Samsung YP-T8 1GB Review August 10th, 2005 (Source www.i4u.com)
Pros: Beyond just MP3 - it's a shrunk portable media player; USB host; speedy USB transfer; beautiful display; plentiful of accessories.
Cons: Non-intuitive button layout; serious WMA tagging bug; pricey.
Verdicts: The Samsung YP-T8 is a tiny all-in-one flash memory player for those who don't mind a rather steep learning curve, but it isn't for the price-conscious type.
In the MP3 arena, Apple puts effort on simplicity & ergonomics whereas Samsung largely focuses on complexity and miniaturization. Samsung's YP-T8 is the reason for this statement. The YP-T8 may look like a large-screen flash memory player, yet the 1GB unit packs with features equivalent to the ones on a full-fetched PMP in an volume only twice that of an Apple iPod shuffle.
In the accessory department, Samsung didn't miss much either. You'll find a perfect-fit silicone case for the YP-T8, a lanyard, a USB host cable and of course, a A-B USB cable. If that's not enough, the bundled CD comes with a host of software that comes in handy for organizing tunes, photos, video and lyrics.
Yep, lyrics. You heard it right. For the Karaoke fans, you can download lyrics from the open database by searching artist or song title, or you can simply nab the ones on the net and let Samsung's Studio take care of the conversion. We were pleasantly surprised that the lyrics were smoothly synchronized with our songs, as we were equally disappointed that the manual lyrics input didn't work in Windows Media Player 10. This maybe a great tool for learning foreign languages since the YP-T8 supports all popular Terran languages. We are certain Klingons won't work.
Mega-sized Screen
The YP-T8's prominent, reflective 1.8" display is exceptionally bright and very readable even under direct sunlight. This alone distances itself from other tiny screen units. The large screen isn't superfluous either as there are plenty of features relying on the extra pixels. The menu is cleanly laid out, which is necessary to navigate through all the functions.
The clock and the battery life indicator are always on the top left and right respectively. The navigation area can list up to 5 songs, and onscreen, you'll get typical info. such as artist, song, album title, bit-rate plus visualizers or lyrics (if present). Everything seemed to be in order until the YP-T8 ran into problems with WMA tags, none of them were displayed during playback except the file name!
Putting the frustrations aside, the display also helps the YP-T8 to double as a 8-line text reader and 160 x 128 photo viewer. Our one caveat: the display is limited to 65k colors, which washes away some details on our photos.
Button Gripes
As with most MP3 players, controls are scattered on different sides. Beneath the 1.8" display is a bi-directional clickable button (NAVI), giving you control to volume and menu navigation. The two buttons adjacent to the NAVI are for the backward and forward. HOLD switch and REC button line the YP-T8's left side; PLAY and MENU are sitting on the right side. Holding the PLAY will turn the YP-T8 on and off.
Pressing the MENU once will list out all options, including bookmark, playlist, play mode and equalizer. Holding the same button for another second will trigger the root menu where you can access to all the player primary functions and settings. Up top are the headphone, line-in and the loophole. Down below are a mini-USB port and mic.
Our main gripe is with the awkwardly placed MENU button. It became a little repetitive after a while of moving our thumb between the most frequently requested NAVI and the MENU. They are simply too far apart. We also found ourselves looking at the Samsung YP-T8 upside down when we put on the lanyard. This can be solved if the loophole is relocated to the bottom of the player. Generally, we weren't too pleased with the button layout.
More YP-T8 Settings
There's simply a slew of features, which will keep you busy for the better part of the day. First of all is the audio player, providing very thoughtful interface and bonuses. There are seven playback modes for repeat, shuffle and intro, and ten preset equalizer settings. To engage A-B repeat, simply press the REC to set the starting point and hit it again for end point. Among the equalizers, the 3D effects have the most profound effect on the listening experience, but sometimes they heavily distorted the low frequency. A 'street mode' is provided to filter out all the background noise. The aforementioned lyrics display is certainly interesting, yet it relies on time-consuming manual input. The lack of album art support and genre/artist/album auto sorting is a letdown.
Audio, Photo & Video Fun
The YP-T8 played back everything we threw at it, ranging from MP3 VBR to WMA DRM to OGG. Oddly, it refused to playback WMA VBR. We didn't have a chance to test subscription-based service like Napster To Go & Yahoo Music Unlimited, and Samsung didn't mention support for Audible. Rest assured that future firmware will take care of these.
