i dont get why all the new players are forcing a software to transfer until then im not ready to replace my dah-1500i

no custom eq thats really stupid coz even the cheapest samsung flash player, the U1 has a 9-band eq.

How hard can it be to add an OTG playlist feature? kind of retarded considering the size of the screen

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/images/samsung-yp-z5/samsung-yp-z5-screenshots.jpg

^ is that album art feat on the bottom left picture.. ?

yeahh... wish it had otf playlisting..

Any test for battery life on the Z5?

grace: The album art did not work for me. But the display in Best Buy it worked just fine. This may be a software bug that needs to be ironed out. Still looking into that.

B.:I did no do a full on test with the battery. But i did do a 24 hour test. It lasts at lease 24 hours countinously. I have not had to go out of my way to charge it. It has been getting enough juice from just loading files onto it just by occasionally plugging it into the USB.

Other MTP devices (e.g. the Rio Carbon running the WMDRM10 firmware) do show up in My Computer in a similar way to a PTP camera (i.e. without a drive letter) so the Samsung player should too. When opened in Explorer you can drag and drop files to and from it. It's still not quite as featureful and useful as a mass storage device though.

One major benefit of this is that you can drag and drop DRM files to the player and they can be played back successfully unlike normal mass storage players that require an application to transfer DRM content.

you forgot to list MTP as a con, because it definately is.

ahh, i hope they fix that...

what are the chances that we'll see user eq and otf playlisting through a firmware update ? or howabout rockbox ?

nice review btw !!

Nice review. I will be getting this player for sure. I heard a rumor that Samsung has video working on this device, but is holding off releasing until further testing. Any truth?

My Rio Carbon 5GB shows up under Windows Explorer as a Removal Drive and gets assigned a drive letter. I suppose it uses UMS, no?

Notice that Samsung DOES do firmware upgrades.
If enough people complain to them, they will add things such as Custom EQ.

Does this do Bookmarking, like when you listen to audiobooks?

this is from cnet.uk, the guy who designed the player had some interesting stuff to say about the player.

http://digitalliving.cnet.co.uk/specials/ces/index.htm?strMovie=CES06-Day2-Samsung_YP-Z5-cs-512k&strIntroImage=&bolAutoPlay=true

IT DOES DO UMS!!!
I just bought one yesterday and filled it to the brim by drag/drop and copy/paste.
It showed up as a drive in My Computer and I could drag/drop copy/paste all day.
No WMP10 or anything else necessary at all.
Great little player, btw. Nice sound and the interface is fine, despite some reviews.
If I could just figure out how to get integrated ID3 album art support....

Revision:
I read on another site that you can only drag and drop if you have WMP10 installed (which I do).
So you have to HAVE it, but you don't have to USE it. I didn't notice the difference. Looked and acted like any portable hard drive to me.

This album art thing is driving me crazy. CNET and another site's review both praise the album art feature and I also remember seeing it at Best Buy when I first looked at it. So why @#!$%&! does it not work now???
I have put in a query to Samsung and will let y'all know what they say.

Album Art Update:
Have not heard back from Samsung yet, but I did go back to Best Buy and looked at the display model. No album art.
I am beginning to suspect that when they say "view album art with ease" they mean loading a seperate jpg file of the album art that you would then need to manually navigate to in order to view with each song you listen to.
Hardly what I would call "with ease".
We'll see.

Wow...
Just got off the phone w/ Samsung...
The ONLY way the album art feature works is if you purchase the song or album from Napster and ONLY Napster (even though MSN is an option on install, album art will not work w/ songs from MSN).
I told them that it would have been nice if the advertising or manual stated this.
I am considering returning this otherwise fine unit.
Total BS
Grrrrr

I just got this as a present the other day. Never had an MP3 player before, so I'm not a techno geek with one or anything. All I can say is, I love it! I was up until 5 in the morning the night I got it, transfering all my cd's to it. LOL! Well, not ALL, but you know what I mean. :-)

I don't know if this will help Night Surfer with the album art problem or not, but, when using WMP to rip my cd's, there's a button to get additional album info off the net. I used that to get the names of the songs on the playlist and I imagine they got the album art from that source too. I haven't purchased a single song from an online store, yet every one of my songs has album art with it. Perhaps if you put the songs into WMP and "get additional info" the album art will magically appear. :-)

The Saga continues..........
I called Samsung again and got to "Tier 2" of their tech support. That guy said that the 1st guy didn't know what he was talking about and that it has nothing to do with Napster and that the player does not support ID3 tag album art. Viewing album art "with ease" means loading a seperate jpg file onto the player and manually navigating to it while listeneing to the song.

