Samsung YP-P2 (4GB, black)
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"Preliminary review of the YP-P2" on by Tranius
Pros: The screen is big and absolutely gorgeous and the touch screen user interface is wonderfully intuitive
Cons: A bit too pricey; Only has 4 Gb of internal memory; No SD card expansion; video conversion is pretty bad.
Summary: I just purchased the YP-P2 today and have played around with it for a few hours. Here is what I've observed so far:
The screen is huge, bright and the 480x272 widescreen resolution is amazing. Pictures look really great and seem to just pop out of the screen. Unfortunately, video performance is not as great. The Samsung Media Studio software is needed to convert your video files to Samsung's proprietary format, SVI. I converted a 30 min., 230 Mb avi file to the SVI format. Even at the highest setting of 1024kbps and 30fps, the video conversion was poor. The playback looked great for low motion scenes, but for fast paced ones, significant motion blur disturbs the video. This is quite disappointing as the screen is not fully being taken advantaged of. I will continue to play around with different settings and source files to see if any improvement can be made.
The touch screen UI takes a little getting used to, but once mastered it becomes amazingly easy to use and very intuitive. There are three different menu settings to choose from: skin, cosmos and matrix. Skin allows you to set a picture as the background and icons are selected at the bottom of the screen. Cosmos allows you to choose the icons as they appear to fly away or toward you in space. And Matrix shows the icons as a control panel. Samsung did a really great job designing the UI. The navigation, searching of files and playback screens are all nice, colourful and very well done. I especially like the fact that artist and album lists include small icons of the album art, which makes choosing a selection a little quicker. Everything about the UI makes using this player a great experience.
The sound quality is also very good. I would not say it's the best, but it's very good. There are plenty of EQ presets to choose from and you can define your own user EQ. A great feature is that you can change the EQ presets while listening to a track. The only problem I have with the player is that the maximum sound output could be a little higher.
This player could also use more internal memory or at least some expandability. It's a bit too pricey for the memory offered, however, you're paying a little extra for the screen, the touch UI and Bluetooth (if that's important to you).
Overall, I'm slightly disappointed with this player because of the poor conversion and performance of Samsung's video format, SVI. But it's lovely screen, sound quality and ease of use thanks to the touch UI and intuitive design almost makes up for it.Updated
In my preliminary review I said that the video playback on this device is poor because of the proprietary format, SVI, that this player uses. Well, half of that statement is true.
I tried different source files and output settings but the results were all the same; Significant motion blur for fast motion scenes and red bleeds badly between frames. So, I started to convert source files to WMV9 files instead, which can be directly transferred to the player without conversion to SVI. I was quite optimistic about it, but the same complaints remained.
In the end, I would have to conclude that the video problems are inherent in the actual display and player and not in the SVI format.
However, I also did play around with the audio and EQ settings more extensively. After making user EQ adjustments and hearing the changes in real-time (which is a great benefit), I was able to get a very nice, clean and loud sound. Keep in mind that I'm still using the headphones that were included. I'm sure it would sound even better if I had a good aftermarket set of headphones.
In conclusion, I will still give this player a 7/10. The video playback and the 4 gigabytes of memory are the YP-P2's biggest cons. However, the display screen, sound quality, touch UI design and the overall user experience are great pros that will keep me happy with this player for quite a while. -
"It's good just has some problems..." on by PrimeOcean
Pros: Touchscreen, Don't have to use iTunes, Neat little features
Cons: Touchscreen may not react to touch (rarely though), Not much variety in accessories, expensive, problems with Rhapsody, useless little features, little thick
Summary: Touchscreen - it's a nice feature but of course that just leads to lots of fingerprints and lots of cleaning of the screen. Sometimes it dosen't react to your touch but this is rare. It doesn't happen very often, and it probably won't bother most users.
iTunes - I use Rhapsody to get my songs which worked very nicely. You just drag and drop into the folder. After awhile though, there were problems with doing this. It would be "transferring" but nothing was actually happening.
"Neat" features - There's .txt reading, FM radio (it's nice to have, but in my opinion you probably won't touch it more than once,) Bluetooth (probably one of the best features), and calendar/alarm clock.
