Features
Considering the Vibe's price, it's hard to find anything to complain about when it comes to features. The Vibe's music player supports MP3, WMA, Audible, and subscription audio (a 30-day Rhapsody subscription trial is included), but it lacks support for the AAC music files used with Apple's iTunes music store. Audio can be enhanced with a handful of EQ presets or a custom five-band EQ, which do a decent job squeezing some extra life out of the otherwise lackluster earbuds that come bundled with the player.
Photos support is limited to JPEG and BMP formats, but we'd be lying to you if we said the postage stamp-size screen is something you'll want to spend a lot of time viewing photos on. Same goes for the Vibe's limited video format support. You'll need to jump through some hoops to transfer videos into a low-resolution SMV video format (software included) before getting them on the Vibe, but considering the player's price and its screen size, you should really just be grateful to be getting video support at all.
The Vibe's FM radio offers good reception with the included earbuds acting as the player's antenna. Users get up to 20 station presets, which can be assigned manually or automatically. Voice recordings offer minimal audio quality as 64Kbps MP3 files, but the feature is easy to use and the MP3 format is handy.
Last, but not least, we're happy to see that Philips includes a USB connection setting under the player's Option menu. The capability to switch between a Windows-optimized USB mode (MTP) and a Mac-friendly mode (MSC) is a bonus.
Performance
The Philips GoGear Vibe can hold its own when it comes to sound quality in this price range. Like most MP3 players on the market, the bundled headphones are the weakest link in the Vibe's sound quality. Heard over a pair of Ultrasone Zino headphones, there was little we could hear to distinguish the Vibe from our $300 Apple iPod Touch.
Philips rates the Vibe's battery life at 25 hours of audio or 4 hours of video, which is quite an achievement considering its closest competition--the Sansa Clip--lasts only 14 hours and lacks any kind of video playback. We'll update this review with battery tests from CNET Labs once results are complete.