NJS2U: Agreed...very nice little player. Question:
You have viewed the album art on the Z5? Or just in WMP? I can see the album art in WMP10 just fine but not in the Samsung. If you can I would very much appreciate as detailed of instructions as you can provide on how you tranferred the music to it.

Thx

Album art - no problems here.
Just go to the device settings INSIDE Windows Media 10 and enable the syncing of album art (don't remember the exact setting). You also need to have WM10 set to go online and pull down album info for any music you keep in your WM10 library. From there - no issues. Any album art that shows up in WM10 also shows up on the player...

Humble1...
Cool! Very good news! Now....
What format are you using (MP3, WMA, WMA/VBR, etc)?
Is your music ripped from CD's, downloaded from a subscription service (Napster etc), or other?
One last thing, if you would be so kind....
From the YP-Z5 main menu under "settings" then "system info" then "version"....what does it say, please?

Thx again M8

Nevermind, I got it (finally!)
Evidently, it pays to actually follow instructions ;)
If you just drag and drop the album art won't be there.
If the song was tagged with MusicMatch or something other than WMP10 it won't be there.
Now it is there (looks very cool) and I have the perfect player.

Tom: I guess it might have video later. I found this article on CNET.co.uk:

The YP-Z5 is available in 2GB and 4GB versions. Crave tested it out this afternoon and the UI transitions give even Mac OS X a run for its money. Samsung exclusively revealed to Crave that it has run video on the YP-Z5, but has chosen not to include this in its initial release pending further testing. At last it looks like an MP3 player from someone other than Big White may actually be worth using. Nice one, Samsung.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,39195581,00.htm

Hi, does any one know if you can buy a charger for it as i want it for holiday travel and you do not come across a computer just like that on your hols.

You can Google "USB Travel charger" and find some options.

Does anyone please can tell me if this device support traditional chinese as file name or will you get the usual messy abc instead of chinese characters ?
Thanks !

ATTN: People who own UMS or MTP only Samsung YP-Z5

Could you please tell me where (Country) you bought it, the firmware version and the exact model name (i.e. YP-Z5xxx)? Thanks.

USA (Oregon) Best Buy
ver 1.02 US
YP-Z5 AS

Note.... Your system matters. Works fine on my new Dell Dimension Desktop w/ XP Home but not very well on my 3 yr old Dell Inspiron 8100 w/ XP Pro.
Both run WMP10 but the Desktop has USB 2.0 and my laptop still has the older slower 1.1.

Thanks! As soon as they start selling these devices here in Switzerland ("first half of april") I will test it by myself.

What a superb player. I have the 4gb and my wife has the 2gb. I have had to do a bit of fiddling around with some of our albums in order to get the album art displayed on the player- but the majority did without any problem. There are at least two albums I have that were ripped from cd, where I used the 'find album info' in WMP10, and had to search for one with album art (the default one it finds sometimes doesn't have)- and even though this album art is displayed properly on WMP10, when transfered to the player it doesn't. I have found that in order for it to be displayed, I must manually drag a 'albumartsmall.jpg' file from the pc folder to the folder on the player, and it then works. Like I said, so far I only seem to have this problem with albums that initially album art is not there when finding album info using WMP10. The majority of the time, WMP10 will find album art no problem though, but still. Anyway, that is the worst niggle I have about using this player. The other niggle I have is when a picture is zoomed in, using the touch-pad is quite hard to navigate around the picture. Luckily, I won't use this feature at all anyway- I wanted a music player, nothing more. I cannot fault it in any other way. Control through the music menus is a breeze, and very intuitive. I like the way you can easily browse your tracks AND controll what you are listening to at the same time. I was a little miffed that the player doesn't have an on-the-go playlist, but after using the player, I can honestly say I don't miss the feature. Why compicate a superb menu control? The display is nice and clear. The album art can be displayed at different sizes (by pressing the touch-pad). I like the way album art is displayed when you are browsing the albums (I am looking forward to this option in WMP11). Wallpaper can be changed to any jpg picture in your picture folders (by pressing and holding the touch-pad with the picture displayed). The sound quality is excellent. I prefer the 'House' equalizer setting, but there are many more to choose- with this many, you don't really need a custom one. I was also disappointed that the player isn't gapless, but not many are. In fact, the gaps between songs are VERY minimal. They don't bother me in the slightest (they did with my Rio Carbon as the gaps were longer on that). Lastly, the player is VERY quick. It takes two seconds to hold the standby button for the player to come on, then you can browse instantly. Songs play instantly after selection. Overall, once the album art feature was perfected for some of my albums, it turned out to be an excellent player.

