Full Review

The Philips Aria is part of the GoGear line-up of MP3 players which means that it is a do-it-all gadget that does not cost too much.

Like other Philips players, the Aria is also encased in black glossy plastic. The front is made up of a large 2-inch screen, and navigation buttons on the side, including a Play/Pause button. On the player’s side are buttons for switching it on, hold, reset and the usual miniUSB and 3.5mm headphones jack. Overall the player looks decent except for the overly glossy body that attracts fingerprints.

Overall the player looks decent except for the overly glossy body that attracts fingerprints.

Out of the box, the Aria supports the usual WMA and MP3 formats but unfortunately, AAC is not supported. Also, in terms of video playback, the Aria only supports SMV files but thankfully, Philips provides a video conversion software in the bundled CD.

The Aria’s audio playback quality is quite adequate. It especially stands out when playing bass-heavy genres like Electronica and Hip-Hop. During our Rock playback tests, the music sounded a bit muddled especially when riff-heavy guitars jumped into the mix with a lot of double-bass drumming. The Aria couldn’t reach the heights of the iPod when it came to playing Classical and Jazz tracks, but it was still good enough for us to enjoy.

The Aria comes with a very good pair of in-canal earphones and we wish it was a more common occurrence. Video playback was not particularly our favorite because of the average screen that all Philips players seem to have. The battery life however was excellent and we got close to 26 hours of continuous audio playback and about six of video.

For everything that it does, the Philips Aria is priced very reasonably at Rs. 4,999. According to us, this makes it a good buy.

Bottom Line

The Philips Aria is a good looking feature-rich player that is simple to use thanks to its no-frills interface. It comes with a decent set of in-ear headphones and is priced competitively. We only wish the screen could have been of a better quality.