Photos support is limited to JPEG and BMP formats, but we'd be lying to you if we said the postage stamp-size screen is something you'll want to spend a lot of time viewing photos on. Audio can be enhanced with a handful of EQ presets or a custom five-band EQ, which do a decent job squeezing some extra life out of the otherwise lackluster earbuds that come bundled with the player.
PHILIPS GOGEAR MP3 PLAYER NOT TURNING ON TRIAL
The Vibe's music player supports MP3, WMA, Audible, and subscription audio (a 30-day Rhapsody subscription trial is included), but it lacks support for the AAC music files used with Apple's iTunes music store. That said, if you can live without the Vibe's color screen (and the photo and video features that come with it), that navigation controls on $50 players such as the Samsung U5 and SanDisk Sansa Clip are far more intuitive.Ĭonsidering the Vibe's price, it's hard to find anything to complain about when it comes to features.
In spite of our complaints over the control pad, the GoGear Vibe's design is decent overall, and a little patience and practice will lessen the navigation woes. A press on the indentation caused the selection to jump, and suddenly, we were trying to decipher Russian. We discovered this the hard way after turning the Vibe on for the first time and trying to select our language from a list of 22 options. Not only is the indentation pointless, but also applying pressure to it causes one of the four surrounding buttons to trigger at random. Philips must have given their usability team the week off when they pushed through this design. Specifically, the problem is that there isn't a center button, but rather, an inviting, button-like indentation that functions only for making users scream and cry. Aside from the fact that one needs to illogically press up to skip backward and down to skip ahead, the biggest mistake Philips made with its navigation pad is the center button. Now for the bad news-the Vibe's four-direction navigation pad is a travesty. Sure the resolution is crud, and you'll really need to crank up the Vibe's brightness to read it in broad daylight, but it's still a feature worth bragging about to anyone dangling their Sansa Clip in front of you. For about $50, you're lucky to get any screen at all, much less a 1.5-inch screen capable of photos, videos, and album artwork. The top half of the player's front includes a feature found on few MP3 players in this price range-a color screen. The face of the Vibe holds its greatest strength and weakness.
The top of the Vibe is bare, but the bottom is riddled with openings for a Mini-USB connection, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, lanyard loop (lanyard not included), and a pinhole microphone for the voice recorder. On the Vibe's left side, you'll find a power switch that doubles as a button hold, leaving the right side with a menu option button and a volume rocker switch that's just big enough to be useful.
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