A revelation!!! Okay people- listen up!! Album art isn't a problem now, for anyone! Following on from my earlier post above, I have found out that you can put any picture in an album folder and it will become the album art for that album! All you have to do is follow these strict rules: 1) Don't go overboard with the size- 100x100 pixels is fine 2) The file MUST be labelled 'albumartsmall.jpg'. So, you don't even need WMP10 to find album art if you don't want to. But it does mean you have to make sure that jpg file is in the folder with the music to get the album art. What you can do is still use WMP10 to sync with the player, and if there are any known albums that don't normally display album art, move the jpg file over afterwards. Or if you drag and drop your music, just make sure the jpg file goes over to the player along with the music. Simple. No-one has to be without album art now. (very handy if WMP10 can't find album art, like on a few of my albums and single tracks). ;)

Okay- With A LOT of testing and trial by error, I have found that the Samsung uses the 'AlbumArt_{(long code here)}_large' file stored in each album folder on your computer, for each album. Basically, if this file is too large a size (memory) then it will not be used, but a smaller jpg file can be used instead by placing it in the folder on the player. However, rather than do this with every album with the problem, I decided to dig further and try and solve why the player only had this problem with a few select albums (even though their album art displays on WMP10 okay).
Result!!!
All that's needed is to make sure that for each album you have that doesn't display album art on the player(that you have already found using WMP10) check the size of the 'AlbumArt_{(large code)}_Large' file on the computer- for all of my albums that didn't work, this file was too big (around 60-70Kb)- all the ones that do work are around 5-15Kb. I used Photoshop to save the file using a higher Jpeg compression, thereby shrinking the size of the file to around 30Kb- THIS WORKS. The picture can still be around 200x200 pixels, it's just the size of the file that needs changing, by altering the quality. So remember, if you want to use the file that WMP10 associates with the album, or you want to transfer a jpg file over to the player for album art, just make sure it is below 40Kb.
Samsung replied to a query of mine by email asking me if my album art is below the limitations in size the player can take, as per the manual. I re-read the manual and couldn't find anywhere in it any information of that sort. Like I said, I just used trial by error in the end.
By the way, if anyone has any single tracks that WMP10 can't find album art for- here's a neat trick to save you moving over jpg's to the player every time:
Find album art from Google image search, making sure the size (Kb) is small enough.
Re-name all the tags for the track to a song you haven't got already, but one that WMP10 will find album art for. Then, once you have the album art re-name the tags back to the proper ones. Go into the folder to find the album art files ('show' your hidden files in 'tools' and 'folder options' first) and replace the files with the album picture you got from Google, making sure the names of the files STAY AS THEY WERE, codes and all (copy and paste, it's easier). Then WMP10 and your player will show the Google piccy as your new album art! You now need ever transfer a jpg over!

Just wanna say thanks to every1 who's posted a comment on this site - i don't own a samsung yp-z5, yet. I plan on getting one as soon as i sell my Creative Zen micro that i got as an upgrade cos my 5Gb model broke twice - they suck big style! Basically all ur reviews helped me decide what to go for - thanks!!! ill let ya'll no what i think when i get it.

Hi Jack. You're welcome. Don't be put off by my last couple of posts and the problem with some album art, it literally is only a problem if WMP10 can't find album art when you 'Find album info', or if it can find album art but the album art file is too big (memory-wise) for the player. Either way, you can work around it, or leave it and just have the music. Regardless, it IS an excellent player.

Hi guys,

Looking forward to getting one of these soon. Can anyone confirm if the YP-Z5 will play .ogg files? Every site I've read (but one!) has said .ogg is fine. Because of that one site, I need to know for sure from someone that owns one.

I have a Rio Karma on the fritz (thank goodness for the extended warranty I bought!) and I plan on returning it to CompUSA, getting a gift card, buying something, returning it and taking the $$$ to Best Buy to pick one up.

Most of my music is .ogg and though I could convert everything to .mp3, I really don't want to. Any answers

Sorry- I don't have any ogg files to try.

