Performance
Music playback is excellent. Both high and low frequencies are well reproduced: bass is powerful, deep and clear; highs are clean and sharp. Slam by Pendulum is a bass-driven dance track that pounded into our skulls. We noticed a particular strength with certain mid-range frequencies too. This was during certain acoustic tracks, such as Dashboard Confessional's song Hands Down.
It took an impressive 12 minutes and 30 seconds to transfer our 1.5GB library of test MP3s to the device. Compare this to the 26 minutes it took to transfer the same files to our Creative Zen V Plus and you'll appreciate the K3's speedy transfer rate.
Battery life is estimated at 25 hours. We fully charged our review unit and set it to play and repeat our 1.5GB library of 256Kbps MP3 files as we left the office at 6pm. When we arrived at 9am the following morning, the K3 was off and the battery completely empty. The battery was flattened after 15 hours at most. This is much lower than we'd expected and we believe our review unit's battery wasn't in full health.
Sadly there's no AC adaptor included with the K3 so the player charges over USB when connected to a computer.
The included software -- Samsung Media Manager -- is very simple to use. It's a pleasure to use and handles both music and photos. We also liked the AutoAlbum feature that dynamically builds custom playlists based on preferences you dictate, such as whether or not the song has been played recently or whether it belongs to a certain genre. This is very simple compared to iTunes' smart playlists and works well.
Conclusion
The Samsung YP-K3 is aimed at the style-conscious user who only wants to carry a couple of hundred songs around at any one time. If you're not too bothered about photo or video support, but want a super-stylish, slim and lightweight MP3 player, you'll definitely want to check out the K3. For just around £95, it's a great product.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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User reviews2
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Abbas Jagani 19 April 2008
Good: cheap (now!...not when it was new!)
Bad: I'd have to think really hard!
Comment: brilliant piece of technology! cool touchpad! nice LED lights. suitable sized display. small and compact.
i think the reviewer above has unfortunately just had bad luck. personally, i think that you should disregard his/her experience as it was probably a rare occurance! mine works perfectly fine, haven't had any problems in the 9months i've been using it!
Brian Judge 17 May 2007
Good: Everything if only it worked!!
Bad: It doesn't work!!
Comment: My initial feeling was wow. It was an impressive player, Build quality and sound matched the quality of the design. If only its reliability and Samsung's warranty were so impressive.
The unit failed after 2 weeks use and was sent back to Samsung for repair. It's now been with them for a further 4 weeks and I have now been told that it cannot be repaired and a replacement will take a further 3-4 weeks to be despatched!!
If only I'd bought an iPod!!
A fantastic product let down by very inferior support!!
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