Samsung YP-S5 8GB

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Ease of Use	Average
Look & Design	Excellent
Range of Features	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Thinner than K5, cool screen, more features
Disadvantages:	Screen balck is not completely dark, smudges easily .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Having owned several Samsung branded MP3 players over the years, I really enjoyed them so I decided to upgrade from their K5 mp3 player. I found this well built and very reliable (hardly ever crashed) and loved the portable slide out speaker. When the S5 was released a year later, also with slide out speaker, I thought this upgrade had to be a must.

I was right. I decided to go for more storage from a 2gb to an 8gb. The 8gb actually costs less than the 2gb K5 cost! This player has everything the K5 missed and the few faults that the K5 had have been ironed out. The S5 now has album art, a prettier screen, video playback and bluetooth. Fair enough the screen doesn't go as dark as the K5's did, meaning it no longer becomes a seamless part of the front of the player, but it still looks stylish none of the less. The menus are more animated and the songs are better organised, with the option to display your music as folders or organised by their ID3 tags.

Album art is not as easy to set up as some players such as the old Z5 (the image was just named 'folder' and it was then shown as album art). It has to be embedded as part of the ID3 tag. Thankfully, some programs such as Media Monkey allow this to become fairly straight forward.

The navigation of the player is somewhat slower than the K5, but I only noticed that in direct comparison. After a while I soon got used to the slower but very smooth animation.

Videos play back fine if not grainy but the screen is too small to really watch anything on anyhow.

I enjoy the ability to add your ow photos or pics as wallpaper just like the Z5. This is called a custom skin. You can chose more visualizations than the K5 too, but I normally have it set to album art view.

The radio quality is adequate but I don't think I will be recording any stations any time soon!

Another feature I love is the ability to pair the player with your phone via bluetooth, answer the phone on the player and speak through its built in mic and use it as a hands free set. This is handy if you can't hear your phone when listening to music: the music simply stops when you receive a call.

I recommend this player as a worthwhile upgrade to the K5 or as someone starting out in the world of portable music as it is cheaper than the K5 ever was. The built in speaker is cool by the way (although it is the same as the k5), Although it is slower to navigate, it's screen is much prettier, sound is more defined and clearer and it is packed full of features to rival players such as the Ipod Nano.