Well, this is what the manual says:

AUDIO: MPEG1/2/2.5 Layer3(8kbps~320kbps, 8kHz~48kHz), MPEG1
Layer2(32kbps~384kbps, 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz),
WMA(8kbps~192kbps,8kHz~44.1kHz)

If I can get hold of an ogg file, I will try, but according to the manual it's a no.

No worries. It was confirmed for me over at www.dapreview.net. Someone downloaded an .ogg file from the vorbis website and said it wouldn't even transfer. Bummer!

I just my Z5 today and got an Ogg file playing on it right now. The trick is to first install the ogg plugin for WMP10(I know it's not official but it works)

I have this player. :) Got it March 27, and I haven;t had any problems. I had been planning on getting an ipod video, but I did some research the weekend before, and found this. Being a PC user, and hating Mac, this little player was perfect for me. It installed easily right out of the box, and I didn't have to install anything. The only slight problem I've had, is when I had the delete some things from my music library, and the tracks on my samsung vanished too, when I was changing it. But I've heard this is standard on most mp3 players, so no biggy.

Also... I've found that you can get a LOT more music on these things if you use wma formating. MP3s tend to be a little more than large (well, for me) even on their smallest settings. But using wma formating, I have been able to get entire cds to be smaller than songs.

Is the battery easily replaceable? Where is it located? The battery doesn't seem to show up in any of the disassembly photos above. Anyone know the name of the battery manufacturer?

I love this website, but as a current owner of the Samsung YP-Z5 I can't help but wonder why this exhaustive review - and the comments following it - seem to ignore one of the biggest selling points of this player...the battery life. It's rated at "up to 35 hours", which I know probably tough to attain but is still 2 to 3 times that of other players. I'd like to see some opinions from users about it, and reports on what they're getting. I had to return my first unit because it wouldn't hold a charge, but the replacement seems to be doing fairly well. I'm at about 15 hours now and the battery gauge shows half-gone.

I'd like to repeat a question that someone posted, but nobody has answered yet. Can you use bookmarks or some other way to mark a place when you turn off the Z5? Will it start up at the same point where you left off? This is really important for listening to audio books. Samsung says nothing about it in their product literature.
EB

I can answer that, I think...or at least as it relates to music. When you turn it off during a song, it starts back up later at the same place.

Would someone at AnythingButiPod.com please add to this page a couple of extra photos showing the location of the battery in the Samsung YP-Z5? Is the battery difficult to remove and replace? Thanks!

I guess this is my last posting to this particular thread because I am taking my YP-Z5 back for a refund. I have tried everything and simply can't get decent battery life. In fact, the first time it got almost 15 hours but the last 2 times I've only gotten 10 hours or so. I've tried charging for longer than the recommended time, tried another PC in case the USB ports on mine were under-powered, etc, and it always shows fully charged after that. Then, while doing the playing test I have it continuously playing ordinary medium-quality music files, no EQ, no display. It runs completely dead in less than a third of the rated 35 hours. Not acceptable...

Can someone explain how to get this thing to play ogg files? I tried installing the codec on illiminable.com for WMP10 to play ogg files, but that did not work. When I sync'd it, it just put it in a separate folder. Any help?

i recently got this player and i definitely feel like it was a great buy, but i haven't been able to find any cases or protection for it. anyone know where i can find one??

I got this player when it came out and I must say its an AWESOME alternative to the Nano. The only thing that sucks is that their aren't that many accessories/cases for it yet.

To the post before me:

They sell two type of cases at Best Buy for $19.99 & $29.99, but I must say they aren't exactly the most attractive..

Does it able to display song name in traditional Chinese?

Why would you want to cover this beautiful player with a case? It is strong enough and scratch proof enough to not need one.

chun, english only i'm afraid

Like an earlier poster, I'm interested in the battery. I'm trying to decide between this and the Sansa e270, which has a removable battery.
Would it be easy to replace the battery on the Samsung? I can't tell from the pix above.

Battery could be jammed between back casing and motherboard, probably too hard to take entire thing apart to access battery. May explain why AnythingButiPod didn't pull out motherboard and take pictures.

I found something interesting concerning the YP-Z5's battery life on the Samsung support site. The users manual states that the player can get up to 35hrs battery life with (LCD off and volume 27). Would love to hear from those who already have this unit about their experience with battery and how the unit is played (LCD on or off/Volume levels, etc...)

