I've been looking for a good PMP (Personal Media Player) for quite sometime now. What were my requirements? Able to play video on biggest portable screen available, play music of course, and look very sleek/light with a good interface. I've worked for apple and honestly I love their products but I wanted to try something new for a damn change instead of following everyone else like sheep.
I've always had an issue with Ipod Touch battery life as well using Itunes. Some of you may not know but "Enable Disk Usage'' on Ipod touch is disable on the touches now meaning you can't put files on it like a plug/play device storage device which is just retarded!
After looking at the major companies here in North America I've bottle down my selection to the Samsung P2 Player (8 or 16gb) or the Ipod Touch. If your from Canada like me then you know very damn well that Iphone is almost pointless to get right now on these shitty service providers and their ridiculously unfair rates, especially compared to the U.S.
(http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3540/p2playeroa6.png)
Samsung P2 8gb pros (when compared to Itouch):http://pages.samsung.com/ca/p2/
just take the tour to save sometime as well, hit DEMO to see live demo.
Tech Specs:Hidden content (Click to reveal)Product Details
Web Code: 10092896
Mfr. Part Number: YP-P2JCB/XAC
AM/FM Tuner Digital FM
Battery Life 5 Hours Video, 30 Hours Audio
Battery Type Lithium-Ion
Computer Interface USB 2.0
Connection Transfer Rate USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0
Cradle No
Digital Audio Format Upgradeable Yes
External Memory Not Applicable
External Memory Format Not Applicable
ID3 Tag Display Yes
Impact-Resistant Case No
Included Headphone Type Earbuds
Included In Box Earphone,Stand,USB Cable,Installation CD
Internal Memory 8GB
Internal Memory Format Flash
Media Compatibility MP3,WMA,OGG, WMV, MPEG4 (SVI), JPEG, TXT
Operating System Compatibility Windows XP/Vista
Product Dimensions 10.0(W) x 5.2(H) x 0.99(D) cm
Product Warranty 1 Year Parts & Labour
Product Weight 0.08 kg
Remote Control No
SDMI-Compliant Yes
Signal to Noise Ratio (S/N Ratio) No
Software Supplied Samsung Media Studio Installation CD
Station Presets 20
System Requirements Windows XP/Vista
Total Memory 8GB
Track Search Yes
Voice Recorder No
Water-Resistant Case No
Pros:I don't know if this is player got overlooked or not but it's really great! I've always like samsung as a phone company and their bluetooth technology really shows in this product man.
! BluetoothBluetooth to any cell phone that has bluetooth (your phone is obsolete if it doesn't have this :()
Bluetooth can dial, redial numbers, has call history, voice over to phone (transfer phone to original cell phone), and you can add a address book of all your contacts.
How does it work? Get a call and the music stops showing incoming call accept or not. you connect and just speak bro, that's all! You hear everything via headsets and the player can be on the floor and you can still speak through the built in mic it's incredible designed to really only catch your voice.
You can transfer files via bluetooth to the player too like pictures and stuff. You can also setup bluetooth headsets!
! FM TunerFM tuner with incredible quality, I mean it's really good... It only gets scratchy on some stations and can be fixed if positioned. A cool feature is the ability to record up to 200+ (8gb player) minutes of songs from the FM radio stations! The things you record go under the music browser under "Recorded Files". These can easily be renamed and moved to your actual playlist of course. If files are deleted, the 200 (on 8gb player) minute counter goes back to what it was before.
! Music Quality/SettingsThere are more features with this baby then the Itouch as well in terms of equalizer settings. You can set concert mode which makes things sound like they are echoed (studio effect) or club which makes things a bit louder as well. Of course there is a volume limiter as well just like the Ipod but you can't really set the bar from what I can tell, only on and off.
You can also change the speed of any songs which I pretty much try with any new song I put on my player to see how they sound :D.
! VideoThe video is really great once you get the videos on the damn player. It took me like a good hour or two to find the best method of getting videos on this baby. The player comes with a SMS which is Samsung Media Studio which can actually convert anything on your computer to work with the player as long as you have the codecs on the computer which is really really cool. The only problem is that the screen size sometimes doesn't fit the screen and I learned a workaround which uses another player to encode the files.
! ThemesI only decided to mention this because the themes that now come with the player are acutally pretty great and it really boosted the overall look.
! Firmware updatesDid you know that the bluetooth to phone was done by firmware? Yes, this feature was added via firmware by downloading online allowing other users who bought this baby before it had the bluetooth to phone feature. You can actually get continued updates like these as well when available off the samsung website (it's called bluewave).
! Design
This thing is lighter, thinner, screen sizes slight smaller then touch, and can almost have the same capacity (max 32gb touch, max 16gb p2 player) as the touch.
! Battery LifeCan't complain, even with video, music, AND BLUETOOTH (major battery killer) the thing lasted the whole day. Turn off bluetooth and use mp3 only and it'll last two days. Read the specs on battery life though.
XXX
ConsX If you had the touch previously, the touch/iphone screen sensitivity will be too slow for you at first. I'm 100% sure you'll get over this as the sensitivity on this player is more realistic then the Touch which was far too sensitive even after settings changed for me. This isn't really a con but I'm sure people will point this out.
X Video conversions should be more user friendly :(, It's pretty simple though!
X Sorry no Wi-fi... But come on, I'll take the bluetooth to phone which the Touch cannot do over this anyday.
X Sorry you most likely won't see any chrono trigger gameplay on this bad boy like the touch. Yup, no homebrews and emulation and so on. Infact, you'll likely have to put content, even movies and such on yourself as the large community/homebrews apple has does not apply to this player (yet.)
I would recommend this thing to anyone who wants something similiar to the Iphone/Itouch as this can be the direct middle product between the two (with bluetooth phone on).
P.S ~ By the way this thing does have storage mode too :D.