Samsung's 1.8" screen is put to good use for viewing photos and watching video clips. However, the image quality turned out to be somewhat average. The screen's optimal resolution is 160 x 128. The viewer always adjusts the picture to fit the screen, and doesn't allow simple rotate and zoom. Despite of these shortcomings, you'll at least be able to check out the photos downloaded from your digital camera. The MPEG-4 player sounds promising at first, but additional step of video conversion using Samsung's Media Studio is no fun.
Games, Voice Recorder, FM Radio, Line-in & More...
The Samsung YP-T8 comes with a host of bonus applications too, such as a voice recorder, FM radio, MP3 line-in recording and alarm. The recorder did its job well, picking up voices clearly in noisy environment. The FM radio even has a timer record setting, just like your VCR.
As for the MP3 line-in recording, there's a special cable for this task, and as soon as you disconnect it, the session ends and file is saved automatically. In the setting, you can choose bit rates from 32kbps to 192kbps for voice, FM & MP3 line-in encoding. There's even an autosync setting for separating and saving MP3 files when there's no sound for a set time.
All the recoded files are nicely organized into folders, and they can be transferred out to another flash drive or player using the YP-T8's USB host capability.
Tunes Sharing & Battery Life
Should you come across your folks carrying a USB MP3 player, just bring out your YP-T8 (and the special cable) to suck out all their tunes using the player's USB host at sloooooow 0.17MB/s, or vice versa. (Our DiskOnkey magic wand turned green, confirming it's only USB 1.1 connection.)
Fortunately, the YP-T8 acting as a slave interfaced with our USB 2.0 PC at a much speedier 7.5MB/s or approximately 2 songs per second, which bested a lot of hard drive-based players. And this result was on par with mid-range flash drive performance. But every time we disconnected from the USB port, the YP-T8 would reboot itself - lasting about 10 seconds before we could regain control.
Lastly, the YP-T8's built-in 850mAh Li-ion battery completely drained in about 17 hours when we let it run play overnight. Samsung claimed the player can last 20 hours. With the equalizer set to 3D DNSe, we got 14 hours before the player shut down itself. Leaving LCD backlight on cut the playback time to just 9 hours. The time it took to recharge the device was 3 hours.
Pros: Beyond just MP3 - it's a shrunk portable media player; USB host; speedy USB transfer; beautiful display; plentiful of accessories.
Cons: Non-intuitive button layout; serious WMA tagging bug; pricey.
Verdicts: The Samsung YP-T8 is a tiny all-in-one flash memory player for those who don't mind a rather steep learning curve, but it isn't for the price-conscious type.
In the MP3 arena, Apple puts effort on simplicity & ergonomics whereas Samsung largely focuses on complexity and miniaturization. Samsung's YP-T8 is the reason for this statement. The YP-T8 may look like a large-screen flash memory player, yet the 1GB unit packs with features equivalent to the ones on a full-fetched PMP in an volume only twice that of an Apple iPod shuffle.
In the accessory department, Samsung didn't miss much either. You'll find a perfect-fit silicone case for the YP-T8, a lanyard, a USB host cable and of course, a A-B USB cable. If that's not enough, the bundled CD comes with a host of software that comes in handy for organizing tunes, photos, video and lyrics.
Yep, lyrics. You heard it right. For the Karaoke fans, you can download lyrics from the open database by searching artist or song title, or you can simply nab the ones on the net and let Samsung's Studio take care of the conversion. We were pleasantly surprised that the lyrics were smoothly synchronized with our songs, as we were equally disappointed that the manual lyrics input didn't work in Windows Media Player 10. This maybe a great tool for learning foreign languages since the YP-T8 supports all popular Terran languages. We are certain Klingons won't work.
Mega-sized Screen
The YP-T8's prominent, reflective 1.8" display is exceptionally bright and very readable even under direct sunlight. This alone distances itself from other tiny screen units. The large screen isn't superfluous either as there are plenty of features relying on the extra pixels. The menu is cleanly laid out, which is necessary to navigate through all the functions.
The clock and the battery life indicator are always on the top left and right respectively. The navigation area can list up to 5 songs, and onscreen, you'll get typical info. such as artist, song, album title, bit-rate plus visualizers or lyrics (if present). Everything seemed to be in order until the YP-T8 ran into problems with WMA tags, none of them were displayed during playback except the file name!