To answer your question about battery life, I'm the one who wrote a few days ago about it. I've had two of these now and just took the 2nd one back for a full refund. I think they rushed this to market too soon and let some lemons through. Both units I tried ran out of battery after 10-15 hours, and let me assure you that I am a knowledgable user and did everything right. My process was first to fully charge the unit, and to be sure of a good charge I disconnected my other USB accessories, tried 2 different PCs, and even charged a little longer than necessary. (The little battery symbol always showed fully charged at that point.) Then I played medium quality WMA music files, continuous play, no equalizer, no display, and every time it ran out of juice way short of the advertised life. I really liked this player too - hell, I would have kept it if it could have even made 25 hours, let alone 35. Falling this far short, though, it makes you wonder will else isn't quite right about it...

Geezer I have two questions. 1. What is the sound quality of the YP-Z5? 2. Did you compare any other players? Which ones?

(1) Sound quality excellent, even with the included earbuds. In fact, I loved everything about this player except the battery issue.
(2) Not sure what you mean about compare - not physically I guess, but I obsessed for the last 6-8 weeks, reading everything I could find on the web about this player, and also the Sansa E260, before they ever hit the retail stores. Had pretty much decided on the Samsung due to the long battery life (hah) and then it finally showed up at Best Buy, so I bought it. Not sure what I'm going to do now...

James, the sound quality is superb. The buds that come with it are good enough for their type. But I use my own Sony EX81 buds, which go right into the ear. With these on my previous player (the Rio Carbon) I still found I had to adjust the equaliser, but on this player, I don't use the equaliser at all- it has sufficient bass and treble for all kinds of music. With the supplied buds however, you may need to use the equaliser, but still is very impressive.

Thank you for your responses Geezer and Barry. I'm still debating about which unit to purchase Sansa E260 or Samsung YP-5Z.

James if you want good quality sound, then from what I have read I would opt for the Samsung. I am saying this because this is exactly the choice I gave myself- but when I read about the interference noises on the Sansa models, I knew that wasn't the player for me. What good is an mp3 player where the one main function is to listen to music, and the thing has hisses and blips going on while you are listening to your music? Read the Cnet review online- they tell you about it there. Okay, the Samsung has less features, but at least you can listen to your music in peace!

that's exactly my point of view barry. I mean who cares about FM receiver, video playback, picture display or any other useless functions like alarm clock? All i need to be happy is a player that actually reads mp3. For having it 90% of the time in a pocket, what is the reason of having all these things on an MP3 player. People saying that, in order to compete with the nano mp3 players need to offer more features, just make me wanna laugh. i've played with this nice mp3 player and i've got to give apple the credit to manufacture the best navigation system on the market. But beside that, the Z5 is just an amazing player with great battery life ( some exeptions put aside ) and an excellent sound quality!
next thing that kind of drive me crazy with these devices is the storage capacity and/or people not happy with players because they don't play compressed files. Can anyone tell me that 2 or 4 gig is not enough? Come on... face the reality... out of 2000 songs ( i don't have the exact number in mind ) that 4 gig can store, how many of those songs are you gonna listen to at least 10 times in a year? 60%? well maybe 70% of them.
bottom line is that battle for best mp3 player is far from being over and manufacturers are always gonna find something new to fit in those things. But let's keep in mind that an mp3 player's first purpose is to play mp3.
i'am gonna go buy the 4gig tomorrow and no longer torture my mind with, in the end, a not-so-hard decision to make.
cheers all

An easy way to change wallpaper!!!
I only found this out by chance as it is not in the instructions-
Usually, you have to go into your pictures and hold the select button down for a second to make it your wallpaper.
Well if you are on the menu where it says "Music, Pictures, Playlists" etc, then all you have to do is press 'back' so the text minimises to the bottom of the screen, leaving you with the rest of the screen showing you the wallpaper- then just tap left and right to change the wallpaper, then press back again and you will have the new wallpaper!

I posted this further up this page:

"All that's needed is to make sure that for each album you have that doesn't display album art on the player(that you have already found using WMP10) check the size of the 'AlbumArt_{(large code)}_Large' file on the computer- for all of my albums that didn't work, this file was too big (around 60-70Kb)- all the ones that do work are around 5-15Kb. I used Photoshop to save the file using a higher Jpeg compression, thereby shrinking the size of the file to around 30Kb- THIS WORKS."

New quick way to shrink the size of album art files for them to be small enough for the player to use:

Load the album art into Microsoft Paint and just save it again. It's that simple!! It halves the size of the file while still keeping the pixel size and quality the same!

