Samsung YP-T9 review

Samsung YP-T9 Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Reviewed on: 22 March 2007

Performance
One noticeable problem was the slight lag with the navigation. There's a tiny gap between button presses and the system responding, and a slight delay when skipping tracks. It's off-putting, but it's made more bearable by the easy-to-use menus. There are no other significant navigation problems, though we'd rather use the back button on the front to go back a step than the button on the side.

Menu navigation is simple and intuitive

The bundled stock headphones are only average, although this is par for the course. We tested the T9 with a pair of mid-range Sennheiser headphones and heard an astonishing improvement over the bundled set. The bass of Yeah Yeah by Bodyrox was powerful and full-bodied, while the high-pitched operatic vocals from Sarah Brightman's performance of Naturaleza Muerta were sharp and clear. Audiophiles will certainly find the YP-T9 offers excellent audio performance, but a pair of quality 'phones will have to be on their shopping list. 

It's getting more common for small players such as this to support video playback, and the YP-T9 does a good job of playing back video encoded with the software provided. Video files are automatically rotated to take full advantage of the screen size. Although the player is smaller than a nano, the screen is larger, making video clips very watchable. You wouldn't want to watch a full-length movie on here, granted, but music videos and occasional TV shows are perfectly watchable without eyestrain. Photos are also well taken care of and look good on the bright colour LCD screen.

Samsung claims a battery life of 30 hours for music -- this was borne out by our tests. Our model played music continuously for 30 hours and video for 6, which are excellent figures.

Conclusion
Samsung has produced an astounding MP3 player that's packed with features, easy to use, a pleasure to operate and delivers excellent sound quality. If you're after a slimline, lightweight and feature-packed music player then don't miss the Samsung YP-T9.

It's the only model we've seen that could deliver a knockout blow to the iPod nano, thanks to the extra features such as radio, Bluetooth, voice and radio recording, and crucially, video playback. Don't worry about paying the extra -- it's worth it.

Available from AdvancedMP3Players. 

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide