Philips unveils GoGear Ariaz media player

"A significant jump in sound quality"

19 February 2009 18:51 GMT / By Verity Burns

Philips has unveiled its new GoGear Ariaz personal media player, bringing what it describes as a "significant jump in sound quality" to mid-range PMPs.

The Ariaz adopts the Philips patented FullSound technology, which enhances the dynamics, bass, treble and stereo imaging of highly-compressed MP3 files for clearer playback.

To help that hit home even more, the Ariaz will come with a pair of high definition, sound isolation headphones, which prevent against external interference. They will also include three different shaped earbuds so you can choose the most comfortable ones for you.

The Ariaz itself is extremely compact and light, measuring 66 x 43 x 12mm, with a 2-inch full colour screen for viewing videos, album art and information during music playback.

The control system is a combination of touchscreen buttons and a large rocker key for scrolling through the menus quickly.

A nice touch for the GoGear Ariaz is that you can download movies directly from the Internet using your PC or laptop, without having to worry about the sizing.

The included software will allow you to choose any open source video file to be downloaded and automatically enhance it for the Ariaz's 2-inch screen.

GoGear Ariaz offers support for most popular file formats including MP3, WMA plus MPEG4 video, and it gives the option to convert most others to a GoGear compatible format.

You'll also be able to listen to the radio through the RDS FM tuner, and make voice or radio recordings thanks to a built in microphone.

The player will be available with 4, 8 and 16GB of storage space from April at 79 euros, 99 euros and 129 euros respectively.