Philips KEY019

It does everything - just not very well

Convergence, eh? Converging on the ridiculous, more like! Look at this - it's a full-blown MPEG-4 camcorder, two-megapixel camera, MP3 player and USB key, all crammed into a unit the size of a fat thumb. And it's even ditched the dreadful optical viewfinder of the non-camcordery KEY010 in favour of a superior electronic one. Sounds too good to be true?

Well, the performance on all counts is pretty poor. Video footage is dark and nasty, as are the still images. And where's the flash? What good's a go-everywhere camera if you can only go to places in daylight? The sound quality with MP3s is also less than impressive, although the supplied headphones don't do the device any favours.

Playback is another big issue. In order to view movie footage and images or listen to music, you have to use the inline remote. That might not sound like a big deal, but imagine you're out with mates, having a few drinks and snapping away, and you suddenly find you've filled up the pitiful 128MB memory. To view your "art" and delete the crap stuff, you have to pull out and attach the remote - which you'll inevitably lose some time later after a few more beers.

In the end, this is a nice idea, but it's not been well executed. Just upping the memory, ditching the MP3 player and building playback controls into the unit would improve things immensely. Perhaps Philips should have thought less about "fun" and more about usefulness.

Posted by T3 Online on 2004-12-21