Samsung YP-T9 MP3 and Media Player

The Samsung YP T9 media player is a thin, feature-packed player.

It comes in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB models.

It is plays MP3s and displays video and photos.

The selling prices is around £40-£55.

NAVIGATION

Buttons

Navigation is done by a five-way button and side keys along the right edge. Far from being thumb-friendly the arrangement pretty much necessitates a two handed operation – particularly as the side keys are closely packed, and feel identical.

File Navigation

Music navigation is done by MP3 tags – artists, albums, tracks and genres.

Playlists were a disappointment - it proved impossible to get the player to recognise playlists produced by the latest computer software provided by Samsung – more on this later.

When browsing large lists of MP3s, you can scroll either at one track at a time or a page at a time. Even with the assistance of a progress bar along the right side of the screen, this is not an easy way of finding a particular track in a large folder.

Video files are navigated using filenames.

Photos can be browsed using a very limited preview which allows display of three thumbnails at once.

There is a completely separate menu which uses imported folder and file names to browse music, video and photo files.

DISPLAY

The 2-inch display provides a vibrant, colourful feel to the player with a range of background colours and effects which can be set to change at random.

The video and photo display is at reasonable resolution. But images aren’t as crisp as those on the best media players.

SOUND

The sound quality is great – the earphones provide a decent sound, but it is really Samsung’s DNSe technology that provides the right edge to any track. You can choose your own equalizer settings or choose from a range of DNSe presets that include several ‘3D’ sound options as well as the more usual jazz, classical, pop and other options.

Very welcome is the player’s Street Mode which adjusts the sound for a noisy background environment.

PLAYBACK

During playback, fast forwarding and rewinding happens at a speed you choose. You can programme the cue speed using the in-flight menu – choosing anything from 3 seconds to 1 minute or even 1 track ‘skip intervals’.

DATA TRANSFER and SOFTWARE

Data transfer and battery recharging is done using a specialized USB cable. Recharging is fairly quick, but the speed of data transfer is disappointingly poor.

Most video and some photo files will need conversion before transfer.

Software

The software for the player proved disappointing too. The in-box Samsung Media Studio software upgrades to the latest Emodio software which can be downloaded via the internet during setup.

Emodio has a similar appearance to Samsung Media Studio. Unfortunately the upgrade automatically uninstalled Samsung Media Studio and it was impossible to reinstall this subsequently.

The Emodio software was unstable, sometimes crashing - particularly during video conversion.

The playlists created by the software never appeared on the player afterwards though the file transfer did take place.

BATTERY

Battery life is excellent. A full charge lasts pretty much the whole day for music playback.

Recharging is done via the Sony data transfer USB cable. This takes about 3 hours for a full charge but a pretty healthy charge is visible after only a couple of hours.

OTHER FEATURES & CONCLUSION

The player has a truly impressive range of features - Bluetooth connectivity and DNSe stand out, and these are packed into a tiny package of around 50g with a pretty cool appearance.

But there are some flaws too and file navigation is a bit tricky especially without effective access to playlists and inflexible list navigation.

A very good player, but lacking polish.