Samsung YH-925GS

With its FM radio tuner, picture viewer, voice recorder and MP3 playback capabilities, the Samsung YH-925GS is one of a category of music players that takes the next step. It rivals any other product in this category for features.

We should start with the excellent colour LCD screen, with its powerful backlight. It's set above a simple four-way navigation pad, with the play controls located on the side of the player. The large navigation pad works very well--we could always get to our destination function very quickly indeed. There's also an instant record button on the side for voice recording (which is stored in MP3 format), through the internal mic or the line-in port.

Navigating through the audio collection is easy, with the Samsung YH-925GS sorting music by artist, album, track, genre or playlist. Voice recordings are automatically put into their own folder.

The audio quality of the playback proved excellent, with excellent volume and excellent definition and low noise even at the highest volume settings. It plays back MP3 files and WMA files.

The device's photo album is available from the main menu. It's a simple image viewer, capable of filtering high-resolution images down to fit on the small screen.

The radio tuner works very well--we never had any problems receiving the major Sydney radio stations. You could also record (although it's probably illegal) FM radio to the Samsung's hard disk in MP3 format, just by clicking the record switch (normally reserved for voice recording).

The Samsung YH-925GS comes with two PC applications: Samsung Music Studio and Samsung Multimedia Studio. The latter is a multimedia library management tool with some decent editing and conversion capabilities built in. Samsung Music Studio is what you'll use to transfer files to and from the YH-925.

Samsung Music Studio happens to be one of the ugliest pieces of software we've ever seen--and we've seen some ugly software. It gets the job done, however, with the task of transferring files to the Samsung largely a drag-and-drop operation.

Like many portable MP3 players, a USB-connected Samsung YH-925GS will present itself as a removable drive. It has a very logical file structure, allowing you to avoid using the supplied software altogether. It also has directories created which can be used to store files other than music, such as pictures or data files, for transfer to another PC. As an added bonus, the Samsung YH-925GS can act as a USB host, connecting to other devices (such as other USB 2.0 MP3 players) and transferring files directly.

We weren't really taken with the design of the Samsung YH-925GS. It's 150g and roughly the same size as an iPod, but not nearly as pretty. But if you're someone who prefers function over form, the Samsung YH-925GS is a winner.