Samsung's Yepp YP-55i is a 192MB fixed
memory portable MP3 player which offers 15hrs playback, and MP3 encoding at up
to 128kbps for FM radio or connected audio on the fly. All this
for a sticker price of about $200CDN. The small white player has a clever set
of track controls, and a nice electroluminescent back lit LCD display which is
easy to read.
Relying on one AAA battery, the Samsung
Yepp YP-55i bridges together the worlds of USB media drives and MP3 players
to produce a portable storage device which is easy to get your music into, or off of.
None of this "you can only upload MP3 files" stuff - with the YP-55i. MP3/WMA
formats can uploaded and downloaded from the flash memory.
The YP-55i handles both MP3 and WMA music formats,
and since MP3s are the favourite, they can be played back at encoding
levels of anywhere from 8-360kbps. Voice recordings are stored in WMA format,
and in our tests were somewhat muffled. A good dedicated digital voice
recorder would produce better results, but the voice recording feature is
acceptable for the limited use likely to be seen here.
As with
most digital FM tuners, background static is sometimes prevalent, as it was for
a couple stations we listened to. The FM radio
automatically shifts between stereo or mono, depending on the signal strength, but overall I'd
have to give it 4/5 for fidelity. The auto scanning, and 20
station presets make jumping from station to station a quick task.
Of all the
YP-55i's features though, its ability to encode FM radio broadcasts on the fly
into MP3 files with the flick of a button, was what most impressed us. Samsung
have certainly equipped the YP-55i with a cool feature there, and if your
friends CD-player is where the good music really is, the ENC connection on the
YP-55i will enable you to record directly from an adjacent device, in
stereo.
As an MP3 player, the Yepp YP-55i offers great
sound, and a ton of extra functionality on top of that. The unit is solidly
built around an aluminum chassis, and with 192MB storage, makes for one very
cool little device.
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