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Philips GoGear<br />
SA6045 4GB<br />
$130 • philips.com<br />
The GoGear is essentially Meizu’s mini-<br />
Player with a rounded edge, a more<br />
forgiving four-way control pad, and<br />
Philips’ own user interface. But, oh,<br />
what a difference: We didn’t encounter<br />
any hassles loading photos and video.<br />
Format support is vanilla—MP3 and<br />
WMA for audio and WMV for video;<br />
however, there’s an Add to Playlist button,<br />
FM tuner, and voice-recorder for DJs,<br />
radio-heads, and dictaters, respectively.<br />
WIRED Handsome 2.2-inch screen.<br />
Dedicated Menu button. Solid build<br />
quality. Useful clock screensaver. Hold<br />
button doesn’t disable volume controls.<br />
TIRED Annoying lags when skipping<br />
through menus and screens. Acrylic<br />
bezel attracts fingerprints. Mediocre<br />
battery life: 14 hours.<br />
Samsung YP-K3 2 GB<br />
$149 • samsung.com<br />
In some ways, the YP-K3 is reminiscent<br />
of Apple’s original sliver nano: It’s about<br />
the same size overall but has a larger<br />
screen and an FM tuner. It’s also just<br />
as beautiful, but in more of an “I have<br />
a secretary and belong to a cigar<br />
club” way. The animated menus, while<br />
interesting at first, are tedious once<br />
you’ve numbed to the bouncy-ball<br />
theme, and icons are slow to redraw<br />
when switching screens.<br />
WIRED Rich audio. Resume function<br />
useful for toggling between radio and<br />
MP3s. Auto-displays photos in their<br />
correct orientation and lets you set<br />
them as screensavers.<br />
TIRED Photos look a little bleached<br />
out. Proprietary USB cable difficult<br />
to disengage from player. Skimpy file<br />
support: just MP3 and WMA.<br />
SanDisk Sansa<br />
Connect 4 GB<br />
$150 • sandisk.com<br />
The Sansa Connect is unique among<br />
midsize players for one reason: Wi-Fi.<br />
Jump onto a wireless hot spot (even<br />
one requiring a username and password)<br />
and the Connect can download<br />
songs from Yahoo’s music service if<br />
you subscribe, or stream Internet radio<br />
stations (Yahoo account required).<br />
But there’s too much untapped potential:<br />
If you want to transfer and beam<br />
tracks wirelessly from your PC or shop<br />
for DRM-free music online, too bad.<br />
WIRED Superb sound. Simple<br />
interface. MicroSD card slot. Displays<br />
photos downloaded from Flickr.<br />
TIRED Can’t connect to networks<br />
that use splash pages for login (like<br />
Starbucks stores do). Lacks video support<br />
despite beautiful 2.2-inch screen.<br />
Sony NWZ-A815 2GB<br />
$140 • sonystyle.com<br />
While it’s hard to imagine Sony<br />
recapturing the zillions of ears it commanded<br />
with the original Walkman,<br />
the A815 stands a fine chance of<br />
luring a few of them back. The 2-inch<br />
screen displays JPEGs and MPEG-4<br />
video, and audio-enhancers—Bass<br />
Boost, Normalizer, Pseudo-Surround—<br />
abound, although the standard sound<br />
is so full you’ll hardly need them.<br />
WIRED Thin and light (1.9 ounces)<br />
without feeling cheap. 29-hour battery<br />
life. Useful contextual menus. Savable<br />
custom EQ settings. Time Machine<br />
Shuffle selects tracks from a random<br />
year. Works with Windows Media.<br />
TIRED Cluttered main-menu icon<br />
grid. Lacks software to resize video.<br />
Hold button on back makes one-handed<br />
activation difficult. No FM tuner.<br />
WIRED TEST<br />
0 9 9
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