Samsung should be advising us about all of this!!

Does what it says on the tin - plays MP3 files, and plays them very well. A colleague who has the nano says the samsung sounds impressive, surely the main selling point. With 35 hours battery life - or even a dodgy 15 as mentioned above - is still more than a nano, has a crisp screen when you need to look at it, not tied to proprietary transfer software (syncs with WMP10 but you can drag n drop files to it like a normal flash drive). It's well priced, it's got to be a no brainer, unless you are a fashion victim!

barry, where can i find album art files?

Victory, here is a comprehensive guide to displaying album art on your YP-Z5. Any questions, just ask:
Load Windows Media Player 10 (WMP10) and make sure your tracks have already been added to the media library.
Right-click on each album or track and select 'Find Album Info'.

It should find the album info and the album art most of the time. If not, try searching ('Search' button) for the same artist or album- most of the time it will come up with several results for the same album, some with art some without. Just select one with. If not, see further down- you can still work around this.

If it finds the info and album art, then click 'Finish' and it will make sure your tracks are 'tagged' correctly with the right song names and album name, as well as assign the album art to each track. It does this by saving 'hidden' jpg picture files in the same folder as the tracks. To see them, in any window click on 'Tools' and 'Folder options'- then click the 'View' tab and click 'Show hidden files and folders', then apply. You should then see a number of picture files in the tracks folder (change how you view the folder to 'thumbnails' to actually see the files as album pictures).

Check the size of each file by left clicking on it once and looking at the details on the left of the window. Anything below 30Kb should be fine- your YP-Z5 will automatically display this album art now when you transfer the track/s over to it (also, if using WMP10 to sync with the player, in the options make sure 'enable picture support for devices' is ticked).

If the size is bigger than that, try it- use WMP10 to transfer the track to your player. If the album art is on there, fine. If it doesn't display then the art is too big and the file needs to shrink in size (that's the file memory, not picture size in pixels). The way to do this is very simple. For each jpg file, right-click and 'open with' then select 'Paint', Then, when you have the file loaded into Paint, select 'File' then 'Save'- this will automatically overwrite the file with what looks to be the same quality picture, but with a lot smaller file size, and should be small enough now for you to transfer the track/s over and have your album art displayed.

Unfortunately, Samsung haven't given any clues as to what limit exactly we have on album art file size, but anything over 50Kb normally has to be reduced.
Okay- that's all you need to do if all has gone well. However, sometimes when you 'Find Album Info' in WMP10, it does not find album art to go with your tracks. There are two ways you can go about 'cheating' your art to be displayed if this happens.

The first and easiest way, is to search for a jpg picture file of the album art on the internet (I use google image search or even right-click on the album image and save from an online cd store!!) and save it in your tracks folder for safe keeping. Make sure it is the right size pixel-wise (try not to go above 200x200- reduce in Paint if so) and memory wise (follow steps above if too big). Once you have transfered your tracks over in WMP10, you can then manually 'drag-and-drop' the album art jpg file into the tracks folder on the player (under 'Music', '(Artist)', '(Album)'). Once you have dragged the picture file to the correct folder on the player, you will then have album art displayed for that album.

The other way to do it is to make WMP10 'think' it has found the right album art for the tracks, then you change it to the right album art. The advantage of this is you never have to manually copy a picture over with your tracks. The disadvantage is it is more time consuming and complicated to do in the first place. Here goes. Firstly, make a note of your track names and the order they are in. Secondly, find an album name online that you know you will never own (I can't stand rap, so I always pick rap albums), making sure it has at least the same amount of tracks as the album you want the art for. Thirdly, find album info from an internet search for the album you want art for (as above) and save it in a spare folder. Then 'Find Album Info', but search for the album you know you will never own and find info that has album art, then 'Finish'- this will change the track tags to the wrong song names and wrong album name etc, but will assign album art even though it is the wrong album art. What you must then do is rename the track songs and album etc to the correct ones, by right-clicking and 'Edit' (for the album name, drag over the songs in that one album to highlight them all, before right-clicking the album column- this will change all the tracks in one go). Then all that's needed is to change the album art to the correct one. Have two windows on the screen- one of your tracks folder with the wrong art files displayed, and the other of the folder with the art you found from the internet. For each of the wrong album art files, do the following: Right click and 'Rename', hold 'Ctrl' and press 'C'- then right click on the correct album art picture and 'Rename', then hold 'Ctrl' and press 'V'. This will easily and quickly rename the correct album art file to the same name of one of the wrong ones (as you can see the file names can be long coded affairs). Then just drag it over to the tracks folder (holding 'Ctrl' as you do- this will merely copy the file and not move it completely). Do this with all the jpg files so they all are the correct album art (don't forget to use the 'thumbnail' view to actually see the files as pictures rather than logo's). Play your track/s in WMP10 to double check the correct album art displays for your tracks, then transfer to the player as normal- you should then see the album art displayed with your tracks!!

