Philips GoGear ShoqBox PSS110 MP3 Player

Great Idea, Needs More Development

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Sep 1, 2006 | 1 out of 1 found this Philips GoGear ShoqBox PSS110 review helpful

Pros: Nice Sound, Plays MP3 and Radio, Can be used as Speakers

Cons: Not Enough Memory, User-Unfriendly Musicmatch Software, Quality?

We bought this unit because it could both play mp3s as well as serve as portable speakers for our ipod. The sound was impressive, given its small size. We thought that since it comes with a USB cable to connect to a computer for file transfer, we cou...ld simply plug it in and transfer the files, but nooooooo, we had to install this clunky Musicmatch software that is slow to load, slow to learn, and ultimately slow to use--a big downer. Warning 1: Though the box says up to 8 hours of music (if 128kbps mp3 or 64kbps WMA), the truth is that it can hold much less, more like 4-5 hours of 128kbps mp3s. There's no excuse for this kind of misrepresentation. Warning 2: If you use the provided Musicmatch software to create your mp3 files, your songs will not sound as good as the ones that came preloaded on the unit. We kept on trying different programs and settings to get our mp3s to sound as good as the preloaded ones, but with no luck. The closest we came was using iTunes to convert the mp3s and Musicmatch to transfer them. (Again, a 2-step process that was time-consuming and discouraging, given the small memory and how often you find yourself wanting to update your 4-hour mp3 library.) Warning 3, and here's the kicker: Our unit simply stopped turning on after only a couple of days. We just got our money back today. Don't know what's up with that! It's too bad, because there doesn't seem to be anything quite like this unit, but it just has a lot of issues at the moment that Philips needs to address. Once it does, we'll be the first in line for a new model. -max Read more Less