Audio - I can't really say much about the audio, because this is my first Mp3 player, so I can't compare it to anything. There's a DNSE funtion that makes your songs sound better.
Accessories - There is very little choice in accessories. You probably have to get them online, but if you are like me, you rather see things first in person.
Price - The price is rather high. It seems like every feature in this has some problem to it.
Thickness - It's a little over 1/2 inch thick. Pretty thick compared to Ipods which are insanely thin. -
"The firmware update makes this product much better" on by Syrish
Pros: Cool menus, Nice touchscreen, good sound, Gorgeous lcd. bluetooth is very useful. Nice firmware upgrades , useful extras, lovely design.pretty cheap nowadays
Cons: Not so high output volume, You cant voice record, you cant do anything while listening to the radio
Summary: So ive owned the p2 for about a week now and im very glad of this product, the 2gb costs nearly the 4gb of the new ipod nano and this mp3 believe me is much better.
I want to say that this mp3 is not a clone of the ipod touch, for you smartheads out there saying that it is. this was announced before the ipod touch, apple rushed with giving out the ipod touch because an touch screen mp3 player would make evreyone suprised.
I agree with the score that cnet put because when the p2 came out, it had unresponsive touch screen, it wasnt this cheap and it didnt have half the features it has now after the second wave. let me give a full review.
Note that this is my first review of anything ever so please be kind when commenting. And another thing i live in Sweden so dont expect evreything to be spelled exactly right.
Right now on to the review
Design:
The design is absoulutley gorgeous. it looks sleek and nice, my friends were absoulutely amazed when they first saw how it looked. but still its a fingerprint magnet and it can be annoying when theres alota light that reflects on the screen because you cant see, but there have to be ALOT. The buttons on the sides is pretty good for using it without taking it out of youre pocket. it feels more comfortable in hand because of the size and the little extra weight that it has ( note its still lighter then the Touch)
UI:
The cosmos menu system is amazing, it looks so good and my friends were like WOW when they saw it. you can put the my skin or matrix menu to show the background picture more. the ui isnt as fun as the ipod touches for cycling through photos and stuff but still pretty good. It uses double tap wich can be annoying sometimes and sometimes a blessing. The icons after the 2nd wave look much better and 3d like now. The touch screen is very responsive now so that is something you dont have to think about. By the way its now multi-touch like the touch so that can maybe be something that people want to have. I still love this mp3 with the Uni-Touch for rotating and doing stuff.
The firmware updates that is always coming to the p2 is the biggest ever made for an mp3 player. They are adding alot of stuff evrey time. let me put some sections.
Music:
It sounds Nice with the Dnse 2.0, It has 10 Eq presets and an custom Eq with 7 bands (2 more than the normal number) and a 3D and bass setting. It has street and clarity modes wich fixes upp the music alot.
You can make 5 playlists on the go pretty fast.
New:in the second wave the album art and visuals have gotten bigger, Theyve put a neat feature here that you can view Lyrics that is very nice. They've added A-B And Play speed wich can be useful sometimes. You can now cycle through album art.
Fm Radio:
It has an inbuilt Fm radio with the best response iv'e ever seen. it has 30 presets and a very good scanning mode. Sadly you cant do anything else while listening to the radio.
New: you can Fm record
Bluetooth:
You can use this to connect to bluetooth headphones. Cutting the cord is pretty nice but the radio cant be used with this because it uses the cord of the headphones normally for the reception.
New: Now you can connect to a phone through bluetooth and answer calls and talk in it with the mic on the bottom of the P2. You can file transfer too without any restrictions so you can get all the songs youre friends have on their phones.
Video:
The video lookes so good and colorful on this Lcd. It is just fun to watch episodes and it has bookmarks for the video.
New: nothing new that im aware of.
Pictures:
Pics looks gorgeous on the p2. The lcd is so cool and you can do a hortizonal stroke with the finger to change between them, annoyingly theres a time lag for this.
New: You can now rotate the pics and zoom in them with touch gestures. And crop them for background images.
Datacasts:
This is like podcasts but not live. This downloads rss feeds through Samsung media studio evreytime you connect it to the pc after putting some sites there.
Prime Pack (Extras):
It has a text viewer that is pretty good you can make the fonts bigger. A world clock, Calendar , adress book so that you can call from the p2.
