May 2nd, 2009 
Kris Saelen 
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!
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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.
Very good video player but would most recomment an mp3 with a bigger screen.
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
Had a iPod shuffle that died, moved to a Sanza that was a piece of crap, then we figured we’d try another brand and got the Phillips 8g Go Aria.
Bad mistake. First, it has an awkward interface. No very intuitive. But I dealth with it.
Then the battery issue started. Since it has a weird on/off button that doesn’t just “click on or off” but instead you have to hold it “on” and it goes on, then to shut it off, you need to repeat the process (move to the “on” for a few seconds), and it turns off. It’s easy to accidently leave it on and run down the battery. At first I thought my problems were because of me but nope, it’s the player.
You charge it, it says it’s full, you shut it off, then the next time you go to use it, the battery is dead. You then have to recharge it, then connect to Rhapshody to “renew” your song subsciptions because when the battery drains it looses the Rhapshody subscription info.
After dealing with this inconvenience over and over (would be nice if I could just turn on a player and listen to music – what a novel concept), today it had a new twist. Last night, I charged it, renewed subscriptions, SHUT it off. This morning, it was dead, wouldn’t turn on. So I went to recharge it again and it lit up, asked me (in Spanish) to choose a language and then shut off. Dead. Done, nothing.
My next action is to dig out my extended warranty and replace it. I NEVER normally get extended warranties but did so because of my unlucky streak with mp3 players. Sad part is, I’m so annoyed that I’d rather just buy a different brand not have to deal with this brand anymore.
Sorry forgot to say that I only got it at Christmas (it’s March 31st now). I’ve taken extremely good care of this, no exposure to the elements (no rain, no snow), only inside use.
Even with all the tender care, this player didn’t hold up.
Very disappointed.
I had a creative zen before purchasing this phillips aria gogear crap.. the Zen was my best purchase and I wanted another one but walmart only had the phillips… At first my phillips was a dream come true. It was tooo cute and now Its the devil. I take good care of my phillips unlike my Zen. (I dropped my Zen into a tub full of water and it works soo much better then this brand new phillips).
My phillips freezes anytime I select all songs shuffle, My songs delete out of nowhere, I hate the fact it wont let me make my own playlist using the device itself, i have to reset the thing like 100x a day. My next purchase will be an Ipod touch because I guess my being cheap caught up with me and this is why my Mp3 player wont work or has soo many problems.