Samsung YP-K3 review

Samsung YP-K3 Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Reviewed on: 12 April 2007

Samsung's YP-K3 is an incredibly slim and stylish MP3 player, with a touch-sensitive interface and a seamless design. Although not bursting with features, the K3 rivals the iPod nano with its ease of use, attractive design and solid performance.

This 4GB MP3 player is available for an affordable £99, however those with smaller music collections can opt for the 2GB version, which is just £79.

Design
The K3 is lightweight, super slim and a devilishly attractive piece of kit to boot. Complimented by a sophisticated silver border, the metallic black finish and seamless design of this player just oozes class.

One thing that separates the K3 from most competitors is its complete lack of buttons. Samsung has opted for a touch-sensitive interface that's invisible until touched, magically lighting up the controls. It looks seriously cool, but there's no tactile feedback given from the buttons, meaning you can't feel that a button has been pressed.

The touch-sensitive controls come to life as if by magic

In the karmic world of MP3 players, however, no good seems to come without an equal and opposite bad: the K3 picks up fingermarks like there's no tomorrow. This can easily be remedied with a lint-free cloth though, so we're not panicking.

The 46mm (1.8-inch) 160x120-pixel colour OLED screen is nowhere near as sharp as Samsung's more recent YP-T9 model, but performs its job adequately.

Features
Samsung has designed the K3 to be simple, functional and stylish. The menu gives you four options: music, radio, photos and settings. It couldn't be simpler to use. Each menu item is animated but it takes a second for the animation to finish before you can select the option you want. This can be quite frustrating.

The music playback screen is made up mostly of a large graphic. Sadly, there's no support for album art. Artist, album and track name are scrolled at the bottom of the screen, along with the track number and progress information. A context menu is accessible with a push of the menu button, allowing you to choose one of four effective sound effects ('vocal', 'bass boost', '3D sound' or 'concert hall'), choose a different visualisation and select play modes such as shuffle or repeat.

The FM tuner inside the K3 is intuitively implemented. The left and right navigational buttons seek through the frequencies, or you can select an 'autoseek' function. Autoseek found a plethora of mainstream stations but also saved a few stations of white noise for us, too.

If there's one thing we're disappointed with in the K3, it's photo support. Photos are unclear, pixellated and dull.