Members of Philips Design, in September 2005, chose for the first time the designs they considered best in class in five categories, with the Philips GoGear Jukebox user interface receiving the award for Interaction Design. In the new range of GoGear Jukeboxes, at the IFA 2005 in Berlin, demonstrated that the MP3 hard disk driver players reflected Philips' sense and simplicity theme. But that shouldn't come to any surprise to those who have kept up with Philips. In 2005, Royal Philips Electronics was Europe's largest with sales at 30.4 billion, and one of the world's top three consumer electronic companies.

The latest GoGear Jukebox is a flash audio player with 30GB for music and photos, along with 18-hour music playtime. It allows its user to store up to 15,000 songs or 8,400 pictures, enjoy MP3 and WMA plus its FM tuner, while enjoying playback control and browsing at the same time. The 2.0" 65-color screen allows easy navigation with its SuperScrollTM along with photo viewing. It synchronizes with Windows Media Player 10 and is compatible with PlaysForSure with Windows XP only. Looking like little black boxes, it has a sleek, high-gloss front that projects a blank wall of black when not in usea different and feel than what is available in the competitive market for the mainstream. The only problem may be when the user downloads the Beta version of Windows Media Player 11, which may result in some rather odd behavior of the PC, digital audio player or windows media player when transferring media files to the Philips digital audio players. Firmware upgrades are being worked on to fix this issue.

The sport audio players are built especially for those that love the idea of the digital player, but can't find the durability they need on the treadmill or bicycle. With the shock absorbing design you are sure to have an uninterrupted workout rolling to your favorite tunes without breaking the pocketbook at $69 for the 512MB or $119.99 for the 1GB. With the Philips Sport Audio player you also have the ability to listen to FM radio or cruise easily between downloaded songs with the easy scroll features.

Like most MP3 players there are downfalls to the Sport Audio and GoGear players. The usual suspects pop-up but nothing new, scratches to the player itself, and freezing up from time to time. Some have complimented the Jukebox about its ease of use, but most are difficult to use at first. But basically, Philips offers to the public several excellent MP3 players, with several Jukebox styles, designs, and sizesfor the beginner to the MP3 pro, each one enjoying the digital music scene. Knowing that there are multiple different streets to venture down in this market, Philips decided on catering to each consumer in a different way. They have also created a line of sport audio players for the athletic type and top of the line hard drive players for the digital music elite. Whatever the public wants, Philip gives.