Geezer:
As posted on the other forum, I will perform a battery check this weekend and post the results.

Barry:
Very well done sir!

Thank you Night Surfer. Hey! I see you on Cnet too, right? Posted the same thing there. Didn't realise how long my guide was till I posted it- Blimey!!

By the way, I'm 'wastedyuthe' on there.

Yup, figured that :)
Funny how you can jump around the different forums and see the same peeps.
Geezer is also Geezer on DAP Review but he is HGeez on Cnet.

thanks barry! i appreciate the effort you put to explain me how to get those album arts! i'll try that as soons as i get the player... couldn't go today so it'll be next week!
I'd love to know how long the batterie is gonna last night surfer! thanks in advice to post the result as soon as you get them!
I can't wait to get mine. i'am sick of having nothing to listen to while being on the road.
cheers and keep this website the way it is! just perfect...

Really thinking about buying this mp3 player but am going abroad and won't have access to computer are the universal usb travel adapters safe to use for this and has anyone used one for charging.

hey barry i have a little problem. i cannot see the jpg pictures in the folder after choosing "show hidden files". do you know what may be the problem? i see them on wmp10 though.

I just wanted to thank Barry Ward and Night Surfer for helping me decide on the Z5. I am also a frequent poster ('Slydini' on CNET and Z5 Lounge).

Barry, if its not too much trouble could you post your excellent album art guide on the 'Z5 lounge' forum also?

I love this site, don't get me wrong... It definitely has the most detailed reviews when compared to the others, ie. CNET. It seems like this 'comments' section is quickly turning into a Trouble Shooting Forum and I'm not sure if this is the best place to do that because it's kind of a pain to scroll down through each comment to find the one that you need. Z5 lounge, however, has a search engine that lets anyone filter their search accordingly.

I'm in the process of conducting a user poll on the top firmware requests (User defined Eq for example... Hopefully Samsung will be listening so be sure to check it out and add your input!

it's a nice mp3 player but i think we would all agree that it would a whole lot better if it could hold more than 4gb!

Firstly, Itallo I disagree. 4gb is plenty for me, and if I do run out of room in the future, then I'll take off albums I don't listen to anymore- simple.
Secondly, Slydini, thank you for letting me know about this 'Z5 Lounge' site. I never knew it existed- and yes, I will post my guide on there.
And finally, Victory, you made need to check another setting in the folder options: Go back into 'Tools' and 'Folder options' then click the 'View' tab. Two lines below where you have the hidden files option, there is another one 'Hide protected operating system files'- make sure this is UN-TICKED. That should solve the problem ;)

I wondered if this would happen- I have missed something out of my guide. When manually transferring an album art file over into the tracks folder on the YP-Z5 player, re-name it first to 'AlbumArtSmall', so the full filename and extension will be 'AlbumArtSmall.jpg'
The full guide has now been amended ready for the Z5 Lounge site.

there it is :) thanks again for the help and keep giving us those good avice barry!

You're very welcome, Victory. From now on I will also post on z5lounge.com (thanks to Slydini for letting me know about the site) and samsunghq.com, although z5lounge is definately the best one as it is dedicated to this player and works better than leaving messages on this site.

Michelle, I have used a USB power adapter successfully with this player. Comes in handy when you haven't got a pc to hand.

How do you turn this thing off...I know how, but when a song is playing, the power off button will only alter between play and pause. Help?

How do you turn this thing off...I know how, but when a song is playing, the power off button will only alter between play and pause. Help?

from either pause or play....just hold it down for a couple of seconds (you may have to press once before you do this if the screen is not lit).

Barry, where did you purchase your power usb adapter ?

Well, the funny thing is James, I tried the one I had with my old Rio Carbon dap. I read somewhere that Samsung don't recommend using these usb power adapters. I only tried once and it worked fine, but I don't know about other makes of adapters. So, unfortunately I cannot recommend a particular make (unless you want to buy a Rio Carbon to use that players one!!)

