Samsung YP-M1 Review.

I can't fathom why Samsung doesn't sell the YP-M1 media player in the U.S.. The 3.3" OLED screen over a Tegra processor has the stones to compete with the offerings of Cowon and iRiver and any other Korean maker, as well as Sony. Perhaps it is Apple's dominance that has them too timid to go head to head. No way of knowing, of course. I ordered this M1 from ExportPrive.com in South Korea, and it arrived within a week or so of my order. Pricey though for an 8gb touchscreen PMP.

So, what can a Tegra processor do for a pocket media player? In this Samsung it can process just about any media you can throw at it. From lossless audio files to 720p video, the M1 doesn't blink. Files that other devices choke on the M1 plays with no complaint. Samsung packs this power in a device smaller than last year's YP-P3 yet with a bigger screen. They've retained the P3's key features, but one-upped it in every media type application. Music and Video play, and even photo display are broadened and more visually entertaining.

Dimensions: 53.6 x 99.6 x 9.9mm. Weight 3.4 oz. or 95 grams (with microSD card inserted).
Included: Bundled earphones (EP390), USB Cable, PDF manual (on the M1), and a Quick Guide. Controls include Volume +/- and a Power/Hold button on the top edge with the microphone hole.

There is a microSD slot on the left side, with USB and headphone jacks on the bottom edge.

The M1 is stainless steel and tempered glass. Built like a tank. Some features:

• G-Sensor. Well utilized, with landscape and portrait modes of most main apps.
• Haptic Feedback. "Vibe Woofer", and tactile feedback of screen taps.
• Speakers. Top and bottom of the screen. Better than most.
• Microphone. Voice recording and phone calls.
• MicroSD-HC slot (not well integrated).
• Bluetooth, including headphone/file transfer/and phone.
• 1280 x 720 video support.
• TV-out (not HD, sorry). NTSC or PAL. Accessory cable not included.

Music: The M1 handles MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, AAC, M4A (not lossless), and FLAC files. I've gotten a sample of every codec to play, although some high bitrate (lossless) versions generate an error message. The M1 is rated for up to 30 hours of music playback on a battery charge.TThe Now Playing screen is complete, with full width album art. The title, artist, album, file format, Play Mode, song length are also displayed. You have to tap the screen once to call up shuttle controls. The bottom row gives you quick access to the Music Settings and A-B marking.
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The Settings include DNSe, Play Mode, Music Play Screen, Horizontal Stroke, Add to Playlist (up to 5 user playlists), Add to Alarm, and Play Speed. EQ (DNSe) preset options include Auto, Normal, Studio, Rock, Classical, Jazz, Ballad, Club, Dance, Cade, Concert Hall, and Church. There are two user EQ (MyDNSe) settings available.
·I found the Music Player very complete. The output from on-board speakers is better than most. Using good headphones the sound is excellent. Throw in Bluetooth output and you've got an A+ music app.
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Video: Samsung claims the M1 will play WMV, DivX, Xvid, SWF, H.264, ASF, and MPEG4. I have no doubt. The M1 is rated for up to 5 hours of video playback on a battery charge. It played every form of video file I threw at it. There is video out with the right cable, but sadly it only supports SD resolutions over NTSC or PAL.
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Notice the little camera icon on the left above. When video is paused a tap on that icon will save an image the M1 will use to identify the movie when listing them. There are three list modes including a text list, an icons lists, and something like a coverflow list.·
Videos look stunning on the 3.3 inch OLED screen. You can see complete info about the video playing with a tap on the screen. The Settings menu includes DNSe, Display, Horizontal Stroke, Play Speed, and TV Out. You have Normal, Drama, Action, and Theater presets under DNSe. Display includes Brightess, Screen Size, and Subtitle options. You can a Bookmark one location in any video. Trying to add a second bookmark will over-write the first. It is a great video app, but not quite as complete as that on my Cowon J3. For that reason video gets an A-.
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Photos: The M1 will display JPEG, BMP, and PNG files. There are two graphic preview styles. The one on the right above is dynamic, panning vertically up and down to reveal your photo thumbnails. Photos are automatically rotated to best fill the screen. You have the option to manually rotate them in 90 degree increments. Zoom is available up to 3X. Tap on a magnifying glass icon to bring up a vertical zoom slider. Photos that are higher resolution than the screen appear to zoom without pixelating. You can actually use this photo app for zooming in on detail in a photo. There are several clever visual transition options for slide shows. No doubt thanks to the Tegra chip. The delay between photos in a slide show seems to be fixed at 5 seconds though. I like the Photo app. It is fairly complete. Surprisingly it is not quite as full featured as that on the earlier Samsung P3. The OLED screen is much better looking though. I give the M1's Photo capability a B+.
Documents: The Samsung P2 and P3 have great txt file readers, and the M1 follows in that tradition. You get a coverflow style list of the documents on board in the landscape mode. Text will rotate as the M1 rotates. You can change the background (paper type) and text colors, as well as the text size (small, medium, large). There is a nice graphic page flip animation when turning pages. You get one bookmark setting for each file. Again, there is nothing apparent in this application that looks improved over the P3's version, except of course the larger screen and clever graphic list view. It remains one of the best text reader you'll find on any PMP, so I give it an A. The Samsung P3 is an amazing player. This M1 is slightly better, but mainly in the graphic effects the Tegra chip apparently encourages. There is far more than Music, Video, Photos, and Text you can enjoy with the M1 though. In the 2nd half of this review I'll cover the more esoteric features. So far, the M1 is looking good.
Stay Tuned.
4D

