Good Quality, Some Drawbacks
Written: Dec 18 '00 (Updated Dec 19 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, compact, relatively inexpensive
Cons: Software, Parallel Interface
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| myideassuck's Full Review: Samsung Yepp YP-E64 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
Overview
The Yepp MP3 player is a very good player. It is small, and compact. It has a simple interface and is very easy to use. Download speeds have something to be desired and the smartcard expansion memory is expensive.
Software
The software for the Yepp is much less than I expected. The long download times could have been offset by the ability to queue up downloads. A simple queueing feature would allow you to create a list of songs to download and then leave for 15 minutes as the songs downloaded.
A realJukebox add-on seems to be in development (according to the realJukebox FAQ). RealJukebox should be a vast improvement over the existing software.
The software also seemed to have a bug with my parallel port. It would not recognize the ECP port. When I put it in ECP mode it would not properly download. This problem seemed to fix itself with the newest version of the software (version 1.3).
Hardware Interface
The parallel port interface is fairly straight forward but slow. It takes about 15 minutes to download the entire memory with songs. This is much slower than a USB player.
A USB cable was difficult to find but is available for purchase from the Samsung site and can be found at the samsung store site at <A HREF= http://www.samsungestore.com >www.samsungestore.com</a>. . Click the MP3 player accessories. It costs about $30 US. That may increase download times and I'm tempted to make the purchase.
Memory
The 64MB of memory is sufficient for over 1 hour of music at 128kbs (near CD quality music). I have found that this is a good amount of memory. I don't think I could handle a player with only 32MBytes of RAM. There just wouldn't be enough room.
The Yepp player is compatible with 32MB SmartCards. However, it formats the cards to be incompatible with any other smartcard devices. It will not work with any 64MB smartcard no matter what the brand.
Sound Quality
I think the sound quality is very good. I have not heard other portable MP3 players but I have found that when comparing it to my computer sound I found that the sound lacked in mid-range frequencies.
The head phones that come with the player also lack bass and as such should probably be replaced with some higher quality headphones. With good quality head phones the sound quality is very close, but not as good as a computer.
Conclusion
Excellent player and pretty good bang for the buck. Don't get your hopes up about software interface or download speeds because this comes up short. I would buy it again and I would recommend it to my friends.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
myideassuck
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Location: Vancouver, BC Canada
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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