Putting the frustrations aside, the display also helps the YP-T8 to double as a 8-line text reader and 160 x 128 photo viewer. Our one caveat: the display is limited to 65k colors, which washes away some details on our photos.
Button Gripes
As with most MP3 players, controls are scattered on different sides. Beneath the 1.8" display is a bi-directional clickable button (NAVI), giving you control to volume and menu navigation. The two buttons adjacent to the NAVI are for the backward and forward. HOLD switch and REC button line the YP-T8's left side; PLAY and MENU are sitting on the right side. Holding the PLAY will turn the YP-T8 on and off.
Pressing the MENU once will list out all options, including bookmark, playlist, play mode and equalizer. Holding the same button for another second will trigger the root menu where you can access to all the player primary functions and settings. Up top are the headphone, line-in and the loophole. Down below are a mini-USB port and mic.
Our main gripe is with the awkwardly placed MENU button. It became a little repetitive after a while of moving our thumb between the most frequently requested NAVI and the MENU. They are simply too far apart. We also found ourselves looking at the Samsung YP-T8 upside down when we put on the lanyard. This can be solved if the loophole is relocated to the bottom of the player. Generally, we weren't too pleased with the button layout.
More YP-T8 Settings
There's simply a slew of features, which will keep you busy for the better part of the day. First of all is the audio player, providing very thoughtful interface and bonuses. There are seven playback modes for repeat, shuffle and intro, and ten preset equalizer settings. To engage A-B repeat, simply press the REC to set the starting point and hit it again for end point. Among the equalizers, the 3D effects have the most profound effect on the listening experience, but sometimes they heavily distorted the low frequency. A 'street mode' is provided to filter out all the background noise. The aforementioned lyrics display is certainly interesting, yet it relies on time-consuming manual input. The lack of album art support and genre/artist/album auto sorting is a letdown.
Audio, Photo & Video Fun
The YP-T8 played back everything we threw at it, ranging from MP3 VBR to WMA DRM to OGG. Oddly, it refused to playback WMA VBR. We didn't have a chance to test subscription-based service like Napster To Go & Yahoo Music Unlimited, and Samsung didn't mention support for Audible. Rest assured that future firmware will take care of these.
Samsung's 1.8" screen is put to good use for viewing photos and watching video clips. However, the image quality turned out to be somewhat average. The screen's optimal resolution is 160 x 128. The viewer always adjusts the picture to fit the screen, and doesn't allow simple rotate and zoom. Despite of these shortcomings, you'll at least be able to check out the photos downloaded from your digital camera. The MPEG-4 player sounds promising at first, but additional step of video conversion using Samsung's Media Studio is no fun.
Games, Voice Recorder, FM Radio, Line-in & More...
The Samsung YP-T8 comes with a host of bonus applications too, such as a voice recorder, FM radio, MP3 line-in recording and alarm. The recorder did its job well, picking up voices clearly in noisy environment. The FM radio even has a timer record setting, just like your VCR.
As for the MP3 line-in recording, there's a special cable for this task, and as soon as you disconnect it, the session ends and file is saved automatically. In the setting, you can choose bit rates from 32kbps to 192kbps for voice, FM & MP3 line-in encoding. There's even an autosync setting for separating and saving MP3 files when there's no sound for a set time.
All the recoded files are nicely organized into folders, and they can be transferred out to another flash drive or player using the YP-T8's USB host capability.
Tunes Sharing & Battery Life
Should you come across your folks carrying a USB MP3 player, just bring out your YP-T8 (and the special cable) to suck out all their tunes using the player's USB host at sloooooow 0.17MB/s, or vice versa. (Our DiskOnkey magic wand turned green, confirming it's only USB 1.1 connection.)
Fortunately, the YP-T8 acting as a slave interfaced with our USB 2.0 PC at a much speedier 7.5MB/s or approximately 2 songs per second, which bested a lot of hard drive-based players. And this result was on par with mid-range flash drive performance. But every time we disconnected from the USB port, the YP-T8 would reboot itself - lasting about 10 seconds before we could regain control.
Lastly, the YP-T8's built-in 850mAh Li-ion battery completely drained in about 17 hours when we let it run play overnight. Samsung claimed the player can last 20 hours. With the equalizer set to 3D DNSe, we got 14 hours before the player shut down itself. Leaving LCD backlight on cut the playback time to just 9 hours. The time it took to recharge the device was 3 hours.
