Samsung YEPP YH-999GS 20 GB

I bought this product in May 2005 for £350. At the time I was looking for a portable mp3 player that I could use to store my music collection. On impulse I decided to choose a player that also included the ability to watch video. I made a wise decision, because the quality of the display on this device is brilliant, especially when watching encoded dvds.

When I took the player out of the box for the first time I was initially impressed ...
...The one thing that worried me a bit was how I was going to fit it in my pocket, but I was wrong to worry because it fit perfectly! The size could be offputting for some, but I got used to it quite quickly. There's also a cool stand on the back so it can stand up when watching videos.

After checking out the player and the contents of the box (power supply, USB cable, instruction manual, installation CD, headphones), I couldn't wait ... more

I bought this product in May 2005 for £350. At the time I was looking for a portable mp3 player that I could use to store my music collection. On impulse I decided to choose a player that also included the ability to watch video. I made a wise decision, because the quality of the display on this device is brilliant, especially when watching encoded dvds.

When I took the player out of the box for the first time I was initially impressed by the size of the screen and by its weight. The one thing that worried me a bit was how I was going to fit it in my pocket, but I was wrong to worry because it fit perfectly! The size could be offputting for some, but I got used to it quite quickly. There's also a cool stand on the back so it can stand up when watching videos.

After checking out the player and the contents of the box (power supply, USB cable, instruction manual, installation CD, headphones), I couldn't wait to plug it into my PC and get it loaded up with my music collection, despite the instruction maual telling me to charge it for 12 hours first. So I plugged the power supply in and connected the USB cable to the player and my PC. WOW, as soon as I plugged in this device I get a very neat display background, similar to that of Windows XP. Anyway after installing the included software I loaded up Windows media player 10 (required) and chose a few tracks for a test. Choosing the sync option this is extremely easy to do, and also extremely fast (a 12 track album took about 20 seconds to transfer).

Once I had transferred the files I unplugged the USB cable and started the device. A handy green button takes you to the main menu, where you can choose what you want to do. So I chose the option to listen to music. The tracks are organised well and can show a picture of the album cover onscreen when listening. Firstly I listened to a track using the inbuilt speaker, which isn't too loud but I found the sound quality very reasonable. I found that this was the same for the included headphones.

After a few weeks of using the device for listening to music on the move with no problems at all, I decided it was time to try the device for video playback. As this player only accepts mp3s, wmas, wmvs and jpegs, I had to convert my avi files into wmv format, which takes place during the transfer of the file to the player. This process process is quite tedious, because the conversion takes place pretty much in realtime (i.e. A 2 hour film takes 2 hours to convert). But once the file was on the player I was very impressed by the quality of video playback.

Another feature on this device is the ability to view photos and pictures and to store data. I know that now 20gb is not a lot of storage space for an mp3 player, but I found this amount to be more than enough.

I would say that overall this is a good portable media player if you're looking for one that can store plenty of music and playback video files well. I would recommend this device if you don't mind the slight bulkiness of the design, and the included headphones, which aren't very loud. But overall good display, good features, adaquate storage space and user friendly.  

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