[Review] Philips GoGear SA6145

[invaderzim_2004]

Philips GoGear SA6145 MP3/Video player

Price paid-on sale for $99 (was $250) at Domayne

Review:

Philips GoGear SA614 is a 4GB MP3/video player with a impressive 3.5" screen and built-in speaker in a appealing black color with silver around the sides.

Design:

The SA6145 has volume buttons on the top, and a hold switch on the bottom.

There are separate menu and playlist buttons for creating playlists (without the need for software):the menu button above the main controls,playlist button on the right side.

You can use the playlist button for creating on-the-go playlists (without the need for software) when a song's selected in the music list screen.

A 4-way navigator is on the right with a on/off, play pause button in the middle.

The screen is very beautiful-3.5" and is QVGA.

2 full range speakers are built-in to the SA6145, with the speaker grilles visible on each side of the display.

Interface

Philip's GoGear interface is quite nice, with graphics reminiscent of iPods-all features are displayed as icons on the left, when you select a feature on the left a bigger version of the icon slides out and appears on the right.

The left and right buttons of the 4-way navigator move between menu screens-unconventional but quite easy to master.

This makes scrolling through the song list very fast.

Music:

The SA6145 plays both unprotected (non-DRM) and DRM MP3/WMA music files-2 popular file formats for digital music.

Playback features are good-the basics of playing selecting songs is familar if you’ve used other players.

Information displayed is artist/album/song name and album art.

The song display looks a lot like the iPod's.

There's also a album art view:album covers in a grid like view.

Photos/Videos:

Photos are displayed in a grid view and are viewed in a landscape orientation,slideshow feature is basic but is effective in use.

When viewing photos you can use the up/down buttons to rotate the currently displayed image-a novel touch.

Video playback is good with smooth motion and frame rate at 30fps.

WMV movies can be transferred to the SA6145, other formats can be converted to WMV with the supplied Media Converter for Philips software.

Transfer and charging:

A standard mini-USB cable is used, with MTP support-Windows is the only OS supported officially by Philips-so you can use Windows Media Player.

It'll charge on other OS but won't appear in the Finder on Macs for instance.

There’s also a program called “Philips device manager + Philips Media converter” which can be downloaded from support.philips.com or installed from the supplied CD.

Philips device manager can be used to perform firmware updates or do a player recovery.

Sound Quality:

The SA6145's sound quality is excellent, with very nice sound reproduction across mids and highs there’s a good EQ selection-presets plus a customizable EQ.

The sound was amazing clear and all ranges and virtually distortion free.

The built-in speaker uses a Class D amplifier to produce very good sound-there's actually 2 full-range speaker drivers in the SA6145

Other:

You can listen to radio with 20 presets and voice recording. Auto tuning in radio presets is very quick.

Overall:

It’s a beautiful MP3/video player that can be enjoyed with headphones or using the integrated speaker.

For $100, I was quite impressed at the SA6145, especially for its large and vibrant 3.5" screen and built-in speakers

Photo:

Edited November 1, 2008 by invaderzim_2004