Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Philips SA1929/37 2 GB Flash Audio MP3 Player with Case and SportsHeadphones (Silver) January 24, 2010
Alan F. Montes Reyes (COLUMBUS, OHIO, US)
awesome little mp3 player for running/exercising, you can wrap them around your arm using the case/band it comes with, it does everything its advertised to do, that said, the headphones on the advertised picture are different than the ones that actually comes with the product, in my opinion the earphones that come with the product are better because they wrap around your ears so when you're excising they stay in place unlike regular earphones that sometimes fall out.
Tiny but Awsome! January 7, 2010
J. Diaz (san bernaradino, california)
i recently purchased this mp3 player from philips and i absolutly loved it!! my only negative is that it is extremely small. other than that it is a great player. thr sound is good i bought mine new it came in its original packaging, and arrived within 2 days.
 Died after 4 months. The warranty was 3 months. December 29, 2009
N. Greene (Elkins Park, PA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Purchased this on August 12, 2009 it died on December 29. Completely dead and useless. To add insult to injury the "warranty" ended in November. $10 a month for an MP3 player is no bargain.
Need to work on batt. duration November 11, 2009
D. Prine (Fl)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought 2 of these for my son and I. The only problem we see is that they discharge in 20 hrs regardles if they are on or not. Other than that they met our expectations.
Too-quick unrepairable automatic shutoff is a deal-breaker October 21, 2009
Kluelos
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
- When paused, this player is supposed to shut itself off after 10 minutes.
- It actually shuts off after only 3. That can't be changed or fixed
- When it shuts off, it is slow and difficult to get back to where it was stopped.
This issue affects all of the RaGa models. Philips will not attempt to repair them and have abandoned the model.
Although I liked this player a lot, the shutoff problem is too hard to live with. That is the reason for the low rating.
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The manual claims that this player automatically shuts itself off, after ten minutes of no activity when it in the "paused" state: if you pause it to deal with an interruption(like a phone call or brief conversation), then (the manual says) after those 10 minutes the player will shut itself completely off. That sounds like a good feature, though a programmable time would be better.
In practice and contrary to the manual, auto-shutoff happens after three (3) minutes, not ten.
I found that almost any interruption takes longer than three minutes, so you'll find the player has completely shut itself off -- not just paused -- when you try to resume playing.
Turning it back on again requires waiting for the player to "update" itself, then navigating through a couple of menus to get it to start playing where it stopped. You'll almost certainly have to stop, pull the unit out and peer at the screen to do this. When you're driving or exercising that isn't always convenient or sometimes even possible.
There is no way to disable the auto-shutoff feature, or to change the time period.
Phillips sent me two replacement units with the same flaw, then told me that they had none without it, had no others in the factory and would not fix the firmware for existing units. Getting a unit or any similar unit that works as the manual says it works, is simply not an option according to Philips Customer Service. To be sure they were very polite and just as helpful about this as I could wish. But the bottom line is a company decision to abandon this model.
Since I was a recent purchaser and within the return period, I returned my unit to them and am awaiting a refund, which is expected to take 6-8 weeks to process.
*******
That's a shame, because the player has a lot to commend it, though the lack of a clip damages the portability rating. Instead it comes with an "action jacket", an elastic case and strap arrangement so you can wrap this around your upper arm. A clip for a shirt or jacket pocket would be more helpful. A way to hang it round your neck would be more so.
There are no instructions for using the "action jacket" or its arm strap, so you'll need to be reasonably facile at figuring such things out for yourself. I fault Philips for not including at least a sheet with a couple of illustrations. You'll have to strain to stuff the player into its jacket, so some reassurance that this is correct would have been a good thing to have. This whole process is a lot less intuitively obvious than Philips evidently thinks it is.
I really, really like the earbuds with the "over the ear loop" design, but you can get these separately and elsewhere. They're much more comfortable than "in the ear" designs, won't fall out and are more likely to fit you. (Internal ear shape is more individual than a fingerprint, and one size most definitely does not fit all.)
The screen is bright, and easily readable. If the information is too long to fit the screen, then it will start scrolling to the left, which is much better than arbitrarily limiting the length displayed.
The computer-side driver-manager (DM) software is unexceptionable, but the player comes preloaded with the DM installation software on it, as a portable disk drive. After installation, this software can be deleted, (though it wouldn't hurt to back it up on your computer or an optical disk). (A CD-sized cardboard case came with the unit, but no CD. The point to mentioning this is that the DM install software does take up room and it does clutter up the listing in the portable-disk view in Windows Explorer. You can delete it to get it out of your face.
When you adjust the player's settings to your liking via its firmware menus, your choices are stored as files on the portable disk. You'll get some more clutter in the root directory, which you should not, of course, delete. I thought this could have been handled better.
When I loaded the DM software, it went immediately to update itself to version 6.1. When I visited the Philips web site for product registration (at DM's urging), I was greeted with a scrolling red message saying that new firmware was available and that I needed to update mine; that I should select the "software" button on that page, to do so.
There was no "software" button. On the site's Software page for this product, it listed version 6.0 as the latest available version. There's a "chat" feature for support on the site, so after a discussion with support, it turns out that the scrolling red message was wrong, that I already had the latest version, that if I had downloaded and installed their 6.0 version it would have just automatically upgraded me to 6.1 again.
As for the "software" button? This was just bad or inconsistent web site design, there is no such button.
Loading audio files onto the player is done via Windows Explorer, with the player plugged in via USB as a portable drive. There are some pre-existing directories and little bit of prerecorded material in them. The directory structure does not affect anything, so you can delete all of this and structure it to suit yourself.
It might be possible to also do some file transfers via WMP, but since I never use WMP, I didn't explore this.
The manual is silent on the actual subject of supported filetypes, but does speak only of MP3/WAV files, so it apparently supports only those. It does not support common playlist formats either.
There is an undocumented shuffle mode in the settings menu, but I only mention that it is present. I did not attempt to use it.
I listen mostly to MP3's of audiobooks. This player is unexceptionable for that purpose. Meh. Not great, not rotten, you just treat them as music albums, make sure the files are split up by chapters, or whichever way you prefer. it does not support any audiobook formats of any kind, just plain MP3.
The mini-manual (all that's available, the PDF files that come with it merely repeat the mini-manual, as do the docs on the Philips web site)
There's a backlight shutoff timer whose delay is programmable. Too bad they couldn't have done that for the shutoff timer.
I understand that Philips does include a programmable sleep feature in other models, but you'll have to search carefully for it. I didn't find out that auto-shutoff even existed until after I'd bought the product.
You must be in "Music" mode for the "resume last" (start from where you shut off) feature to work. If you are in "Folder View" mode, that option's not available. It's not that big a hardship to work around, but is another symptom of a lack of thought that went into the firmware.
Unless you only listen when you're seldom interrupted, I'd give this player a pass. Since Philips chose not to produce a simple software update to fix this, I have to recommend you go with some other brand instead.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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