Samsung P3

Samsung's P3 is a touch-screen player with an icon-based menu. Sound familiar? At $149.99 (8GB), $249.99 (16GB), and $299.99 (32GB), Samsung is clearly taking aim at the more-expensive iPod touch. The preloaded software, excellent FM tuner, and haptic feedback are steps in the right direction. But the P3, an update to 2007's P2, lacks Internet access and an accelerometer, making the touchy touch screen feel like a gimmick—and the player seem overpriced.

Measuring 4 by 2.1 by 0.4 inches (HWD), weighing 3.3 ounces, and sporting a 3-inch 480-by-272-pixel touch screen, the P3 has both a smaller frame and display than the iPod touch. A reset pinhole doubles as the microphone, which is found on the bottom panel with the proprietary-to-USB connection and the headphone jack. The top panel houses the Power/Hold button, volume controls, and a built-in speaker. The rest of the controls are internal, operated via the touch screen. Samsung's included earbuds are pretty weak—as usual, we suggest upgrading to something like the Shure SE115, or, for lovers of low frequencies, the Radius Atomic Bass. Also included with the P3: a connection cable for syncing with (and charging from) your PC, and a CD containing EmoDio, Samsung's music- and video-management and video-conversion software. The conversion software is pretty straightforward, but for managing your files, I'd stick with Windows Media Player.

Media players should be easy to use, but the P3 is not especially intuitive. It's easy to navigate to a menu from the main screen, but because the virtual "Home" button is hidden under a flip-up menu (usually at the top of the screen), getting back to where you started can be tricky. The screen is also somewhat insensitive, generally needing several taps to select an option, and it's quite easy to select the wrong one. It's a shame, because Samsung has clearly poured some hard work into the interface's graphics. The main menu is a little cluttered, but it can be customized with various wallpapers. But no matter how nice the graphics are, navigating the device is a generally slow process, and this is bound to annoy all but the extremely patient.

File support is, as usual for Samsung, strong for audio and weaker for photos and video. The P3 plays MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AAC, WAV, and ASF audio files. Video support is limited to WMV9, MPEG-4, and H.264; for any other file you want to watch, you'll need to convert with the aforementioned software, which is easy to do but can be time-consuming for longer files. Only JPEG, BMP, and PNG files are supported for photos.

Samsung players are consistently strong at playing back music. Like Sony, Samsung knows how to make an EQ that both looks cool and responds as it should to user adjustments. But because the screen buttons are slow to respond, navigating to the music menu and playing a song is slower than on the iPod touch, even though both processes involve about the same number of steps. The Now Playing screen has several different animated graphics to choose from; my favorite, the "Spectrum," shows EQ bands pulsating to the music, like an eighties-era stereo system. Another cool feature in the music menu is the "horizontal stroke" option, which lets you skip a certain time interval in a given song when you swipe your finger across the screen. Alas, there's nothing here like Apple's Cover Flow that truly utilizes the touch screen's capabilities, and there's not even an accelerometer to switch the screen to horizontal mode when you rotate the player—something you find on other touch competitors, like the Cowon S9. (Accelerometer aside, the S9 is inferior to the P3 in just about every respect.)

Video is a pleasure to watch. Sure, the P3's screen's resolution is slightly lower than the touch's (480 by 320 pixels), but because the P3's screen is half an inch smaller, images end up looking just as crisp. All files automatically switch to a horizontal orientation on the screen, and, as with music, playback controls appear when you select a file and tap the display.

For a player with no Internet access, the P3 still has plenty of features, even if they're not all mind-blowing. Among them: an FM radio with 30 presets and a recorder, a voice recorder, and Samsung's usual Bluetooth pairing options. (Want to answer your cell-phone calls through your player? Simply pair the two and you're set.) The included games are incredibly simple—one involves popping virtual bubble wrap by tapping on the screen—and not always consistent given the screen's fickle response to fingers. The widget collection is extensive, if a little underwhelming: a short-term alarm called Sleep Cat makes an animated kitten meow when your alarm sounds, there's a detailed virtual map of every major subway system in the world, plus an international clock, a calculator, an address book, and a memo pad. These extras pale compared with most of the free apps you can load onto an iPod touch, but they do add value to the P3.

The haptic feedback adds little more than charm. A little vibration occurs every time you press an onscreen button. I suppose this is to alert you that you've successfully pressed it, but shouldn't you know you have because the screen changes? I think it was included for the same reason Sleep Cat was: It's kind of fun. The goofiest—and worst-named—use of the feedback is a feature called "VibeWoofer," which makes the player vibrate to the beat of whatever song you are listening to. (Insert dirty joke here.)

Samsung estimates the battery life for the P3 at an admirable 40 hours for audio and 6 hours for video. Our own battery-rundown test yielded 28 hours 27 minutes of audio—still respectable, but not quite 40 hours.

Samsung is one of my favorite PMP manufacturers because, like Apple, it sticks with the formula that works: Make a good-looking, simple user interface and wrap it in a case with a slick design. Although the nice looks remain, the new interface lacks the simplicity found in previous Samsung iterations like the YP-T10's, and the screen's sensitivity issues are annoying. Basically, Samsung is making the same mistake competitors like Cowon have made in trying to beat Apple by emulating its designs. But a touch screen alone isn't enough to make a device exciting, and although the P3 is generally solid, its flaws and omissions (no accelerometer, no Wi-Fi) make justifying its prices difficult for me. As it is, the Samsung P3 is somewhere between an iPod touch and an iPod nano in ability, but without the grace of either.

Source : http://www.pcmag.com