Samsung YP-P2 (8GB, black)
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"Review from Canada" on by DuckInA.Pond
Pros: Design, touch screen, GUI, performance, and bluetooth.
Cons: A lot of fingerprints and smugdes, scratches but not a lot, slow, no Wi-Fi may also be a let down for some.
Summary: Well, this player is available in Canada, but I'm not sure about US. Here is my review (I actually have it).
It really looks nice and was smaller than expected. The GUI looks really nice but won't look good with your own pictures uless they are dark. Sound is pretty good as well as video. The side button are OK but it makes it impossible for one-hand operation, but I'm okay with that. Easy to use espacially if you've used touch screens before. Using bluetooth is quite simple, too. It's great that I can answer calls without touching my phone. Most dissapointing thing though it that sometimes it lags and is slow, and the GUI can get old a tiresome after a while, no matter how nice it looks. Overall excellent player, highly reccommended of you're looking for something that isn't from Apple. -
"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 design but has some flaws" on by afakirani
Pros: Form factor, features, sound quality
Cons: Video playback, touchscreen sensitivity
Summary: I just bought this player yesterday on sale at Bestbuy for the very cheap price of $150 (the 4gig model).
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.
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. -
"Bluetooth GREAT but player has flaws" on by kaos4u2nv
Pros: bluetooth, sound quality, bright display, long battery life
Cons: inaccurate touchscreen, syncing software sucks, no ac adapter
Summary: First off, I don't see why people who haven't even had this player in their hand are rating this product already. I bought it then less than a week later sold it on amazon. This is a nice player, no doubt. Bluetooth, sound quality, bright display, stylish, what more could you ask for? Well, how about an accurate touchscreen? It seemed I had to keep repeating my strokes or touching an icon multiple times just to get it right. Frustrating. When using the radio you can't use your bluetooth headphones. When i put my images it had no feature to rotate them so I could not put a nice picture in the background because it was always the wrong way. I hated the samsung studio software (the application to sync your player). It took up a lot of memory, is a bit slow on transferring files, and I couldn't figure out how to convert video files into the right type for the player. I thought it would do it automatically but when I opened up the player to see the video it would freeze on me. I wish Windows Media Player, Samsung, Winamp, or any other application would do something like the iTunes backwards delete mode. If I delete something off my library then it is automatically deleted when I sync my iPod. The player does not have the option to delete the file without the use of a cpu, so you can imagine having to hook it up then search through the over 1,000 songs I had loaded on there to delete a couple files I didn't want anymore. So, overall it's an outsanding piece of device. However, it is definitely lacking some user-friendly features or at least some where people with only average computer knowledge can work at it without hacking or changing things. Definitely not for those who have a large library...good for working out though when I did it with my bluetooth headphones!
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"Brilliant player overall" on by RandomPerson06
Pros: Great sound and screen quality, drag and drop
Cons: Sometimes inaccurate UI
Summary: The player is actually quite small for something with a screen this size. I love the simple, clean cut design. The player isnt as wide as the ipod touch so it can be operated using one hand (unless you're trying to get the side buttons). Sound quality is great and the 9-band user EQ is a huge plus. The screen is very crisp too.
Another nice thing is that you can drag&drop files. Although there is a program called Samsung Media Studio, you can use the player perfectly well without it. I only use it to convert videos to SVI format,
The UI needs some getting used to. I thought it was very inaccurate and unresponsive until I fugured out a "technique" for using it. You have to use the tips of your fingers for more precise input. Now I get much less errors during input, although there still is the occasional mistake.
Overall, this is a great alternative the iPod touch.
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