The 23.8 x 87.8 x 13.5mm YP-U1Q is one of the larger memory sizes in the YP-U1 range offering a rather hefty 2gb of disk storage for your music. It is primarily a MP3 player and ditches FM radios and other gimmicks retaining only MP3 playback and a simple voice recorder. Operating the U1Q is a basic affair too, but this is a good thing, the 4 line backlit LCD displays a navigation menu which is driven from a familiar 4 way pad on the right of the screen. This allows access to a listing of all tracks on the player and the basic playback controls. It's easy enough to browse for an album or artist but support for playlists are fairly dismal and fiddly even when these are built off device. We did encounter the GUI being a bit slow to update and had to wait rather than rip through menus but its not a major complaint.

However Samsung do a good job with the range of media supported by the player, this includes MP3 and WMA as you'd expect but it also works with ASF and our favourite Ogg Vorbis. Meaning you can compress more highly and get more music on your 2gb.  We've become accustomed to all the flash based small MP3 players providing an OK sound and the Samsung YPU1Q proved to be as good as the majority of the players on the market including the iPod shuffle. It has a good weighting of bass and a faithful midrange and top end reproduction. The supplied earphones are quite good for a cheap MP3 player and do a reasonable job of handling your average pop track although they are shown up by anything with serious bass lines. The biggest issue with them is comfort. We found that a weeks use of the earphones started to cause some discomfort to the point where you just didn't want to use them, swapping for our Shure E2'c solved this an improved audio, but they cost as much as the MP3 player itself!

Battery life is key in any MP3 player review and normally the flash based players boast some of the best battery performances. However the Samsung is fairly average and while it claims 15 hours of replay from a charge we never quite achieved that, the best we managed was around 13 and a half hours before playback stopped. Topping up the YP-U1Q is simple enough, you can only charge by connecting via USB to a host computer, charging takes just over 2 hours from flat and the Lithium Ion battery performs well and does not suffer any memory effect for multiple recharges. The flip out USB 2.0 connector provides fast and efficient transfer of media onto the player but can be a bit fiddly to prise out of its little flap on the rear of the device.

We should touch on digital rights management at this point (DRM), for those that purchase music from legal download stores Samsung have enabled the player to work with Windows media DRM so WMA DRM enabled files can be stored and played. Sadly tracks purchased from iTunes in ACC format are not supported.

Overall we were quite impressed with the Samsung YPU1Q, its a compact and yet capacious device which provide good audio replay without too many gimmicks. Of course we've saved the best feature until last and that is price. The 2gb unit retails for under £80 which is less than you'd pay for a 1gb iPod shuffle!  When you compare the Apple shuffle and the YP-U1Q it becomes even more of a no brainer as the Samsung has a screen and an extra gigabyte of storage plus Ogg Vorbis and WMA support.

Published - 25/02/2006

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