Philips GoGear 512MB

The GoGear has a poor headphone connector design which although being my only complaint does stop this mp3 player from being good value for money.

I really wanted an MP3 player. At the time the mobile phone MP3 players were pointless due to lack of space, being bulky, and basically rubbish quality meant a portable MP3 player for any music listener was a must. Looking around, there's always going to be the cheap gadgets on the market. I try and stay away for them because, even if they do what it says on the box, the actual quality of the amp on them is usually very bad quality, and they usually have poor battery life, which means charging them for longer than you're actually listening to them. However, Philips have a good reputation, so when the Philips GoGear 512MB Player came on at a good price, I thought why not?

And I haven't looked back. At around £40, a 512Mb player was especially good. Good battery (up to 8 hours of play) and charging (takes about 30 minutes for total charge via the USB dock.) I never thought that I could really use it for such a variety of things, ie. other than music. The amount of times I've seen other students using their flash drives and then having MP3 players by their side. I ask, why the heck didn't they just use the MP3 player! You can store music on it and also your computer files, and you'll only have one unit to worry about, and you can also listen to music while uploading your projects into your computer.

The only issue I would be annoyed about is that I've been let down by the quality of the remote. The wires have pulled out from the remote control; not totally, but enough so that the remote is useless! Therefore, as the only way of controlling the unit is via the remote, I can't listen to music any more. So instead, I just use it to transport my Word documents and AutoCAD files when need be.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this particular unit. The sound quality is good, and charging is especially good. It plays .wma, .MP3 and .wav. However, you can't store many .wav files on it, so that's pretty pointless. So, it's a good MP3 player, although it is let down by the only control mechanism, which is via the remote. When that breaks it will deem the MP3 player useless for playing music.

So, when you go out and buy a portable MP3 player, don't buy one without controls on the actual unit itself. Or just get a mobile phone with one instead.