With slide-out speakers and touch-sensitive buttons, the Samsung YP-K5 is in a league of its own. Should you play ball, or find a different game?
Review summary of the Samsung YP-K5:
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 The Samsung YP-K5 certainly tries to stand out from the crowd with its unique, slide-out speakers. We suppose this player is targeting a niche crowd, looking for a portable party (and something to wake them up the next morning), and for that crowd we can easily recommend it. The device's sound was very good, as long as we used our own headphones. Battery life, too, exceeded our expectations. Still, the lousy music transfer software will keep computer noobs away, and the lagging menus, which aren't nearly as responsive and quick as the iPod's, will make Apple fanatics think twice. Samsung deserves applause for being different, as long as different is what you're looking for. Release: August 2006. Price: $170.
Pros: Great sound. Reliable, easy-to-use alarm clock. Interesting, unique design replaces the need for tiny, external speakers.
Cons: Lousy transfer software. Uncomfortable headphones. Screen is a bit washed-out. A bit bulky for a portable device.
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Full Samsung YP-K5 Review:
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Design - Good
When the screen and the touch-sensitive buttons are not lit, the Samsung YP-K5 looks like the black obelisk from "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- it's a nearly perfect, glossy black rectangle. At 0.7 inches, it is not a thin flash player, by today's standards at least, but it's still small enough for a jeans pocket. Except for a Hold/Power switch on top, all the buttons are touch-sensitive. We find touch-sensitive buttons to be a bit gimmicky, better for aesthetics than usability. Often, retrieving the player from our pockets, we would switch tracks accidentally as our fingers grazed the button surface, until learned to engage the hold switch. Though the buttons provide no tactile feedback, the player emits a loud chirp whenever you press a button. Buttons were generally responsive, if not too much so, but the menus themselves were a bit sluggish. Menus look very cool, like animated Lite-Brites with tiny dots that dance into the shape of a pair of headphones, or a clock. Unfortunately, these transitions take time, so moving from the Music to the FM Radio menu, for instance, means waiting for the animation to finish. It was cool to watch, at first, but became tiresome when we wanted to perform some rapid actions, like quickly changing the song or playlist.
The screen itself is OLED, which is still pretty rare, and the technology is probably a reason the player gets incredible battery life. The screen is not as bright as LCD screens we've seen on other gadgets, though it is clear, and we had trouble reading it in bright, direct sunlight. The player's pièce de résistance is the speaker panel that slides out from beneath. It opens with such a satisfying snap that it was hard to keep ourselves from playing with it. Just keep in mind that when you open the speakers, music playback switches automatically from the headphones to the loudspeakers, so innocent bystanders may get an unexpected blast of your music.
Our favorite: Excellent build quality, with a nice snap to the slide-out speakers
Our request: More responsive menus, without the pretty fluff
Sound - Very good
We tested the sound quality with a few compressed MP3 tracks, listening through our Shure E3 headphones. Though we prefer to test using uncompressed tracks, the YP-K5 can't handle WAV or AIFF files, so instead we used a trio of MP3s compressed at 192kbps: Jack Johnson's "Flake," the fourth movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 41, and Regina Spektor's "Ne Me Quitte Pas". All the tracks sounded clean and lively. Jack Johnson's laid-back guitar strum came through nicely, with a resonance on the frets as his left hand moved, an effect we dig. The Mozart was expressive, not flat, giving us a good sound stage of the orchestra. Regina Spektor's bouncing, high vocals were crisp, but not jarring. We heard no noise or hiss from the player whatsoever, and the overall sound quality was even better than on our third-generation iPod. Though most users won't miss the uncompressed files, with such great sound quality, we often prefer toting a few good albums, rather than a few hundred okay songs.
The speakers sounded like, well, small speakers. Nothing too special, and certainly not a room-filling sound. The sound was flat and restrained, as you would expect, without any real bass presence, even with the bass-boosting EQ set. They sounded a bit better with the "3-D surround" EQ preset, which made us wonder why this wasn't the default.
Our favorite: Great sounding music when you use a good set of headphones
Our request: Support for uncompressed files to take advantage of that great sound
Features - Good
The YP-K5 has a built-in FM radio, a picture viewer, and an alarm clock. The FM radio works well, with a nice fine-tuning dial that let's you change frequencies in 0.05 MHz increments. It will also automatically program itself with local stations as presets, but it doesn't give you any information about the broadcasting station, or the song you're hearing. The radio uses headphones as an antenna, so even if the speakers are open you'll need to leave your phones plugged in. The picture viewer was disappointing. While browsing thumbnails, photos are scaled poorly and look distorted. Full screen, photos look washed and yellowish on the OLED display, with a noticeable screen-door effect. The player has no recording features, and only supports compressed file types, though protected Windows Media files make the list, so your Napster and Yahoo Music files will work.
Back on the plus side, the alarm clock is so good that we could see users buying the YP-K5 for this feature alone. The alarm is good and loud, using the preset beeps; the speakers seemed to be even louder playing the alarm beeps than they were playing music. The alarm app allows you to set an alarm by specific days of the week, say Monday through Friday, or for just one day, and allows multiple alarms to be set. You can use your music as an alarm, as well. The clock has a cool, old-school flipping-digit look. We could easily see this player replacing our travel alarm clock (though you'll have to pry our beloved Bose Wave alarm from our cold, dead fingers).
Our favorite: Best alarm clock we've seen on a digital audio player
Our request: Brighter screen, with better color, for viewing pictures
Transfer - Mediocre
If there is any question about how Apple has maintained its dominance in the digital music industry, look no further than its fantastic transfer software, which is much easier to use and more intuitive than the Samsung Media Studio included with the YP-K5. Installing the software was a chaotic experience, as some files are simply GNU public license apps that Samsung is redistributing (we suspect "Lame MP3 codec" works fine, but the name doesn't inspire faith). Immediately the software asked to be updated, then crashed during the update. When we plugged our player in, the Samsung Media Studio came up, but failed to recognize the player. We had to unplug the player, or restart the software, to get the two to play nicely together. Even then, the software was only slightly more usable than Windows Explorer. Also, Mac users should look elsewhere, as there is no Macintosh support for this player.
Music transfers over the player's USB 1.1 port were painfully slow. Our review unit came pre-loaded with 700MB of music, and that took nearly three minutes to simply erase. Loading almost 2GB of music took more than a half hour, compared to the mere minutes it takes to transfer files to a USB 2.0 device, like an iPod.
Accessories - Mediocre
We couldn't tell you how the headphones bundled with the YP-K5 sound, because we refuse to keep them in our ears long enough for a proper test. The headphones have a unique shape, kind of like an offset hairdryer aimed directly at your ear canal. They have a rubber tip that angles its way in, and this felt like it was constantly jabbing us. The headphones felt like they were constantly slipping out, but when we tried to steady them, we ended up jabbing ourselves painfully. Considering the excellent sound we heard from the device using our own, comfortable Shures, we were very disappointed to see these stylized phones. Perhaps they fit some listeners perfectly, but not us. The included cable has a proprietary connection, and Samsung lists no first- or third-party accessories made specifically for this device, though with its built-in speakers and excellent alarm clock, we're not sure what else we would need. The battery is not replaceable, but battery life was extraordinary. We started the player at 9AM one morning, and at the same time the next morning decided to stop our test, as 24 hours more than exceeds our expectations. Samsung claims up to thirty hours of battery using headphones, and six hours with the speaker.
Our favorite: Excellent battery life
Our request: Better, or at least different, headphones
Related devices: Flash-based digital audio players
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Price and availability
The Samsung YP-K5 is available immediately for $170.
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