Finally! A Value MP3 player that wont cost me an arm and a leg.. (Philips GoGear HDD070 2 GB)

Member Name: helpa4eva

Product:	Philips GoGear HDD070 2 GB
Date:	13/08/05 (737 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Holds a decent amount of songs, long battery life

Disadvantages: Bit of a kerfuffle putting songs on sometimes!

Philips HDD070 review by Helpa4eva

I was recently walking down the high street going into a few of the shops - due to a recently cashed cheque for £500 i had to buy a few things!

Anyway there i was trundling down the street, headphones on my head, a little headbanging as the guitar riffs of Iron Maiden and Metallica pleasured my ears, when all of a sudden, the chorus of "Run to the Hills" is interrupted by an untimeley beep! It is then that i stop in my tracks, open my bag and pull out the obselete,very almost old-skool, soon to be vintage music player known to the generation as a "Walkman"!

"Well this is no good" i thought to myself, and walked into Argos, and after opting between low cost low space and high cost high space, i bought the 2GB "Philips HDD070" for £109.99, that came with a neck strap, headphones, charger, pouch, pc software, usb cable and stickers, and of course a manual!.

After a few other purchases i caught the bus home and got inside and sat in front of my computer looking at my new toy! It was in a strong cuboid box mainly white in colour, with a picture of the mp3 player of the front and spec's and information dotted about. But not being able to hold back anymore i opened the box and there in very posh polystyrene (the kind that doesnt crumble as soon as you touch it) there sat my headphones, manual, and mp3 player wrapped in plastics, and underneath that polystyrene tray sat another tray, contaning a cd, and some cables.

The mp3 itself has a pretty simple layout - It has 4 directional buttons in the centre, the up and down being used as skip backwards and skip forwards respectively. There is also a small button on the right of these 4 that is used for Play, Pause, and when held, Power. On the left side of the MP3 player there is the hole for headphones, USB cable and charger. On the right there is and up and down button for volume, a menu/hold button and a source button, which takes you straight to what song is playing if you are in the menu.

After installing the driver and software that was supplied - the software being Musicmatch Jukebox, i plugged in the mp3 player which was immediatley detected, and Musicmatch jukebox opened, i clicked the add button and promptly started to copy songs on to it, it takes about 10-20 seconds to copy a song, which is actually quite a while when you sit there and count. But its worth it i suppose.. now it claims to hold 1500 songs, which i find hard to believe as at the current time mine is 1/4 full and only has 125 on its hard drive. The mp3 player supports wma and mp3 file extension songs which are about the same size.

If you put a music CD in the PC you can copy it straight to the player, although often you will have to manually rename them all as the PC will only detect them as "Track01" by "Unknown Artist" and "Track02" by "Unknown Artist" which is the way it will appear on the MP3 player which makes it impossible to find the song you want. This is a slow process but if you prefer ease of use over speed than this is the path to take.

This was my first MP3 player as i am very hesitant to part with money and so this was a big step, but a step i am now glad i took. I have around 6 cd's worth stored on a little gadget around a 10th of the size and a 10th of the weight of a walkman and all the cd's!

The headphones that are provided are small white earbud ones, however i dont like these as the sound quality is abismal (this applies to all earbud headphones) I much prefer the big ones that u actually put over your head. Much better.

When fully charged, the mp3 player will make love to your ears for 600 minutes, thats 10 hours for those of you who couldnt be bothered to work it out!

And so this brings us to the end of the review of my latest toy, and i hope it influences those who havnt yet been converted to the mp3-side to do so! soon!! But just be careful what you buy! I was lucky, this is great value and i really would recommend it to anyone.

The End
By Helpa4eva

Summary: It plays a lot of music! Thats the most important thing.

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