Designed with athlete insights and technology innovations the product can be worn securely on the arm. Pure solid-state means no moving parts for 100% skip free sport audio. Automatic tuning with 10 station presets onboard, you'll never run out of new music to inspire your daily workouts. Essential for walk/run training programs, the stop watch can be used to increase your performance. State-of-the-art illumination technology strobe light that enhances being seen in low light conditions. The product's design is compact and features a soft touch keypad, co-molded rubber and high-impact plastic housing and electro-plated shell for sport-tested protection and durability.PRODUCT FEATURES: 512MB built-in memory; Plays MP3, Windows media formatted content and future formats; FM radio with 10 presets; Remote control waist belt; Dedicated stopwatch; Strobe light for low light conditions; Backlit LCD display; 4 EQ presets and Dynamic Bass Boost; Up to 12 hours of playback time; 1-hour rapid [4 hours full] battery recharging time; Audio manager software included.
1 Great product poor radio
I have trashed both an Iriver and a yepp at the gym. This thing is build like a tank. The software isn't the best, but it is very usable for someone with some basic computer skills. The sound is very good. The size is bigger than I was used to, but for a workout player it is great. The bigger size gives you a bigger display and controls. This is much better for adjustments while running. My only complaint is the radio reception. I work out at a gym that broadcast TV channels over the radio and quite often I have problems tuning and getting stations to stay tuned in(no problem with the previous 2). It does get good reception of regular stations. When I purchased this I did not realize it had a recharable battery. At first I was dissapointed, but have really come to like that feature. The battery life is great, and I don't have to carry spares in my gym bag anymore or have the battery compartment pop open in the middle of a run. This is not an MP3 for everyone, if you are looking for a durable MP3 for running or for the gym this is great.
2 user-UNfriendly software ruins ownership experience
The best thing about the PSA250 is the excellent build quality - durable metallic casing and rubberized buttons - much better than the cheap plastic most other MP3 players are made of. It also has a built in rechargeable battery (lithium, I think), which is nice. FM radio, bass boost and strobe light are all great features as well.
Unfortunately, the software interface is so horrible as to be nearly unusable. Seems like Nike/Philips spent all their R&D money on external construction then slapped together some truly slipshod software as an afterthought. While XP does recognize it as a removable flash drive (meaning you *can* drag and drop MP3's directly onto the unit via Windows Explorer), the PSA250 does not natively read the MP3 format. Ironically, the PSA250 is an MP3 player that does not play MP3's.
You have to load your MP3's using the Nike/Philips Digtal Media Manager (DMM) program that, uninvited, loads itself into the background every time you boot up, hogging system resources and aggravating people like me who hate software bloat slowing down their computer.
DMM starts by creating a database of all the MP3's on your computer (takes a long time if you have gigs of music like I do), then translates your MP3's into a proprietary format that the PSA250 can recognize. Also, the software only reads embedded IDv3 information, not filenames, which means it will probably report many of your MP3's as "No Title Found" if you ripped them from CD's you own. This all turns out to be a very long and frustrating process, especially when all you want to do is add a couple songs to your playlist before going on a morning run. The DMM interface is also ugly, with none of the style of the PSA250 itself.
I'm no engineer, but I do custom system building and am no stranger to working with various electronic devices, from Pocket PC to configuring complex wireless networks. Even for me, using the DMM software has been such an upsetting experience that I simply leave the PSA250 sitting on a shelf gathering dust while I go running in silence. The crazy thing is that if Nike/Philips had just made the PSA250 to read and play MP3's natively, there wouldn't be any need for a separate software interface and you'd have one heck of a product. This seems to be a problem with many other Nike/Philips products.
The PSA250 looks and feels great, but spend your money on something you will actually use.
