The Philips GoGear Aria (see CNET Review or official Philips product page) is an affordable portable video player (PVP) that’s good if you’re looking to get your first PVP and don’t want to pay a lot of money. There are a lot of MP3 players out there that kinda do video, but this one does it and does it well. There are things it can’t and won’t do, but overall it’s a pretty decent entry level product for those who want and MP3 player with a nice screen and video capability if you can get past the plastic design and other minor flaws to this MP3 player.
Philips GoGear Aria Quick Stats:
- Dimensions: 3.3″ x 1.9″ x 4.2″
- Weight: 1.7 oz
- Screen: 2″ LCD with 176 x 220 pixel resolution
- Memory: 8GB Flash Integrated
- Supported Audio Formats: MP3, WMA
There are some things this MP3 player doesn’t do. If you’re an iTunes fan, you’re going to want to go somewhere else. The Philips GoGear Aria doesn’t do AAC iTunes files, which is a real bummer. There is great access to the Rhapsody music service, though.
On the video side, the MP3 player is a little light as well – the GoGear Aria will ONLY play SMV files – not only that, but only files that are recorded at a 200 x 176 resolution. As you can imagine, it takes a little work to get good looking video on this small, portable player.
Battery life is also average, with an estimated 30 hours available if you’re listening to music only or around 6 hours if you’re doing nothing but watching video. This pretty much compares well to other similar MP3 players.
If you have the Philips GoGear Aria, we’d love to know what you think – good or bad. Does it really make it difficult with no access to iTunes AAC files? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!
on Nov 14th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I don’t recommend this AT ALL. The one I got I was pretty excited, but then it started messing up the first week. Whenever I added my songs on it, it only took about half of them and also like if I had 150 songs on there and deleted them, it would still say I had 150 songs on there so even though the songs weren’t on there it took up storage space. I can no longer turn it on because it says that my memory is full when I have absolutely no music on it whatsoever.
on Dec 7th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Very good video player but would most recomment an mp3 with a bigger screen.
on Jan 7th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
i love mine i dont have that same problem as u emily maybe it was the place that you were downloading your music from that messed it up the only problem i had with mine is whenever i deleted the pictures that came with it it would freeze and not turn on i pluged it into my computer and it finally came back on but other then that its great it also has amazing sound quality