New: theyve added 3 pretty fun games, The text viewer can now be rotated, changing the backgrounds and font color for better viewing. An alarm have been added.
As you see many features have been added to the p2 to make it better.
Well this is the end of my review. I hope it will help you buying this product. im utterly happy with mine and i think that you will be too. Thanks for reading
Best regards/ Syrish
Ps. i just put the ipod touch in comparison because many are confused between those two and they're often compared. Dont tell me that the touch is better after jailbreak and bla bla bla because that is not how it came fabriced. I think both of them are good mp3 players and pretty nice actually but i just wanna break the habit of buying ipods for the premium price when there's alternatives out there. -
"Great looking anti iPod" on by jasonappelbaum
Pros: Sounds great, good features, FM tuner, beautiful product
Cons: Samsung media managing SW lacks, All videos have to be converted slowly, no voice recorder
Summary: if you are looking for a great looking, small, light Non iPod, this is it. Plays videos on a beautiful screen. Pictures and videos look amazing, and this player sounds amazing..not sure if it is the headphones or the actual player, but it sounds great. Also packed with features, Bluetooth, FM tuner, alarm, calendar etc.
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"Great design but has some flaws" on by afakirani
Pros: Form factor, features, sound quality
Cons: Video playback, touchscreen sensitivity, Bluetooth management
Summary: just bought this player yesterday on sale at Bestbuy for the very cheap price of $150 (the 4gig model). I reviewed the 8gig version (didn't realize the 4 gig version would be reviewed seperatly since they're the same player, with different capacity) but I'll also add some comments on the bluetooth.
Already I can pinpoint a few problems with the player and some great advantages. I'll begin with the cons and move on the the pros of the device. The software that's provided with the device is slow and not very user friendly. Moreover, there is very little you can do in the way of options or customization with the interface or features. Converting video is a pain! I'm a pretty proficient computer user with years of experience with peripheral devices including varioud MP3 players and PDAs, but I tried numerous times with numerous file types and file sizes but could not get the file to transfer to the player and play. The device is very limited in terms of video playback and though it is primarly and audio player, video should be just as big an asset on such a beautiful screen. I'm still trying to figure out how to transfer videos and I might just have to call Samsung for assistance. The other disadvantage to point out is it's touchscreen. The touchscreen is not accurate what so ever. On numerous occasions, I had to repeat my inputs to get the player to perform the desired actions. The bright LED light at the bottom of the device is nothing more then decoration and doesn't serve any practicle purpose. It would have been nice if it would be used as a "home" button like on the Touch. The bluetooth is a great asset to have especially when you consider that not many players in the market have built in bluetooth. However, I had great trouble pairing my P2 and my Samsung D820 cellphone. Samsung claims that the device can be paired with cellphones and allow you to pick up a call through the the player itself. Try as I might, I couldn't get this feature to work. Others have had no problems with this player so maybe it's just my bad luck. If anyone can help me out, I'd appreciate it.
That being said, on the plus side, this is an audio player and the sound quality therefore should be the most important thing. I'm happy to report that the sound quality is bar none. Samsung's sound engine technology is really impressive. If you're an audiophile, this MP3 player can't be beat (take that iPod!). The look of this palyer is also a huge pro. It's sleel and stylish and is the perfect size for everyday use being neither to big or to small and the player does have a nice heft to it. The screen is bright, clear and crisp. The included videos on the MP3 player played beautifully (if only I could get mine to work) and the included pictures were displayed beautifully. The GUI is nice, but I'm hoping that in time Samsung will release more options for themes and icons. The music player itself is well designed with many visualization effects including album art and track info. My favorite feature of this device and the primary reason I bought this over other players is the P2's ability to navigate through files through a file browser. I sort my music by folders and for me accessing that folder hierarchy is important becuase it's how I organize my music. The automatic library features of most MP3 players (including the iPod) really pisses me off becuase often, my music files are not properly organized because of missing ID3 tags. With the file browser I can organize my music how I want.
Over all the player does music very well but I'm still trying to figure out how to transfer videos. The touchscreen is a little bothersome but I blame that on a necessary learning curve and besides, the many dedicated tactile controls really ease the operation of the device.
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