YP-P2

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It's slim, stylish, sexy and sleek, it's a Samsung. The company has created a brilliant, thin and intuitive multimedia player with a full 3-inch touch screen interface with Bluetooth capability.

Pros

  • Incredibly stylish, slim and user friendly; Bluetooth; 3in screen

Cons

  • No AC adapter; media software doesn't see videos on your PC, they must be added manually; scrolling through files on the player can be a little tricky; unintuitive back/forward commands; price

Bottom Line

It's a nifty little MP3 player with Bluetooth capability that is suited for anyone who would like a slim and sexy device to listen to their music and watch their movies while on the go. The only problem is that scrolling through files can be a bit annoying.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 269.00 (AUD)

When you first take the P2 out of the box it is easy to be impressed by its minimalist design. It's incredibly slick and smooth with only the following buttons along its slim sides: volume (for quick access), pause/play/power, and a hold switch. The plastic face of the device is not easily scratched, but if you're paranoid, you can put on the supplied screen protector to prevent any scratches. The screen is highly reflective when out in sunlight or a well-lit room, but if looks are more important to you than seeing the screen, then you can always use it as a mirror. And then, of course, there are the fingerprints and smudges that the glossy surface easily picks up.

The touch interface pretty much controls everything. It is so easy to use, the average layman will be able to pick this device up and start using it with no problems. The menu system is so well planned out that we didn't find any problems with the interface. But that's not to say it was perfect. The scroll attribute can be annoyingly precise; if you accidentally tap a fraction off the arrow you'll find that it will scroll in the wrong direction or too far ahead. A convenient, but strange and slightly backward aspect is that to skip forward to another track you drag your finger across the screen to the left (instead of the right) and to the right to go back.

Transferring songs is as easy as drag and drop. Or you can use the included Media Studio software, but installing this software is not a necessity and any other software such as iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player, for example, will work just as well. Unfortunately, using the Media Studio software, Australian residents don't have access to the Samsung media store as it is only available to residents in the UK, France, Germany and Korea.

Watching movies or looking at photos is a joy on the P2's 3in widescreen with 480x272 video resolution. Images are crisp and clear while videos are played back at a smooth rate of up to 30 frames per second. However, placing videos on the player isn't as simple as dragging and dropping music. You'll need to add the video to Media Studio and from there you right click on the file, just like in iTunes, to convert it so it can be playable on the device.

In the P2, Samsung uses its Digital Natural Sound engine (DNSe), which uses sophisticated algorithms to process the sound, making sure that the sound is as close to the origin of the recording as possible. You can use the supplied equaliser presets (rock, jazz, rock and roll, etc) to pick a sound that suits your listening taste. We can tell you that during our tests, while the player's sound through the supplied headphones wasn't true to life, it was pretty close. Low frequencies came through loud and clear, with minimal distortion, even at high volume levels, while high frequencies were crisp. Vocals were also clearly audible on our test tracks, and it even managed to make Britney Spears' songs sound good!

A great feature of the P2 is its Bluetooth capability, which lets you connect to wireless headsets or speakers at ranges up to 10 metres away. No more pesky wires!

You can listen to FM radio, which can have up to 30 presets of your favourite radio stations. Datacasts and text files can be downloaded onto the device so you can read while you're travelling on transport, but this must be done through the Media Studio. It has various other settings that are convenient for day-to-day use or when travelling such as an alarm, calendar and world clock. The alarm can be setup either once a day, everyday, Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday, or weekends only. Even if the player is turned off the alarm will still function as per normal.

Unfortunately, the player's 2GB built-in memory isn't a lot for keeping movies and music on the one device, particularly for $269. The memory can't be expanded on; however, there is a 4GB and 8GB version available.

According to Samsung, a fully charged battery is estimated to play up to 30 hours of music and five hours of video. This seems to be pretty accurate as we were able to watch two movies and listen to music without having to recharge the device. To charge the device you're given a USB adapter, allowing you to recharge through your PC rather than an AC adapter, which isn't convenient if you're travelling and haven't brought along your notebook computer.

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