Haier Theatre Touchscreen MP3 Player. My Review.

Web Site: Haier Theatre.

Haier finally enters the touchscreen player competition with this sleek HV3A-4G Theatre player. I picked mine up from Target.com. This $99 4gb player appears well made. It has a curved back that fits comfortably in my hand. The chrome frame is interrupted with the USB port on the bottom edge and the headphone jack on the left side near the bottom. The small power slide switch is just behind the chrome on the top edge. There are no other external controls. The hardware seems like a good package, although the UI doesn't take complete advantage of the hardware. Read on to find out if this is one I'll be keeping.

Features include a G-Sensor/Accelerometer. Shake to shuffle. Photos will rotate with screen.
FM radio with recording.
Plays subscription music online services.
Display: 3" Capacitive touch screen, 400x240 (WQVGA).
Weight: 2.6 ounces ~ 75 grams. Dimensions: 3.5" tall, 2.125" wide, .5" thick.

Music: The Theatre will play MP3, WMA (not lossless), AAC, WAV and OGG. Rated for 12 Hours of Audio Playback on a single charge. One sample file is included. The image above shows the music player screen. Cover art will display if it is included in the audio file. You can see and change your position in a song. To change volume you have to tap the second icon from the left on the bottom row, then hit a + or - to raise or lower the volume. Not very efficient. Nicely though the song name, album, artist, bit-rate, and play mode are displayed. A-B marking is also thrown in.

You can sort music by directory list (folder), favorites, artist, genre, album or look though all music. The music app is complete. The only lossless format supported is WAV, but otherwise this makes the Theatre a good player for your music collection. I give Music an A-.

Movies: The user manual and web site state you can watch AVI videos. I've gotten AVI and WMV (not listed in the manual) to play. I have a feeling the user manual doesn't have all the info about this player listed. The Theatre is rated for 3.5 Hours of playback time on a full battery charge.

Photos: Displays JPEG (JPG) image files. Four 400 x 240 pixel photos were included. The G-sensor will rotate photos if you turn the device, but only 90 degrees one direction. You can manually rotate images in 90 degree steps clockwise or counter-clockwise. No zoom function that I could find. You can slide-show the collection, and change the delay between each to 2, 5, or 10 seconds. No fancy transitions. Just your basic photo frame function. Photos get a C from me.

Documents: Reads simple TXT files. You can change the font color and text size. The text options screen wasn't very responsive to touch. You can also have the pages auto-flip, and change the delay between page flips. Again, a very basic text display app. I'll give it a C too.

FM Radio: Nothing unusual about the FM radio on the Theatre. Your frequency is displayed both graphically on a slider bar and in large numbers above. You can advance stations by auto-found presets or manually. You'll need the headphone cable inserted as it serves as antenna, and your reception will vary depending on the length, position, and quality of that cable. I experienced more static than I usually get with similar devices. No RDS. I'll rate FM on the Theater a B.

FM Recording: The FM app has a little red button to initiate recording. It doesn't begin instantly, so be sure to tap the button BEFORE what you want to record has started. Recorded radio is saved as a stereo WAV file.

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Voice Recording: Your voice will record to a WAV file. Again there is a delay after touching the record button before recording starts. The Theatre also clips the end of your recording after you've pressed STOP. Be sure and pad both the beginning and end with 5 seconds of silence or so if you want your speech completely saved. The failure to start and end quickly seriously cripples this feature on the Theatre. Voice Recording gets a C-. \

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Extras: Haier threw in a simple silicone case for the Theatre. A Nice touch but the Theatre looks far better without it. Extra apps include a stopwatch and calendar. Nothing amazing, but nice to have should you need either.

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Summary: I like the Theatre for a first attempt from Haier. It won't compete with the Samsung P2 or P3, Cowon S9 or J3, Sony X1000 series, or the iriver SPINN. It is priced on the high side for most 4gb touchscreen players. Add another $25 and you could get the 8gb Samsung P3, a far superior player. The two nagging complaints I'll register about the Theatre are volume control and the main menu. There are no external volume control buttons. There is no way to pause/mute/volume control music outside the music app. Within the app you have to tap an icon first to bring up volume + and - buttons, and have to tediously increase or decrease volume one step at a time. The main menu only shows one app at a time. You have to first slide left or right until you find the app you want, then slide that icon down to enter it. Very inefficient! I appreciate the fresh attempt at a user interface, but not at the cost of efficiency. Haier's Theatre media player rates a "Don't bother" from me.

