Philips PSS110

I acquired the PSS110 soon after release and paid £60 for these cool and stylish MP3 speakers. At the time not many similar products were on the market so I thought I would give it a go. In my opinion it was well worth the purchase due to the amazing sound quality of speakers these size. Even at loud volumes, depending on the amount of bass, there is no distortion. One concern though was the failure of the MP3 player to recognise the track names even though I was using the software which came with it. I suspect this was an individual fault with my player. I also found rather frustrating the small amount of memory as 256mb is clearly not enough to meet the demands of anyone who wishes to store their entire music soundtrack on it. The FM radio function is handy as well as the alarm clock function but what I found most handy was the 'line in' function as this allowed me to connect it to my laptop and replace the rather poor standard laptop speakers.

Introduction of the Philips PSS110:

I picked this up at Asda as it was on offer of below £20. If it works as advertised, it is a good piece of gear in concept. However that is a big 'IF'. I had tried for a whole month on 3 different computers and it just could not work as promised.

Concept:

Build a MP3 player in a reasonable pair of speakers for use around the house, or bring it on the road and use it as a radio alarm clock in the hotel.

Contents:

The speakers

A quite useless CDROM with Musicmatch Jukebox (MJ)

USB cable

Line in cable

Charger

Carry case

Sound:

Like I said in the introduction, the speakers are only of reasonable quality. Do not expect to rock the room with them, but they do sound ok.

Use:

It is a multi feature speaker unit, with FM radio, MP3 player and external speakers for, say your laptop. On start up, you select the feature you want. Batteries are built in rechargeable. I had not really tested how long they will last as the unit couldn't play much except the demo tracks and the FM radio.

Problems:

The first problem with this unit is it is quite choosy about which computer it will run on. I meet ALL the requirements on 2 of my personal computers but MJ fails to recognise it, coming up with the dreaded 'Unknown USB device' warning instead. I managed to get it recognised on my office computer and you would think that I am up and running now correct?

NO! This brings me to the second problem, there is no way to transfer files to the unit except by MJ. You can drag and drop files onto it by Windows Explorer, BUT the unit will refuse to play it, or even list it. So MJ it is then?

Again NO! Even after using MJ to sync the music onto the player, the player STILL fails to recognise the songs. The files are showing on MJ as synced and uploaded, but after disconnection from the computer, it does not show up on the player list instead! I have 2 albums uploaded on the unit at the moment, but when I try to play them, they are not 'in' the unit. Further more, MJ will just re-upload whatever files I had just deleted from the unit (ie the demos).

Conclusion:

This is a good idea in concept but very very poorly carried out. Using MJ is a painful and complex process, and to find out that it does not work after hours of trying is a real pain in the bum. I had just placed this piece of rubbish into the bin.

Sound Quality

Good enough for casual music, with it size, you shouldn't expect to rock the house.

Features

There is a fair amount of features in a product of this size.

Value for Money

I wouldn't even pay £1 for something that could not work.

Overall rating

(-)10

Recommend to a friend?:

NO NO NO!!!

The Philips PSS110 MP3 player is not really a personal MP3 player, but a travel radio/alarm clock that can also play MP3's. It is small, light and easy to use. Tiny speakers the size of a 50p piece produce a surprisingly powerful sound with good bass registers. Memory is limited to the built-in 256MB, which is sufficient for 7 - 8 hours of music. It would have been easy for Philips to provide a slot for SD memory cards... Perhaps they will address this in future models.

All in all, a good little travel companion.