YP-T7

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The Samsung YP-T7 is a feature packed flash-based MP3 player with a quality colour screen and easy-to-use controls. It contains most features expected from a high-end device--all at a very reasonable price. It comes in three models: V, X and Z; and these have 256MB, 512MB and 1GB of memory respectively.

Pros

  • Colour screen, light weight and compact size, text and image viewer, FM radio

Cons

  • The need to carry cables and/or USB adapters to transfer songs, battery life

Bottom Line

If you are looking for lightweight MP3 player with a lot of features, the T7 is a perfect choice--as long as you replace the poor headphones.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 199.00 (AUD)

With its 1.2", 65,000 colour screen, the interface of the YP-T7 is a pleasure to use. The screen is quite small for viewing photos, but its rich colour adds to the user experience while listening to music. We found ourselves tapping the volume button every few minutes just to view the well-structured Now Playing menu. The main menu of the device is a pleasure to browse and, like the Samsung YP-T8Z, is very similar to a Nokia mobile phone menu, with an animated, coloured icon representing the menu option you can select.

Just below the screen is the five-way navigational joystick, which is used to access most of the device's basic features, including browsing through your track lists and adjusting the volume. Using the joystick was effortless.

The YP-T7 fits perfectly into the palm of your hand and is hardly noticeable when it slips into your pocket. The silver casing feels very sturdy and doesn't attract fingerprints, while the metallic silver edging around the sides of the device gives it a very professional look. The YP-T7 has an inbuilt microphone for voice recording. Voice quality was clear and concise during testing.

It supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and ASF files, and the audio quality of the unit is outstanding. Samsung has offered extensive equalisation presets, including WOW, SRS Surround Sound and TruBass bass booster. A variety of other preset options are included, such as Normal, Classic and Rock etc. If you're still not satisfied, you can tinker even further with the sound settings by adjusting the seven-band equaliser. We were very impressed with the sound options on the unit, as Samsung has quite clearly catered for everybody, from those who are not too fussed about sound, and want to select a quick and easy preset option, to those who love experimenting with audio quality and aren't easily pleased.

The YP-T7 incorporates an FM radio tuner with up to 20 channel presets (and an automatic channel scanner). It can record FM radio, and even set timed FM recordings through the clock. We were impressed with the YP-T7's recording functions. The player encodes tracks directly to the MP3 format through the supplied line-in cable and port, which means you can record audio directly from devices such as other MP3 players and CD players. We tested this function with the TDK NX-02 Mini Hi-Fi system and recorded a track from a CD to the YP-T7 without any problems. When recording, the unit lets you select bit-rates from 32Kbps to 192Kbps.

The YP-T7 also has a photo viewer, although this is not a major feature of the device. The unit displays JPEG images only, and they are automatically optimised to 96 x 96 pixels when you transfer them to the unit using the supplied Multimedia Studio software. The lack of album art support is disappointing, considering the screen would be well suited for such a feature.

The YP-T7 is let down by poor quality headphones and an average battery life. The supplied headphones lack bass and as soon as we used our preferred set of headphones, the sound quality increased dramatically. Batteries in the YP-T7 lasted only about 8 hours before needing a recharge in our tests--which doesn't compare to rival Sony models such as the NWE107 with approximately 70 hours of battery life.

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