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New Firmware for the Creative X-Fi2.

On 11/25/2009 Creative posted new firmware version 1.10.04. Among other things it added a Sudoku game within a new Apps icon on the second page of the home screen. You can find the update after clicking on "Agree" on this page of Creative's site. Other improvements include:

Enhancements:
• Automatically rotates photos when you turn your player sideways.
• Adds a Sudoku game under the Applications menu .
• Updates your player with new colorful themes.
• Enhances the touch screen's responsiveness.
• Ensures a "press and hold" behaviour for the Power button when you turn on/off your player.

Given the new Photo Rotation it looks like there may be a G-sensor inside the X-Fi2. That leaves open much more potential for apps.

There was a firmware release less than two weeks ago as well, but you don't need to install it before installing this latest one. I'm hoping this indicates Creative will have more apps for the X-Fi2 and possibly a Software Design Kit (SDK). To be competitive in the MP3 player market a few apps are required. I personally am addicted to Sudoku and delighted to find a version for my X-Fi2.

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Latte Espresso Touchscreen Media Player, 16gb. My Review!

Latte looks like they want to move up the ladder in the touchscreen player market. Target.com sells this beautiful 3" touchscreen Espresso model in 8gb and 16gb versions for $120 and $150 respectively. No cutting costs on hardware features, as this player features a G-sensor, Haptic Feedback, Voice and FM Recording, and FM broadcast to any nearby FM radio. Target listed a microSD card slot, but my Espresso DID NOT have one. Target also lists a calendar app which doesn't exist on the Espresso.

The packaging is a nice change from plastic blister packs. Slide the top off to find the player. Lift out the player to find the normal contents beneath. You'll find a standard USB to mini-USB cable, some nice sounding in-canal earbuds, a user manual, warranty card, and coupon for 50 free songs. The earbuds appear to be well made and designed to compliment the Espresso's style. They come with uneven length cables to the buds which makes them easy to wrap behind your head. They also came with a nice net bag and spare set of tips. As a bonus they also sound Great. Good bass, plenty loud, external sound isolating, no audible noise, and expressive across the audio spectrum. They are on sale for $5.99 at Lattezone.com (regular $14.99) though, so don't be upset if they sound or look cheap to you. The only external control is the Power/Play/Pause/Hold slider. On the same end you'll find the USB and headphone jack. There is a small reset hole just around the corner. I love the way the Espresso looks, with a clean simple bronze body evenly framing the 3" touchscreen. The back and sides appear to be aluminum with a fine bevel between them . The front screen surround is plastic. The back is brushed, and the overall finish does a good job at not showing fingerprints. If you care about where your headphone jack is, then the Espresso has the perfect solution. The internal G-sensor knows where down is, and no matter how your rotate it the icons and apps all rotate to stay upright. The main menu is a simple array of icons. A tap takes you to either the files list for the app or right into the (radio) player. There is a nice haptic vibration to confirm your selection. Music. This Latte will play back MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, and AAC (no DRM) files. I've tried MP3, WAV, WMA, and FLAC with success, although it wouldn't play lossless WMA files. The music app is nearly complete. Missing is the ability to advance to any part of a song. There doesn't appear to be gapless playback. I couldn't find any playlist support in the manual or on the device, but there is an option to add songs to a single favorites list. The now-playing screen lets you tap between album art, a graphic equalizer, EQ/bitrate/repeat/shuffle info, or the ID3 info including title, album, and artist. There is a large PLAY/PAUSE button, with track and volume buttons smaller and along the right side (or top in portrait view). You also get an A-B button, lyrics toggle, settings icon, and BACK (previous screen) icon. Finding a single song in a long list is a tedious process. There is no reliable way to jump to a relative position in a list, and with no swipe or fast scroll of the list the touchscreen capabilities are underutilized. Yet this music app is better than most I've seen on budget Chinese media players. I've been enjoying a shuffle though my music collection as I write this. Music gets a B+.

Video. Video format includes AVI, WMV, RM, RMVB, and FLV. Video is the only visual media to not rotate to portrait view. You can still flip the headphone end from right to left and the video will flip. I've tried WMV and AVI files on the Espresso, and although they play there is occasional frame drop. Audio will also get slighly out-of-sync. This may be no problem with videos formatted to fit the native resolution of the screen. My videos were all 480 x 272 or larger. The screen resolution is 420 x 240, but the user manual claims videos up to 800 x 480 (AVI) will play. This is no OLED screen, but videos look decent, and are certainly watchable. The resolution is slighty below what other 3" players feature, but on such a small screen the difference is not apparent. On a side note, the new (and expensive) Sony Walkman 3" t0uchscreen player has the same resolution yet worse video codec/format support. Video playback gets a B-.

