Watch Out, ipod.
Written: Jan 07 '06 (Updated Jan 07 '06)
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Pros: Lots of features, color display, plenty of space, radio, more.
Cons: Touch pad can be too sensitive.
The Bottom Line: I love it.
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| Bruguru's Full Review: Philips GoGear HDD6330 (30 GB) MP3 Player |
I was happy with my ipod Mini . I really was. In fact, I still like it, and I still use it. I probably would have kept on using it for a long time, too, had I not won a new MP3 player, my Philips GoGear HDD6330 at a contest at work. Now, like I said, I still love my ipod mini. But I really love my new Philips GoGear.
MP3 players and I go way back. I love to go walking, and when I do, I need my tunes. About five years ago, I bought my first: a Rio Rave with a whopping 64MB of storage space. I paid more than $200 for it, and it was plagued with problems from the get go. But the technology was new, and there you go.
A few years later I bought a Seal SFP150 , which my son still uses today. It doubled the storage space of my old rave, was cheap (about $60), works great, and has an easy interface: you just pop the cap off of it and plug it into a USB port on your PC. It even doubles as a jump drive.
A few more players would come. My Philips Shoqbox is really cool, but more suited for home use with its built-in speakers than being a portable. So, still needing more storage capacity for my walks, I bought a Philips GoGear HDD070 . This was my first hard drive player, all of the prior ones being flash. Sadly, my first GoGear wasn’t up to the task of vigorous exercise, and died an ignominious death. Enter ipod.
Now that we have my history with MP3 players established, I’ll jump right into what you’re here for: the scoop on the HDD6330. So, without further ado:
What You Get
30GB player, USB file transfer/power charger cable, carry case, headphones, software CDs.
Appearance
The look of this player is totally cool. It’s compact, about the size of a deck of playing cards. When I showed it to a friend, he promptly dubbed it something out of Star Trek, and it really does look like that. The flat back front panel has no buttons, dials, or knobs. It simply has the Philips logo and a 2-inch, 65 color display. This is all part of Philips “Sense and Simplicity” theme I’m sure. Turn the device on, and the fun begins. The screen lights up and so do the touch-sensitive controls
Operation and Navigation
You can read the instructions if you want to, but I didn’t really need to. It’s fairly intuitive, and I figured it out in no time. The HDD6330 goes right to the main menu on power up.
From here, you can get around by tapping the touch sensitive controls: two sets of back and forward arrows, a play/pause button, and a nifty little scroll bar in the center. You can run your finger along the scroll bar for rapid movements, or simply tap it for incremental steps. A “Menu” button will give you various options depending on where you are at any given time. Volume control is located on the right side, on/off and hold on the left.
Menu Options/Features
From the main menu, you can select the following features and options.
Music
This is the heart and soul of the player. With 30GB of space, you can fit a lot of music, about 7500 songs by my calculations. When I got the player, I only had 28GB available, but I’ve never had a hard drive player that gave me all the space it boasted, ipod included. You can easily access tracks by playlist, artist, album, genre, or just browse through all tracks.
Pictures
Your HDD6330 will store and display pictures as well as music! They look great (if small) on the full color display screen.
Radio
If 7500 songs aren’t good enough for you, the HDD6330 has a built in FM tuner. Reception is actually pretty good, with your headphone cord serving as an antenna. The autotune feature will pick up and preset the strongest stations for you, or you can search manually. You can add up to twenty preset FM stations.
Recording
A small microphone is built into the top of the HDD6330, and you can make very decent voice recordings on the player. FM radio can also be recorded, either directly from the tuner section or through the recording option.
Settings
You can choose the language you want your player to display in, set shuffle or repeat, length of backlight timer, brightness, album art on or off, sleep timer, or clicker sound, and more. Information will display firmware version and available disk space. There’s even a list of call centers if you should need help.
Sound settings is the graphic equalizer section. “SRS WOW” sounds really great to my ears, but you can choose from Rock, Funk, Techno, Jazz, Classical, Spoken Word, and Hip Hop presets. What I really like is the Custom option. Here, you get a true equalizer that allows you to select your own bass, treble, and midrange preferences.
Now Playing
This is the final option, and simply brings you to the info screen for the track or option currently playing.
Display
Let’s talk about the display. I really like the amount of information displayed on my HDD6330. It far surpasses my ipod Mini in many, many ways. The color screen is the first, of course. If your track information includes album art, it will display right next to the music information in glorious color. This is a really nice feature.
In addition to album cover and artist, title, track length and elapsed time are displayed. A small progress bar advances as the music plays. Equalizer setting is also visible, as well as battery status. A big plus is the time, always displayed at the top of the screen while playing. With my ipod, I had to fumble back through the main menu to “Clock” while the music was playing. Also cool is the ticker that runs at the bottom of the screen should you leave the main track info screen. It will display the data on the current track while you browse other tracks.
Ease of Use
As I said, this was fairly intuitive. It won’t take you long to figure out the controls, and soon you’ll be tapping them with precision to navigate. To be sure, scrolling through 7500 tracks can be a formidable task, but holding down the very top or bottom of the scroll bar will put you into a fast scroll mode, which reverts to normal, slower mode when you remove your finger.
The tracks are sorted alphabetically, and as you super scroll, the letter of the alphabet you’ve reached will display to the right. Overall, I like the scrolling and the touch controls, though they are quite sensitive. Sometimes I find myself going too far on the scroll bar and hitting the “Play/Pause” button, which would have been better located on the bottom left hand corner. In addition, you’ll likely want to set the “Hold” button if you’re on the go. I find myself accidentally hitting the touch pad and jumping or stopping tracks.
File Transfer
The HDD6330 connects to your PC via USB 2.0. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it uses Windows Media Player for file transfer and management. I don’t like Windows Media Player nearly as much as itunes. To be sure, transferring files is quick and easy, at least as fast as with my ipod. But file management on the device is a bit more cumbersome.
Compatibility is again an issue. The HDD6330 will play MP3s and WMAs, but not tracks bought from itunes. In addition, WMA files bought through or recorded with Windows Media Player won’t play on your ipod. That meant I had to take all of my itunes-bought tracks, burn them as CD tracks, and rip them as WMAs to play them on the HDD6330. Pictures are added through Media Player too. Through Windows Explorer you can add any type of file and use the HDD6330 as a portable hard drive.
Headphones
The in-ear headphones are at least as good as those that came with my ipod. They stay in your ears a lot better, however. Bass and treble are faithfully reproduced, but in the end I like my Philips HE-592 phones better, and I use them.
Sound Quality
I love the full, rich sound I get from my player. I get great volume and sound and faithful reproduction. A lot of this, of course, depends on the quality of both headphones and the file you're playing. The equalizer options help here, too.
Battery Life
Philips says you can get up to eighteen hours of battery life, but I think that’s overly optimistic. Maybe if you just let the thing play with display light off on a full charge you’ll get something approaching that time. But I have only gotten about five or six hours on a full charge. The upshot is that the USB transfer cable also has a power plug attached, so I can charge from any electrical outlet. I don’t have to have access to a PC to charge as with ipod.
Durability
The case is metal except for the display, which is plastic. If you take reasonable care of the unit it should last a long time, though I assume the plastic display could break if you dropped it enough times.
Overall
I have been having a ball with my HDD6330. It offers a lot of features that my ipod didn’t; I don’t miss much in the reverse. The color display, album art, time and track info ticker, and power charging are big improvements. For the price (about $300) this one comes highly recommended.
Recommended:
Yes
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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