3 Purchase with caution
I did not have any trouble with software, although I find the software extremely annoying. I think many people are having trouble with the software because for some reason Phillips decided that it should change your refresh rate, among other things, when you run the software. I don't understand why the standard Windows "drag & drop" wasn't good enough. My main trouble with this item stems from the hardware itself. The volume adjustment is way too sensitive; you press the button slightly and it makes a very huge difference. I'm not too certain if the "Shuffle" settings do anything at all. The instructions are sparse and fails to mention what some of the more dubious settings (like DBB) does. The waistband remote buttons are extremely sensitive also; a slight touch is more than enough to activated an unintended control. I purchased one from Best Buy and 45 days later, I had to return it because the waistband remote stopped working. The one it was replaced with has some issues with the waistband remote also, and I am considering exchanging this one as well. Philips has a bad reputation for making "innovative products." It seems that "innovative" to Philips means making things more difficult than they need to be in order to call themselves "original." On the plus side, it is a very durable unit, while finicky & sensitive, the waistband remote is a good feature, for some that is. The strobe light is welcome as well. After an initial depletion & recharge cycle, I am getting about 12 hours of playtime. On my first unit, the earbuds were very tight (in a good way) and stayed place in your ears during the most vigorous sprints. On the current unit, they are loose, but that may be able to corrected with a little tightening. Back to "innovative;" Instead of commonly availible mini phillips head, or mini allen, Philips decided that a mini torqx head was the ideal solution for the fitting in the hearbuds. It's hard to find a torqx head smaller than 1/8" in most stores, let alone anyones home tool box. I wish I had purchased another model, but soemone else may like the PSA250.
***EDIT ON MARCH 6, 2005***
As it turns out, the 2nd units remote belt was defective also, and I went to return it to Best Buy. The PSA-250 is no longer stocked at Best Buy, although some stores have a limited remaining supply. The Electronics manager who worked with me stated that their particular store has had a lot of returns on the PSA-250 for various comlaints. Although he did not know for certain, the fact that the PSA-250 is still being made and it did initially sell well at Best Buy, & the fact that it is no longer offered by Best Buy, led him to beleive that Best Buy stopped selling it as a result too many returns. At anyrate, they didn't have it anymore so I got an iRiver H10 (5GB; USB 2.0), which is outstanding! I do miss the rugged construction & sturdy wearing characteristics of the the PSA-250, but I don't miss the long load times due to the USB 1.1, and file conversion process. I can load 100 MP3s with USB 2.0 in 6 minutes, compared to 15 minutes or more to load 70 into the PSA-250. If I could rescore this item, I would give it 2 stars.
4 Ignore Computer Illiterate People
The people below obviously are the kind of people that use AOL. I am sorry that they do not know how to operate their computer, however I got my MP3 player today and it has been great. I did decide to download Musicmatch because of the below reviews, however I have had no problems with the transfer at all. The upload rate is pretty fast, I got 180 songs on it in around 20 mins or so, and I was able to get over the 8 hours advertised music time on it.
My only complaint is that the system could have been drag and drop like some reviewer stated, however that makes the software inside the MP3 player more complicated as well. Being an Electrical Engineer myself, I understand the need to have your software come into your hardware in an expected manner, so I can understand their desire to have the songs "treated".
Regardless, it is an excellent system and it comes with the lovely arm and waist bands, as well as a cool little waist "easy access" volume/selection control for your belt. Overall the sound could be louder, but I suppose if I want to get volume control headphones I could adjust that.
5 HORRIBLE PRODUCT
This is bar far the biggest waste of money I've ever purchased. The software is horrific. It didn't crash my computer at all, but it has some MAJOR flaws. First of all, you can't drag and drop music onto the player--you have to use their lame software. To make it worse, the software is useless! It bases everything off a database within the player. This database doesn't look at file names--it only looks at MP3 ID tags. So if you've ripped any CD's that are a few years old, or have music that you downloaded a few years ago, the software won't recognize it. So, according to this software, I have 443 songs named "No Title Found" on my computer. Useless. Utterly useless. This was also a gift. I will never buy from these morons again. They should stop hiring sixth-graders to write their software.
