Samsung Napster YH-920GS user reviews (20GB)

4.0 stars

"good ipod alternative, but old..." on February 25, 2005 by pieces

Pros: extra features, extra accessories

Cons: could be more polished, needs better software

Summary: the cnet review is a bit off. yes, comparing to the new gen ipod, battery life is a little slow. and yes, compared to the new ipod, on the fly playlists suck... but... i think this product was released during the 3rdgen ipod times. so compared to that gen, its great. so like i said, its a good ipod alternative, but its old now.

you're getting am/fm receiver, leather case, remote, and recording in addition to mp3 playing. that's alot of value compared to other players which don't include any of this.

and... cons... napster... is really bad. and its the only way you can get playlists on the player. i've been using wmp, and it works really well, but like i said... no playlists =( . that's the biggest flaw imo. and as for playing songs in alphabetical order (as mentioned in the cnet review)... i don't have that problem at all. if you add the album, select the artist, then press play onthe album, then it plays in order. if you select the album, then select the song then it plays in alphabetical order. looks to me like cnet didn't really spend alot of time using the player...

sound quality is decent. its different though, can't explain... feels more like a 3-d sound ...

(hmm... i just think its odd that cnet, when reviewing the ipod, mentions options you have to pay for in its reviews... is it me, or is cnet a bit biased? maybe they're getting paid...)

bottom line... not as polished as the ipod, but has more features. pick your poison.

3.5 stars

"While not perfect it's a decent solution..." on March 17, 2005 by thuber

Pros: Good size; Audible-support; Janus upgrade coming

Cons: No auto adapter; so-so menus; playlists require Napster client

Summary: I was looking for a small 20GB hard drive player that was reasonably attractive (that ruled out the Rio Kharma) to replace my Creative Zen. I wanted WMA support as I didn't want to re-rip my entire CD collection and wanted access to more than one online music stores (which ruled out the iPod). If it had Audible support, that would be a bonus.

Thus I picked the YH-920 up at a Best Buy sale.

On the whole it worked well. I have a 45-60 minute commute and listen to Audible audio books. It's great to be able to dump multiple books on the player without having to worry about where I was in the book or burn CD's. It is also a great size to take into the gym or slide into my coat pocket at lunch or on a walk.

A firmware upgrade is promised that will support Janus DRM, used by Napster-to-go and other future subscription services. This will allow unlimited songs on the device as long as the subscription is maintained. I use Rhapsody at home to find new music and determine what I actually want to purchase permanently. Having the capability to take it with me would be worth the $15 per month.

When first setting up the unit I had trouble with it on one of my home PCs running XP SP2. They subsequently released an updated driver and it's worked very well since.

In addition to the features I listed above, it also has an FM radio and a voice recorder. I really am not interested in either of those features, have never used them, and will say no more about them.

A few annoyances:

* Unfortunately, there are no auto adapters for the YH-920.
* If you navigate to an album, the tracks are listed in alphabetical order. However, you can get album order if you navigate by Artist and then Album. The one downside is that an album with multiple artists displays only the songs for that artist. My work around is to edit the WMA tags directly on the YH-920 to have consistent artist names for an entire album (i.e., Various, Original Cast, etc.). Samsung tech support suggests creating a playlist for each album if you want to play in album order, which is pretty stupid and also requires the Napster client. Which leads to another annoyance...
* Playlists can only be created on the PC and transferred using the Napster client. I've never been a big "playlist" user; I tend to play albums or do shuffle play. But for those occasions when it would be nice to have a playlist the only way to create it is to use the stand-alone Napster client.
* Audible books with long titles seem to confuse the player. Audible books generally come in multiple downloads, especially unabridged titles. With some of the books, it seems to be unable to differentiate between multiple the parts and only displays a single title. Most of the time that's not a problem, but it does mean that I'm back to having to make sure I have the right part loaded on the device.

On the whole I've been quite happy with the YH-920 and understanding it's limitations, would recommend it as a reasonable option.

5.0 stars

"Drag and Drop...It's There" on February 7, 2005

Pros: Hey there is actually a way to drag and drop on this player and make it work without Napster or Windows Media Player 10. What you do is view hidden files in your explorer first. Then, access the player from My Computer and click System then click MUSIC. D

1.0 stars

"Horrible buy Ipod is way better" on July 22, 2005 by ready2ride125

Pros: more features

Cons: more features means more to go wrong

Summary: Fm tuner voice and line in recording are nice, still lacks quality that ipod has. I recently purchesed this with the notion that the software for the napster to go would be comming out with in weeks, yet its been seven months and still no results. It has very weak battery life and always freezes up constantly. Worst puchase of my life. DONT BUY