YH-820

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The Samsung YH-820 is a sturdy MP3 player with excellent sound quality, but those seeking an iPod killer will not be satisfied as this model is let down by poor battery life and a tacky control pad, among other problems.

Pros

  • Sound quality and equalization settings, sturdy build, FM Radio

Cons

  • Battery life, tacky control pad, small screen, poor quality headphones, slow interface, poor quality headphones

Bottom Line

The YH-820 is a solid MP3 player which is let down by some very annoying problems. We can't help but feel it could have offered a whole lot more.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 379.00 (AUD)

The YH-820 has a titanium and white finish that looks quite like the iPod mini. The unit only weighs 85 grams, and measuring only 50 x 88 x 14mm, it is small enough to fit comfortably into any pocket or purse.

As with many Samsung MP3 players, the best feature of the YH-820 is the sound quality and extensive equalisation options that are available. There are nine equaliser settings to choose from, including SRS, WOW and TruBass, which add special effects to the music you are listening to. We found the WOW setting to be the best option, but it is well worth testing out all possible EQ options in order to find the best quality for the style of music you listen to.

Tthe headphones shipped with the unit are of poor quality and lack bass. At high volume settings the sound constantly cracked. We were also disappointed with the controls on the YH-820, which lacked responsiveness and felt tacky and hard to press. The unit has three tiny square buttons for play/pause and forward and rewind controls. The menu, up/down and select buttons are all contained on one large pad that quite unresponsive and noisy when repeatedly clicked. The YH-820 supports line-in recording and the jack is located on top of the device, alongside the headphone input and the hold button.

The YH-820's 1.6" colour screen is also a disappointment. With the size of the player, surely the screen could have been much larger. The colour depth and resolution is poor and the graphics in the menu are fairly bland. This screen makes the photo viewer present on the YH-820 nothing more than a gimmick. We uploaded several photos to the unit, and the screen is so small that we couldn't even make out which photo was which.

The menu system is well designed and easy to browse, but the interface is painfully slow and those who regularly scroll through long playlists should steer well clear of the YH-820. At one stage we thought the player had frozen, but it was simply scrolling through tracks.

The YH-820 plays MP3s and WMA files, but doesn't support drag-and-drop transfers, which means you need to install the supplied software (no Mac support) to transfer files from your PC. This is extremely frustrating if you like to quickly add files to their player without having to lug around software.

The YH-820 also has an FM radio tuner with five presets. We found it a cut above the radio tuners of most other MP3 players. The reception and sound quality of the radio was excellent and even stations that would normally be distorted on other radios were clear on the YH-820.

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