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Samsung YP-Z5
Price: £139 .99 inc VAT

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 25/05/2006
Featured in magazine:
Issue 136
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Samsung
Tel: 0870 242 0303
Web Address: www.samsung.co.uk


If you store your digital music in Microsoft's Windows Media Player rather than Apple's iTunes, you'll probably be well aware that you can't synchronise your music with an iPod. However, there are a raft of players from other companies that connect to Windows Media Player and do the same job of playing your music on the move. At first glance you could even be forgiven for thinking that Samsung's latest digital music player was an iPod Nano, courtesy of its black colouring, photo-capable screen and slim build.

Features
Apart from the obvious difference that Samsung's YP-Z5 uses Windows Media Player rather than iTunes, plays MP3 and WMA files instead of MP3 and AAC tracks, and uses the Windows-based music shops to keep your download supplies up, the device itself isn't all that different. The battery life is much improved over Apple's Nano, offering 35 hours of playback, and its metal casing also makes it feel significantly more robust than Apple's plastic player. This all makes it a few millimetres thicker and although it's barely noticeable on a device this thin, it's the kind of thing your Nano-wielding mates are going to notice.

Performance
As well as the battery life, Samsung seems to have supplied better quality earphones as standard. They're still little buds to insert into your ears, but they offer a decent sound without too much leakage to annoy those around you. It links to Windows Media Player's music without any fuss and, if you're replacing an existing player or already have Windows Media Player 10 installed, it will just plug into a USB port and you're away – there's no need for any extra drivers or software.

Ease of use
For the beginner, first impressions on the ease-of-use front are good – you get a CD-ROM that includes Windows Media Player 10 and talks you through the process of getting music onto your player. However, transferring photos onto the device remained a bit of a mystery without experimentation – we couldn't work out how to do it in Windows Media Player but you can open the player like you would an external hard disk and simply drag and drop images onto the device. However, the documentation makes no mention of this. We also found the soft-touch controls on the device took a bit of getting used to and didn't seem to be quite responsive enough, occasionally leading to frustration.

Value for money
We reviewed the 2GB version but it's also available in 1GB (£109.99) and 4GB (£179.99) models – all identically priced to Apple's Nano models. So without being any better or worse value for money, the difference really comes down to whether your music is stored in iTunes or Windows Media Player and whether you can be bothered to swap from one to the other.

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