Philips GoGear SA255/00 flash player

Dude, Philips, enough with the stick-like flash flash players, aight? Where does it end? Here's yet another small capacity (256MB, to be exact) flash DAP — this one's measuring in at 97.5 x 43 x 23mm, sporting a miniSD slot, doing the line-in and voice recording, FM tuning, supporting MP3/WAV/WMA and transferring via USB2.0. It runs on a single AAA battery, no word on lifespan, and no word on why it looks so odd.

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I don't get why big companies like philips (or any other company for that matter) are still pumping cash into designing these flash players. I don't dare say how many are on the market already, but unless you have something new and innovative to sell whats the point?

[John Lewis @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

The mini SD slot is definitely nice, but the internal memory is really lacking. How can they expect to compete with the style of the iPod Shuffle with not even half the internal storage? Come on Phillips. We all know that the beautiful LCD screed on this thing is gonna pop the price up way too much without any real functionality.

[Adam @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

And you people miss the point entirely - these players are aimed squarely at people who do a lot of jogging and working out where constant jarring can eventually affect HD performance in - I see plenty of HD based DAPs at my gym, but I always wonder how long they are going to continue to work for the people....As for the rest of the design, the Mini-SD is really nice, you can change out some of your songs by switching SD cards - I personally have a 256MB Creative Muvo Sport that I have 2 512MB SD cards for - I use those to vary my workout music from time to time. As for the so called strangeness of the design - it actually makes sense - the side scrolling view is to make it easier to read while hanging on your arm.

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

#3, Exactly. It's as if iPod people don't exercise, or don't do it hard enough to realize that an HD based player is a little expensive to be risking all the constant jarring.

As for other reasons to go flash, those little buggers (the cards) are getting larger and larger in capacity while remaining relatively cheap. I don't want my whole fargin music collection on my portable divice. If I want random (no, not like the STUPID shuffle "feature" on the iPod Shuffle) I want on-time control over what the randome choices will be... that is *DRAG AND DROP* what I want on a whim. Have 2-3 flash cards ready for chang over and I have my running card for the morning, lifting card for the afternoon and riding card for when I'm on the motorcycle.