Philips Fidelio A3 wireless Hi-Fi speaker AW3000 High-fidelity stereo sound 36 W, 4 Hi-Fi drivers Analogue-in is rated
2.3 out of
5 by
16.
Rated 2 out of
5 by
londoner from
excellent speakers, crippled by its software solutions.In short,
No iOS app in the UK app store.
The Android app is bare bones with a poor interface and poorer documentation.
There is no Napster or Spotify option anywhere in the Android app.
All I'm able to get now is internet radio and some of my music on my Android device.
The documentation in the box and the Philips website is lacking and does not explain the basic functions of the speaker or provide troubleshooting information.
I really hope the apps are quickly sorted as they servery limit an otherwise great product.
Date published: 2012-06-02
Rated 1 out of
5 by
Sylvain from
A great exemple of how user interface can kill a technically sound productIt's amazing how Philips managed to produce an elegant piece of tech, with great audio output and undermine it in the most woeful way. This product would have been brilliant had it stuck to being a simple bluetooth / line in speaker. Instead, Philips has tried to make a media center out of it and it simply doesn't cut it. It's nye impossible to use without a cellphone, and when a cellphone is on hand, the app is so bad it takes half a minute to even get to the music on spotify or on the media server... When it does work. And then it would randomly shut down. And the worst ? If we wanted to use it as a simple speaker with a cable,.... We'd have to configure it from our phone ! Has ANY user tested it before it got on the market ? The product has only done a stop and go, straight back to the store. We're buying a proper speaker instead.
Date published: 2014-05-02
Rated 3 out of
5 by
Crisscass from
This product has potentialEasy to set up the speaker to my WiFi network and listen to internet radio & there's also plenty of choice regarding music streaming services (Spotify, Deezer etc..) But I wanted to use the A3 to stream my own music and the App is not upto the job. Its user interface is far from clear. I'm still confused by it & I've been using it for 2 weeks. Audio randomly stops between songs and I still haven't worked out how to fast forward a track.. I am really hopeful that Philips fix the App as the speaker itself is stunning, both its audio quality and appearance.
Date published: 2013-04-02
Rated 3 out of
5 by
sleekmeek from
Great Sound Poor InterfaceThe unit sounds great for it's size and does not distort when turned up loud. The Airstudio App on Android is very clunky and not userfriendly, I can not find the Spotify / Napster options, and also am unable to edit the pre-set radio station feature due to non-existant documentation o nthe app and limited on the speaker.
Date published: 2012-08-13
Rated 1 out of
5 by
flanari from
Full of potential but does not deliver.I bought this speaker two weeks ago.
Hooking up the device was fairly easy.
Sound quality is very good, a bit on the bassy side but still very good.
User experience is where this device shows its problems.
Regarding the app playback is not as straight forward as in most conventional players.
- Songs within an album can't be sorted by track order.
- You have to manually select the songs you want to play. If you select one song within the album view, the speaker will only play that song, and not the remaining songs in a continuous order (There is a + button which you can use in order to add songs in bulk, but this is just awkward). I don't know why Philips could not make this app work as like every other music player.
- Song playback stops randomly sometimes.
- Sometimes the app can't find the speaker, even when everything else is working fine and the speaker is recognized by other devices.
- This speaker does not allow to broadcast any other kind of content such as the sound output of a computer or a mobile device (for example to listen to youtube videos).
- I bought this player in France and brought it with me to Argentina. In France the app would show the option to use spotify, in Argentina it does not. I am a premium subscriber of this service in Argentina (legally available here) so I don't understand the reason why this app is intentionally crippled.
I have heard that spotify is launching a new service with Philips as a partner called connect. I hope this device will be updated to benefit from the user experience of the spotify app, and the sound quality of the A3.
Right now I am just sad I bought this device and cannot return it.
Date published: 2013-10-22
Rated 2 out of
5 by
Keyboa from
Great speaker......when it works!!I have had this product for a week now, and having major problems getting it to play music! I can get the radio to work fine, but when I attempt to play music from my IPad it rarely works! I managed to work round it, but requesting one song only, and then an album but today not even that will work! So far I seem to only have a fancy DAB radio! The app is horrendous and very un user friendly, so I am at a loss to work out why it only works occasionally when I have a good solid Internet signal .
Date published: 2013-07-28
Rated 3 out of
5 by
Lardy from
Good product in general, very poor app and setup process.I bought this product for my wife for Xmas. However it took me 2 days to set it up which was not helped by the android app which was very poor. In a nutshell I couldn't get the device to connect to my wifi router. After 2 days of diagnostics I worked out that the device was having difficulty connecting to the router when it was operating with two wireless channels, a 2.4Ghz channel and a 5Ghz channel. Eventually I had to disable the 5GHz channel for the device to connect to the router which I am not at all happy about. I hope this can be fixed with a device firmware update as dual channel routers are pretty common.
The android app is truly awful. The IOS app is slightly better but both need a good rewrite. The setup process can be straight forward if everything goes to plan but its very hard to diagnose problems if they occur as the app is the only interface with the device while setting it up.
However, its now set up and its easy to hook it up to internet radio stations, music on your phone or NAS and you can also hook it up to Deezer if you're on orange which is real plus point.
Overall a good product let down my the app, the setup process and how it interfaces with dual channel routers (or just my dual channel router).
Date published: 2012-12-27
Rated 1 out of
5 by
WeeChumlee from
Worst app everWhat a great disappointment.
Music sound quality great.
The app though is the worst app I have ever used - ever!!
App crashes all the time and is painfully slow and just horrible!!
This is not cheap but at the end useless as I can't be bothered trying to get it to work every time I want to use it.
