Samsung YP P2 Review

The Samsung YP P2 is a superb MP3 player / PMP by Samsung and competes primarily with the Apple iPod Touch / Touch 2G. It was droolworthy when it was released and went on to become a favorite of many a audiophile. It was one of the first devices to fully incorporate a touchscreen and does a pretty good job at that. It has much better features than the iPod Touch and betters it in terms of audio quality. In this review we check out the YP P2 and check out its features and try to list its shortcomings and advantages.

Samsung YP P2 Specifications:

• Display: 3″ TFT LCD Touch screen, 480 x 272 pixels (WQVGA), 262k Color
• Size: 3.8″ x 2.0″ x 0.4″
• Weight: 86 gms
• Capacity: 4GB, 8GB
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, OGG
• Video Formats: SVI, WMV
• Other Documents: TXT, JPEG
• Colors: Black, White, Red
• Price (Approx): 4 GB - $129, 8 GB - $179
• Battery: 35 hours audio, 5 hours video

Other Features: Bluetooth Headphone Support, RSS Data casts, FM Radio with Recording, Alarm, Calendar, World Clock

Design:

The Samsung YP P2 is a very slim and compact PMP with a sleek design. The design is very subtle, clean and minimal. It has dimensions of 3.8″ x 2.0″ x 0.4″ and a weight of just 86 gms which makes it very portable and easy to carry. The YP P2 has superb build quality, basically it is made of just a plastic face and a metal back plate. The touch screen is scratch resistant but is very susceptible to finger prints as is expected in any touch screen device. Overall the Samsung YP P2 feels solid and can easily compete with the iPod Touch in the design and looks as well as the build quality department.

It sports a 3″ touchscreen display with a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels and supports 262k colors. The display is smaller than the iPod Touch’s 3.5″ but is just as good in terms of brightness, contrast and video quality. The daylight legibility is decent too.

The bottom of the player has a mic, dock and headphone jack. There are volume controls on the right and play / pause / power button and a hold switch on the left. Most of the controls are handled with the touchscreen, hence the minimum amount of external buttons and controls.

Interface:

The Samsung YP P2 is almost totally controlled through its touch screen interface, just like the iPod Touch. The interface of the YP P2 is easy to use and intuitive and the touch screen is very responsive with nice sensitivity. There are no lags or delays in opening menus, media files etc. The GUI is cool with nice icons and menus. It has almost all the features you would expect in a PMP, nothing ground breaking though. The earlier versions used to have some bugs, but most of them have been squashed by Samsung with firmware updates.

The Samsung YP P2 supports just the MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and not the MSC (Mass Storage Class) protocol. This means that it is compatible with just Windows XP and Vista for media transfer and won’t work with Mac or Linux. It works flawlessly with Media Player, Winamp and other MTP compatible players. You can use Samsung’s Studio software to transcode video and audio files before transferring them to the device. It supports the MP3 and WMA audio formats and the SVI and WMV video formats.

Audio and Video Playback:

The Samsung YP P2 has excellent sound quality and will impress most audiophiles. It is cheap compared to many other players which provide the same sound quality. It trumps the iPod Touch in this case. For a better audio experience, you can swap the bundled earphones with better earphones. It performs well over the whole spectrum with no reason to complain about.

It comes with Samsung’s DNSe - Digital Natural Sound Engine technology which enhances the which adds to the audio playback. It also has a 7 band customisable EQ which you can use to customise the sound to your liking. It supports multiple playlists to which tracks can be added easily with just a click of the Menu button. You can sort your music easily based on the artist, album, genre and playlists. You can also organise it in folders if you wish to.

Video playback is awesome on the YP P2, thanks to its superb 3″ display. It can easily play 2 or more full length movies on a single charge which mkes it all the more enjoyable when commuting. There is no lag in video playback and no skipping of frames. Video playback is as fluid as it can get, very close to the iPod Touch. It supports the SVI and WMV formats for videos, to transcode your videos to these formats, you can use the bundled Samsung Media Studio software or any other video converter. It would have been nice if the YP P2 had natively supported more common formats and codecs like DiVX and XViD.

Other Features:

It supports document viewing and can be used to view TXT files and JPEG images. The image viewer is great and allows zooming in as well as fullscreen mode You can view images as thumbnails or as icons. Viewing images is a pleasure using finger gestures on the brilliant display. There is slight lag in the image viewer interface though. It also has a built in FM radio with decent reception. It supports a total of 30 available presets. It also supports FM recording using which you can directly record songs off any FM radio channel. It also supports many other basic features like alarms, calendar, world clock and RSS data casts. You can also connect it to any bluetooth headset to listen to your music wirelessly.

The YP P2 has a rated battery life of 35 hrs for audio and 5 hrs for video and does manage just about the same. It can last for about 2 days with moderate usage. It comes bundled with a USB cable, earbuds, the studio software, a screen protector and clip alongwith the user manual.

Pros:

• Nice Design
• Superb Audio Quality
• Fast Responsive Touchscreen UI

Cons:

• Limited Codec support
• No Voice Recording

Conclusion:

The Samsung YP P2 is a great PMP with superb audio quality, nice video playback and a sleek design with good interface. It is a good alternative to the iPod Touch.

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5.