Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
→ MySpace to launch a music store too: based on Snocap, all unsigned artists (currently estimated to be around the ~3M mark) will have the option to set up online storefronts on their profile pages and sell their music in DRM-free format, at a price of their liking (MySpace and Snocap will be taking a [...]
Samsung’s YP-F2: spotted at CeBIT, this microscopic, sleek-looking MP3 player (that also does Ogg Vorbis!) weighs in at just 21 grams with up to 2 gigs of flash memory and 12 hours of playback. According to Gizmodo, it’s expected in Europe next month for $105/140/227 for the 512MB/1GB/2GB versions respectively. A model with radio tuner [...]
David Pogue reviews the Samsung YP-Z5 for the NYT: if you ignore the man’s lame attempt to sound funny by coming up with supposedly witty acronyms such as MMS-MMS, it’s a well written piece touching on all the steps Samsung did right and wrong with this player. The consensus is that it’s good (excellent in [...]
Samsung YP-Z5: an overall positive impression on this iPod nano competitor. There’s not too many extras here to brag about, but the iPod dogma is all about offering less, right? The device looks and feels great, the UI is a joy to use. The amp could use a little more power, but hey, if you’re [...]
A report on the Korea Economic Daily, quoting an unnamed Samsung official, speaks of a contract that is to be signed during the first half of this year and exceed Samsung’s sales contract with Apple. Sony will be using the chips for its MP3 players—The Inquirer speaks of a 8GB one.
Samsung said the flash deal [...]
As much as we sympathize with Samsung’s efforts, we can’t help but notice they’re having some misconceptions as to what it takes to reign the portable audio market. (Lest we forget, it was only last year when they publicly vowed they’ll grab the #1 spot from Apple in the MP3 players department by 2007.) Peter [...]
Pioneer and Samsung released two MP3 players that double as XM receivers. The Pioneer Inno XM2go (pictured on the right—more pictures) and Samsung’s Helix XM2go are basically the same devices: same specs, same design, just slightly different enclosures (and we prefer the Inno’s brushed steel look a bit better, but that’s just us).
You get 1GB [...]
The YP-Z5 [via] (pictured on the right) will come in February in two capacities (2GB/4GB) going for $200/$250 respectively. It’s got a 1.8-inch LCD (no video capability though, just pictures), MP3/WMA support and a Li-ion battery that runs for up to 38 hours. Here are some pictures of the device at Samsung’s CES booth. UPDATE: [...]
PC Mag reviews the Samsung YP-U1X: gets a 3.5/5 rating and a a fairly positive review overall for its broad format support, nice sound quality and ease of use. Tracks from subscription services don’t work with this device though. We’ve covered the YP-U1 model a couple of weeks ago.
Samsung YP-U1X and YP-U1Z now available in the US: good looking flash-based MP3 players, in various capacities (U1X: 512MB—U1Z: 128MB-2GB), with full audio support (MP3/WMA/WAV/OGG) and support for subscription-based music services (Windows Media DRM 10). In this miserable Shuffle-dominated era we live in, we have to point out that the U1 has a 4 line [...]