Performance
Overall, sound quality is pretty decent. There's little we could
complain about on the whole. The SA9345's tone is similar to that of
the new iPod classic -- it's not quite got the bass oomph of, say, a Sony player, but only hardcore critics will find reason to complain. Aphex Twin's psychedelic Windowlicker sounded excellent through our Denon AH-C700 earphones. The song's critical bright highs sounded as they should.
Green Day's Whatshername exploded with the same power and studio-increased gain that the iPod has. Bass is clear and mids are well reproduced. A set of preset EQ options are available and make a noticeable and effective difference on sound quality, though personal preference will take over here. The SRS WOW option throws up the volume of the bass well, but added severe distortion to the track in question, and took away a vast amount of audio definition.
One interesting point to note is that the player's maximum volume is quite low. This isn't to say it's quiet -- it's simply lower than that of many other players. This is good news for parents concerned about the potential damage to their kids' ears.
Battery life is rated at 20 hours for audio or two hours for video. Our tests will determine whether this is accurate so check back soon for our results.
Conclusion
There's no question that the Philips
SA9345 is a well-designed player with nicely implemented features. The
problem is that for £129, there aren't enough of them. With competing
players like the iPod with beautiful artwork and video integration, or Cowon's iAudio D2
with its SD card, touchscreen and vast audio codec support, the SA9345
just doesn't bring anything strikingly new to the market.
Still, if you anti-iPoders just want a simple, attractive and good-sounding audio player and can afford a premium, don't overlook this new offering from Philips.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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sonymad 7 March 2012
Good: Sound quality Design Weight Intuitive navigation and controls FM radio
Bad: Price Short list of codec support Low-res screen for a video player
Comment: The Philips SA9345 is a great-looking digital audio and video player that’s easy to navigate and boasts an FM tuner, which is always a plus.
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In common with Apple's iPods, navigating the Philips SA9345 requires the lightest of touches and benefits from a straightforward menu structure. Plus you can listen to DRM-protected content you’ve bought through any PlaysForSure online store.
Get the best price for the Philips SA9345 here
Philips’ relatively low capacity new MP4 players (there’s a 2GB model available too) use the same touch-sensitive navigation that caught our imagination on its hard-disk-based Philips 6320 a couple of years ago. The company continues to sell players with navipad controls, but we’re sold on delicately scrolling through playlists with a gentle stroke. You’re rewarded with a flowing blue LED lighting up in response.
The Philips SA9345 offers 4GB of storage for your media files. Philips reckons up to 2,000 Windows Media Audio (WMA) tracks can be housed on it, but most people are likely to have heaps of MP3 tracks they want to listen to and these tend to be sampled at higher bitrates.
Given the Philips SA9345’s good range of audio preset options and customisable equaliser, it would be a shame not to use the top sampling rate of 192K.
As a Windows Media Player-focused player, with the Philips SA9345 you just drag items to the Sync list and star ratings, musical genre, album art and other details are imported along with the music file itself.
Other players – notably the Archos 405 – support more video and audio formats than this model and you get superior video playback on the Sony as well as both the iPod touch and the nano.
Philips needs to up the 1.8in display’s resolution to the 240x320 pixels of its rivals, while the Philips SA9345's 30fps (frames per second) playback is standard.
As a piece of design the Philips SA9345 puts in a strong showing. As well as the excellent and classy touchscreen, the slim metal casing with the translucent black fascia looks great. You do of course have to put up with fingerprint smears, but the same is true of the iPod touch.
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