Smaller than a Nano, the Samsung YP-T9 has great sound and comes packed with features like FM radio and a mic for recording. Is it on the hunt for the iPod?
Review summary of the Samsung YP-T9:
| Watch » Gallery » |
 An iPod nano killer? Probably not, though it does offer Apple's device some stiff competition. It may lack the quick navigation of the iPod, but it has great style, and it sounds every bit as good, if not better, than Apple's slim device. The screen is clear and colorful, and the interface is much slicker than Apple's boring menus. Samsung's Media Studio can't compete with iTunes, though, and perhaps the buggy software is an indication that movies simply don't belong on a screen this small. Still, we liked the lightweight T9 enough to carry it in our front pockets for a few days. Release: October 2006. Price: $175.
Pros: Very slick design. Great sound quality. Nice screen with a cool interface.
Cons: Lousy transfer software. Lack of supported file types. No alarm clock.
| Poor |
Mediocre |
Good |
75%
VERY GOOD |
Excellent |
|
|
Full review of the Samsung YP-T9:
 |
Design - Very good
Pictures of the Samsung YP-T9 do not do it justice. It is a very attractive device, slim and shiny, and easy in the hand. It is a few millimeters thicker than an iPod nano, but not as tall, and seems like a smaller and prettier device overall. It slightly resembles Samsung's Black Carbon phone, which is a good thing. The interface is slick and intuitive, and we especially liked the new age sound of the aural feedback on the menus. Navigating the device may have been much slower than on an iPod, with the iPod's accelerating clickwheel, but was easy nonetheless. The navigation button on the front worked well and was comfortable to press, it had a nice recession that our thumbs found easily. However, we did not appreciate the side-mounted play/pause, back and menu buttons, which were harder to find, and less intuitive. We would have preferred to keep everything, except the side-mounted record button, up front.
Sound - Very good
We compared the T9 to our third generation, 40GB iPod, and found they sounded nearly identical. We tested the device using a set of Bang & Olufsen A9 headphones, and songs sounded clean and accurate. We heard a little bit of hissing from the YP-T9 at louder volumes, but nothing that a little traffic noise wouldn't drown out. Overall, we were very impressed by the sound of the device. It performed better than the second generation iPod shuffle we tested a while back, and much better than our middling Dell Latitude D420 laptops. Unfortunately, the YP-T9 lacks support for some of our favorite song file types. It supports MP3 and WMA files, including DRMed files from Napster and Yahoo music, which is nice because we have a Napster account. Still, without AAC support, many of our iTunes tracks would not play, since we prefer AAC encoding when we rip our own disks in iTunes. Obviously, Apple's FairPlay tracks are out as well. Finally, though the player we tested was only a 2GB model, we still like the option of playing uncompressed tracks, which the Samsung player lacks.
Features - Good
The Samsung YP-T9 has all the features you'd expect from a media player, though some are obviously taken more seriously than others. Besides music playback, the T9 can play a couple of games, show MP4 videos and display photographs. It also packs an FM radio and a recorder, capable of recording voice through the built-in microphone or recording directly from the radio. The screen on the device was a bit small for video watching, but was clear enough that photographs look sharp on the device. The FM radio was basic fare, without many frills beyond auto-programming. It did have good reception in our brick-walled Manhattan office building. We missed the alarm clock on the device, a feature we use on MP3 players, and would have traded the included games for alarm features in a heartbeat.
Transfer software - Mediocre
We tried to like the Samsung Media Studio after it made such an effort to determine our musical preferences. By reading ID3 tag info and working a little magic, the software tries to determine what sort of songs you like, presumably to inform your buying decision. The Media Studio declared our tastes to be "Sweet" and "Cheerful," not "Quiet" or "Passionate," and though we'd object to being called sweet, it was still an interesting take on our library. Still, even with this fun, if not quite useful, feature, we still found the interface to be difficult to use and at times downright buggy. Often the player would not register when we plugged it in. When it did register, we missed the automatic synchronization option you'd expect from iTunes. The player crashed a few times while trying to convert our MP4 video files, and then flatly refused to convert the video for the device's small screen, saying we needed to download the proper codec. Oh well, "Bullitt" would just have to wait for a larger PMP. Though the lack of Mac support didn't bother us at work, at home we are all Powerbook all the time, and we were annoyed that no Mac support was available. The transfer software was also quite slow, taking more than a half hour to sideload enough music tracks to fill the device. This is much slower than a high-speed USB 2.0 connection, a necessity on modern players.
Accessories - Good
We won't fault Samsung for not including a dedicated charger, since most players this size are meant to be charged through your computer's USB port. We do have a problem with Samsung's proprietary cable, though, which means you'll have one more cable to carry with you on the road. The headphones included were standard earbuds, and nothing terribly special, though thankfully they weren't the devilish deep-in-ear buds included with the Samsung YP-K5. We got very good life out of the battery. For our test, we started playing the device at 9AM, and the next day, at the same time, the device was still playing. Twenty-four hours is plenty of play time to impress us. Unfortunately, the battery is not replaceable, so once it dies, it's time to buy a new MP3 player.
Price and availability
The Samsung YP-T9 2GB player is available immediately from online retailers and in stores for $250. The 4GB player is available for $330.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive