Product Description

The Samsung P2 is a flash-based portable media player with a 3" LCD widescreen (16x9) with slim-style form factor. Capable of video, music, photo, FM radio playback, the P2 will let you carry your media files with you wherever you go. Samsung has also embedded a Bluetooth 2.0 chip into the P2 so users can use right away with other Bluetooth 2.0 devices such as stereo speakers and headphones. Packed with additional features such as datacasts, alarm clock, world clock and calendar functionality, the P2 is an extremely multifunctional media player. Get up to 30 hours of music or 5 hours of video playback per charge of the internal lithium polymer rechargeable battery which charges whenever connected to the PC for extra convenience. P2 is available in Black, White, and Burgundy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3718 in Consumer Electronics
• Size: 8 GB
• Color: Black
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: YP-P2JCB
• Dimensions: 3.94" h x .39" w x 2.05" l, 4.00 pounds
• Display size: 3

Features

• Slim and robust 8 GB multimedia player with digital FM radio
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.0: compatible with Bluetooth headphones and speakers for wireless stereo playback
• 3-inch widescreen LCD with touchscreen controls
• FM radio, text viewer, alarm clock, world clock, and calendar
• Windows XP and Windows Vista compatible

Amazon.com Product Description
The Samsung P2 is the first Samsung MP3 widescreen video player with an optimized touchscreen user interface and Bluetooth functionality. The P2's Bluetooth capability will enable the P2 to pair with other Bluetooth 2.0 devices.

This MP3 player sports a touchscreen interface and built-in Bluetooth. View larger.

The P2 comes ready to pair with stereo Bluetooth 2.0 headphones and speaker systems to provide high-quality wireless listening. For added convenience, the P2 is able to pair with up to two devices at the same time. Full integration with cell phones will be available via a firmware upgrade in November 2007. Users can even set up datacasts (podcasts) by using the SMS software that comes on the included installation disk.

The Samsung P2 is an 8 GB Flash-based portable media player with a three-inch widescreen LCD and a slim-style form factor. Capable of video, music, photo, and FM radio playback, the P2 lets you enjoy your favorite media files wherever you go. The player supports video playback in MPEG4, SVI, and WMV9 file formats and audio playback in MP3, WMA, and subscription WMA file formats. JPEG files can be viewed as pictures or slideshows.

Packed with such additional features as an alarm clock, world clock, and calendar functionality, the P2 is an extremely multifunctional media player. The P2 also comes with a file viewer, which you can use to view and delete any file on the device without the PC. The P2 supports up to 30 hours of music or five hours of video playback with every full charge of its internal Li-Poly rechargeable battery. The P2's battery charges whenever the device is connected to an active USB link. Compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems, the P2 measures 3.94 x 2.05 x 0.39 inches and weighs just 2.88 ounces.

Audio playback supports MP3, WMA, and subscription WMA.

Any JPEG on the P2 can become wallpaper.

Speed through your preset FM stations.

Customer Reviews

Overall good player
Aesthetically, this is a really nice product from Samsung. The player is quite sleek, with nice rounded edges, a decent weight, and sharp piano black gloss finish. The sound quality is superb. I didn't get the same battery life the manufacturer did (they rate 30 hours, I probably average 20), but I would bet that's because I use the touchscreen interface more than their battery testers did.

As for the touchscreen, I have to admit it's pretty nice. I prefer tactile use, so I'm more of a fan of buttons than touchscreens, but Samsung has done a nice job executing this one. There are a couple of odd quirks to the touchscreen. For example, when you "swipe" the touchscreen to advance you have to swipe from right to left, which seems counterintuitive since you are advancing the progress bar from left to right. Obviously, the same is true of swiping to back up, where you swipe from left to right, even though you're going back on the progress bar.

Also, in the default menu setting, you make circular gestures on the touchscreen to advance through the menu. Neat? yes. Functional? not really. The biggest problem I had with this is that my thumb kept obscuring the icons as they moved into view. Ultimately, I found this too annoying and I disabled it in favor of a regular grid menu. Not as cool to show your friends, but much more functional.

The audio player functions are top notch. As a caveat to this, I will say that I could not get this to sync with Winamp 5.5. My Winamp crashed every time I loaded it when the P2 was plugged in. Instead, I did my syncing through Windows Media Player, and it worked fine. It synced playlists perfectly, and did a great job recognizing albums when I copied them directly like a mass storage device. The on-board player functions include a customizable EQ with quite a few presets and a clarity adjuster. There are preset visualizations including a couple of light shows (that do not track the music), album art, track info, and a spectrum analyzer.

The video player is pretty good, but I don't really like watching video on such a small screen anyway. I'm not a big fan of the fact that you have to convert through Samsung's software to get it to run, but I guess that's the case with most MP3/video players. The widescreen playback is properly formated. FM reception is satisfactory. Not sure how the eReader works since I don't have any ebooks for it, but you can see test screens of it.

This is, overall, a good MP3 player, even if it is a bit pricey. It is only $50 cheaper than the iTouch, but it also brings in an FM radio tuner and bluetooth support for up to two bluetooth devices--including a pass-thru for your cellphone to a set of bluetooth stereo headphones like the non-US release Samsung T9. Bluetooth is a great feature if you've got bluetooth headsets, speakers, or car radio. So you're getting more features than the iTouch offers. A major downside for me is the fact that it is primarily touchscreen-only (there are hard buttons on the side: on the left a lock button and a play/pause/power button; on the right, two volume buttons). Since I tend to like to keep my mp3 in my pocket, I prefer to have tactile skip buttons as well.

Samsung has made some great strides with their feature packed MP3 players. And while this one was almost perfect for me, it fell short of the mark only in the somewhat high price tag and the lack of hard skip buttons. I give them kudos, however, for having hard play/pause/power and volume buttons (FYI, play/pause and volume can also be controlled via the touchscreen).

Easier than IPOD and easy file transfers for video and music
I wanted a video player that was easy to use with UnBox and other video sites other than iTunes (I have owned a 3G 40G and own a 4G 30G video and 3G Nano 4GB). Here are my initial thoughts:
Fast charging via USB
Easy to use Samsung proprietary software for music, video and RSS feeds
Nice User Interface with Touch Screen, bright colors
File transfer from UnBox a breeze, recognized immediately, very fast file transfer vs. IPOD
Easy interface to add, update and load RSS feeds
Drag and drop computer files for music and video
Syncing is much easier than an IPOD, does not sync all of your files to obtain new files to load
Updated firmware was fast and easy (Bluetooth upgrade)
Great sound quality and form factor
Cost per MB more affordable than an IPOD
Love it so far after 1.5 hours of use; will update once I have it for a week or two.
WORTH considering, like the fact that it does not require quirky Windows Media Player
Purchased for $200, which was a bargain vs. the 4G IPOD Nano
Considered the Creative Vision and Archos; Archos was more than I needed as I just wanted to plug and play and take this on a plane. :)

Update 1/20/2007: The Unbox and Vongo video downloads work great. Vongo at $9.95 per month gives a variety of videos to download (14 day trial). Vongo does load any video that you choose from your subscription (total rental fee per month) vs. Unbox which only lets you download purchases --- no rentals for portable video devices.

I also purchased the JabraBT620s Bluetooth headset and it paired immediately. Wireless music and video. However, the P2 does not support bluetooth with FM radio. Price for the Jabra is around $38-40 from an Amazon seller, 1/2 the price vs. other websites. When on Bluetooth, you can not change the equalizer settings.

Wish this were 16GB which would hold enough music and video; Samsung is coming out with 16GB model. However, this is not a deal breaker. Just means that you have to take videos off and swap them, and that would be the case with Vongo as you can download new videos all of the time.

When I take a plane trip this coming week, I will come back and update my review. Will be using Bose Quiet Comfort 1 with this player.

Excellent Sound
Just wanted to post that if you are in the market for a portable player, you should not pass this one up. I have the 4 GB version, and I rate the sound quality 10 out of 10 with some KOSS headphones mp3 encoded at 256. The screen is bright and clear, and while the volume has to go almost to peak to push one set of my headphones it is crystal clear when I get there, and every step before it! I am impressed by the sound quality, and highly recommend it.