Photos. You can view JPEG, BMP, and GIF images. You can rotate the screen, but images don't auto-rotate to fit the screen, nor will they reliably rotate as the screen rotates. There is a one-step zoom option. You can pan around a zoomed image, but screen response is slow and a bit unpredictable. Images looks fine on the screen though, when you can avoid glare. This app is immature, and my experience suggests it won't be updated. Photo display gets a C+.
Text. TXT files can be read. You get three font sizes, as three font colors to choose from. The text will rotate as you turn the player for landscape or horizontal views. Legibility depends on the background and font color you choose, but text is crisp on the 420 x 240 screen. Moving through a large text file isn't as easy as it could be. It should be easy enough to throw a grocery list on the player, though you can't create one on the player itself. Text gets a C+.

FM Radio. Works as expected. You can tune manually or let it autotune and select by preset stations. The presets page irritatingly doesn't let you pick a preset and jump to it, but it does let you delete or add stations easily. No RDS info. No HD radio tuning. Reception will vary depending on your headphones and orientation, as the headphone cable serves as the FM antenna. You can also record off of FM. You get two quality settings. To my ears the high quality WAV recording produced sounds just like the song did playing over the air. It take RDS to get an A from me, so FM Radio gets a B.

Voice Recording. There are two quality settings and five level settings. Recordings are in the .WAV format. I have no idea where the mic is on the Espresso but facing the screen the pickup seemed to be fine. There was noticeable 'static' in my recording. I could hear it through the headphone both while recording and playing back what I'd recorded. Not enough to make the recording useless, but something that will keep this feature of the Espresso from replacing your dictation machine. You can pause and resume while recording, and choose to save or not save a recording you've just made. You'll need to go into the music app or explorer to find an play back your recordings. Voice Recording gets a C-.

Stopwatch is your bonus app. Very basic. No lap times, and only a single timer. It displays time down to 100ths of a second. You can pause and resume a timing. There is also a reset icon. The display will rotate as the device rotates. That's it. Nothing special. C.

Explorer is what explorer does. Have a grand tour of the files you've put on your player.

Settings. Among other things the Settings option lets you turn on or off haptic response and the G-sensor. You can change or disable the backlight and power OFF timings. You'll also find your background choices here. Photo slide show timing is also here, although it would have been more useful in the Photo app.

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Summary. I strongly suggest you use a soft tipped stylus with the Espresso. It's hard to be precise enough with a fat finger as the small icon/targets demand. Otherwise I find this Latte a good value for the money. FM broadcast from a media player is very convenient, and it works well on the Espresso. You can set the frequency you want to broadcast at, and any FM radio with 30 feet or so should be able to play your music. A cheaper alternative to wireless audio than Bluetooth although not as versatile. It's not as nice a player as the Samsung P2 or P3, but you get twice as much memory capacity for the same money. Target seems to have the best price on them right now, but don't trust their description. There is NO memory slot and no calendar on the Espresso. If you can get over that, I highly recommend Latte's Espresso.

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Cowon S9 Gets Another Update! Firmware 2.30b

Update: Firmware Version 2.30b (still a beta release) is now available for download. You can find it HERE along with info on what it includes. For direct download of the Zipped file click HERE. The main difference between 1.30b and 2.30b is that 2.30b doesn't include a dictionary icon or application. It looks like Cowon has decided to be king of the hill among the Korean players. They are at a feverish pace with updates to their beautiful S9 media player. These aren't minor bug fixes.

- This update enables full access to the S9's tilt sensor. Data returned is no longer limited to up, down, left, and right.

- There's a new game to exploit it. Hunter has five levels, each a little harder than the previous. The objective is to not get hit by a bullet. You tilt the S9 to move the character around the screen. The longer you last without getting hit the higher your score. It is similar to the ancient arcade asteroids game, except you can't shoot back. It proves how sensitive the tilt sensor is.

- They've completely started over with music art display in landscape view. You get a 3 x 5 array of your album art. Slide left or right to see more pages.

- Tap on a cover to see a big view and a list of the songs in the album. Do a quick double tap on a song title to start playing that song. The CD below the art appears to spin if a song is playing. The album name overlays it.

- You now can opt to give the S9 a shake to change songs forward or back a track. You can also optionally lock off both landscape Matrix View and the Shake feature. - It's still in beta, so you can expect a few more improvements before the final release. A few things that still need work include remaining in your previous sort mode once you select a song from the landscape matrix view.

You can download the 1.30b firmware HERE. Some info thanks to Google Translate is HERE.

Enjoy!
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