Philips GoGear HDD6330
Firstly, let it be said that I'm a complete and total iPod hater. I was an early adopter of the first-generation iPod as I saw it as an innovation but since then the only innovation has come from Apple's marketing department. Each amazing new feature is touted 6 months after the last as if it were some miraculous evolution of technology. All I can say is this: Buy an iPod now and cry in 6 months when you're holding yesterday's must-have toy or, pick up something different and set yourself apart from the rest of the crowd. Whip out an iPod and people say neat. Whip out something different and people say what's that?

After experimenting with various players over the years - from the first 16MB Nomad player that took 45 minutes to transfer an album over USB 1.1, to the Apple-only first generation 10-gig iPod with the dead battery feature, and the 512MB Muvo Slim that almost did the trick but required USB to recharge and had akward controls, and even the Windows Media Player on my Audiovox SMT5600 that (surprise!) ate up battery power quicker than a 2-hour phone call and later, the Olympus M:Robe 500 which hit the mark in as many places as it missed.

I've thought about holding out for the perfect PMP but that may be a year or two off and in the world of a gadget whore such as myself, even 3 months is a lifetime. There's certainly some good contenders out there but most of them are too large and as I already carry my laptop most everywhere I travel I need something that fits in my pocket for walking the dog or more casual activities around the house.

I'm a complete music nut, purchasing hundreds of albums a month and I need a player that supports this habit in the best way possible - price, performance, features, and style.

I've been searching for an MP3 player with the following characteristics:

a) not an Ipod
b) displays album art
c) no proprietary software requirement
d) native ID3 tag support
e) AM/FM radio
f) intuitive interface
g) good battery life
h) convenientyly placed controls
i) no DRM crippling
g) great looks
h) last track/location memory
i) sub $100 per 100 gigabyte ratio
j) drag/drop support

Things that I don't need:

a) support for download sites
b) support for playlists
c) photograph display
d) Mac OS support
e) OGG support
f) video

And so, im my continued quest for the perfect mp3 player I've found the Philips GoGear HDD6330. It's not the perfect DAP by any means but it hits most of the areas that matter to me and in the past couple weeks of testing proven to be well capable as a succesor to the M:robe 500 which I was close to settling for.

The Philips HD33660 proves capable in the following areas:

a) Ease of use: The interface and controls are intuitive and easy to use. Navigating in and out of the file system is a breeze and reaching the various albums, artists, and titles takes no more than a few seconds. The touch-sensitive controls make it a breeze to scroll through hundreds of albums.

b) Album art display: It took me a while to figure out just how (each DAP seems to do this differently) - I tried embedding the artwork in the MP3 file itself, tried naming images "Folder.jpg" - which works for Windows Media Player and my SMT5600, and even tried adding the images through the Olympus m:trip software - all to no avail. Finally, I took a peek in the "samples" folder that ships with the player and found the simplest answer - name your album artwork "Album Art.jpg" and the player will automatically recognize it. (note that throughout this review I'd been adding tracks with Windows Explorer. Sync'ing with Windows Media Player 10 works just fine)

c) Supports terrestrial radio: The Philips GoGear HDD6330 excels in this area with exceptional support for terrestrial radio - even picking up a powerful signal in my office building so I can catch all my NPR goodness at work.

d) Simple file transfer: I never bothered installing Philips proprietary WMP 10 software as I'm not interested in support for paid-download sites or synchronization features. Instead, I plugged the player into my USB 2.0 port, Windows XP immediately recognized it by name and allowed full access via the familiar explorer interface. Navigate to Media/Music then drag and drop your folders onto the player. That's it! ID3 tags handle the rest.

e) Good battery life: The simplest test for me is a real-world test. Walk the dog in the morning, connect the player to my car stereo for the ride to work, listen all day at work, re-connect for the commute home, listen at home, fall asleep listening, wake up and there's still juice in the player. How many hours is that exactly? I couldn't say for sure but I can say that no matter where I am I'll never be more than one day away from power so if my player can last through a full day and night of playback then it more than satisfies my needs.

f) Not DRM crippled: This was one of my biggest complaints with the Olympous m:robe 500 - after syncing tracks to the player all the files and folders were renamed and if anything was deleted from the source computer m:trip would delete them from the player on next sync. What's the point of having 20gigs of DAP space if I have to mirror the files on my laptop? Along came the m:robe loader which solved that problem but by then so many other problems existed with the player that I'd all but given up. With that said, Philips has no DRM cripppling that I've found. Add and remove files and folders to the player, delete them from your hard drive and re-add them from the player etc.

g) Memory: Thankfully the player remembers where you last were when it goes to sleep, shuts off, or is paused. The m:robe 500 drove me mad with this - it would automatically shut off after 10 minutes of inactivity and then not remember where you last were when you turned it back on. I'd think this would be an obvious requirement to have but apparently it's a feature and so I'll mention it here. The GoGear HDD6330 remembers the artist, album and position of last track played after going to sleep or powering off.

As mentioned before however, the Philips GoGear HDD6330 is by no means perfect and here are a few ares where it missed the mark:

a) Proprietary USB/power cable: I can only guess why they would have this wacky combo cable - perhaps they want to force users to purchase future accessories, or maybe it was a means to cut cost, or maybe they thought it would be more convenient - any way you look at it however, a portable player shouldn't require lugging around the entire power block just to sync files. The block itself is about the size of some larger cellphone chargers - which isn't huge, but is still a block. The cables are long enough to comfortably reach a good distance between your PC and the USB port however and that's a plus. The cable also has attached caps for the USB and power tips to keep out dust and debris.

b) Small screen size: With a player this large you'd expect a larger screen area. It seems that far too much real estate is being lost for no apparent reason. Perhaps battery consumption or cost was a factor but other players in this price point have a much larger screen size with similar cost/battery life specs.

c) Album art: All this time I've wanted a player that supports album art but the thumbnails are so tiny (think 45 x 45 pixels) that they're all but useless. It's a nice feature to have but Philips' implementation leaves me wanting something more - either support for direct access to the full-resolution cover with an additional click or support for slideshow viewing in the picture viewer. Perhaps a future firmware upgrade will mitigate this oversight.

D) Sensitive controls: While the touch-sensitive controls are one of the player's most attractive features, they are far too sensitive. The hold switch must be activated frequently to keep from mistakenly clicking to the next track or hitting play/pause. While this isn't a complete nuisance, it's definitely a minor inconvenience and I often hit a button mistakenly unless I handle it very deliberately.

E) Startup time: I'd love for this to power up with just a press of a button. Unfortunately, there's a switch on the side which must be held for 3 seconds to reboot the device - which then takes an additional few seconds to load. Now while this undoubtedly is in place to conserve battery life it's definitely going to be annoying to those who are accustomed to instant access. Still, once booted the GoGear will continue playing exactly where it left off. 7 seconds can seem like an eternity to wait in the world of portable players but it's a good trade-off in terms of extended standby time.

In summary I have to say that I'm very happy with this player. It circumvents some of the more annoying features of other players with its robust ID3 and drag/drop support. It has great battery life and gets a 70% charge in 1 hour with full charge in 4. It looks sleek and isn't an iPod, includes a protective carrying sleeve, and comes with adequate headphones that don't have that stupid one-side-longer-than-the-other cable that looks moronic unless wrapped behind your head. It's affordably priced at just under $300, has a healthy 30gigs of disk space, includes support information on the player itself (first for a DAP as far as I know), and has gotten consistently positive reviews from a variety of reputable websites. I used a 10% coupon that I receieved in the mail from Best Buy to bring the price down a bit further.

Philips Usa HDD6330 30GB GoGear Digital Music Jukebox

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