(pass the word: z5lounge.com)

Will do. Thanks Barry. I have the z5lounge bookmarked. Great site!

Samsung are looking for feedback! Give them your opinions please, and ideas for what needs to be fixed in the next firmware. It is mainly for UK residents, although if you are outside the UK, you can select 'Other' in the location.
I have mentioned a little bug with individual artist selection on compilation albums, and easier album art application needed among other things. Here's where to go:

http://www.samsung-europe.com/europe/pages/microsite/html/z5.html

(thanks to someone on z5lounge.com for posting the link)

Hey everyone, just got this player 2 days ago and I did a full test with the battery life. Instead of going with the manufactured test I went with the everyday life test.

To start off lcd screen was off and light aswell, player volume was about 27, eq set on rock and away it went.

With once every 3 hrs touching the player so the screen can light up so I could see if there is still any battery left the player has now run for 18 hours.

I was hoping with only the Eq set to rock and lighting up the light once every 3 hours will give me playback time at least 25 hrs.

The battery bar is showing red but is still playing I assume it will die at the 19-20 mark, falling short of the claimed 35 hr playback time by 15 hrs.

Consider the eq set on rock I will only take the player falling short of 5 hours due to my expectation of 25 hours playback. What are peoples opinions.

ALBUM ART UPDATE!! If you are having problems with wmp10, then download this FREE program-

http://www.avsoft.nl/artfixer/

It will sort out all your problems- but still keep in mind the size limits as mentioned in my guide above.

Can it read in other language (Chinese)?

AnythingButiPod.com Forums Added

Forums were just added to the site. They are somwhat in beta state and i am still playing around with the format and categories. So please email me with suggestions, comments, complaints... mail at anythingbutipod.com

www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/

There is a specific thread started for the Z5.

I should hope it is in the beta stage- it doesn't work! (or at least the link doesn't work)

Sorry, spelling mistake. Works now.

To all who may have concerns over battery life, I have been testing my unit (4gb) since 7:20 am yesterday (all play, volume level midpoint). The battery indicator has only dropped one level (24 hrs plus). Excellent.

Why are you guys so tied up on the album art thing? Is it really that critical that you have a miniature picture to look at and use up more space when you probably already have the REAL thing sitting on your desk! I don't get it. Besides, all you have to do is click on "album info" and it's done! SO, to all you hype addicts...the sky is NOT falling OK???!!!

p.s. I have the 2gb version and it works great. Easy to navigate and sounds great. As for battery life, who knows. Too many factors to squabble over a few hours here and there. the point is that it plays for a heck of a long time. Do you really need to listen to it for 35 hours between charges? Come ON you guys! It beats the hell out of lugging aroung a sony discman and 50 cd's in a small suitcase doesn't it? SO...in closing...SHUT UP, STOP COMPLAINING AND JUST LISTEN TO THE MUSIC!!!

p.s. #2 i hate you guys

OK i feel bad for poking fun at you so here is a procedure for album art...from windows media player library, right click on a song from the album you want. Then choose "find album info". Then, near the bottom, right above the player's toolbar, you have to drag the window up. It's easy to overlook and I think this is what is causing the confusion. then click 'finish', and it's done.

p.s. i hate you guys...seriously

fwiw, my initial testing shows that this unit does not need wmp10 or even winXP to work in ums mode, just dragging albums into the 'music' folder (incl. album artwork) works fine here on os X. thank goodness. I've been looking for a decent competitor for the nano for ages, and I think I've finally found it. ymmv with drm'd craps of course.

Hello guys, I'm planning to buy this player for myself and girl friend, who have been using gool-old-days' minidisc players. Now, the question I have for those folks with the player is that, is this player support multi-byte language, such as Korean or Japanese? I know menu language is limited to western language, but what about for display? If you guys can help me about this, I'd really appreciate. Thanks in advance.

WARNING!!

DO NOT USE GRIFFIN POWERBLOCK TO CHARGE THE SAMSUNG Z5.

Today, I purchased the griffin powerblock and tried to use it to charge the z5. When I plugged it in, the player started to charge for about two seconds, and then it died. I have not been able to turn it on since. When i plug it into my computer, it does not respond. It is completetly dead. Luckily, I can still return it.

UPDATE

I was able to reset it, and found that the Griffin Powerblock merely freezes the player instantly, but does not kill it.

I just bought the 1gb version of this player last night and I love it. I didnt want to be like the bazillions of iPod users so I had to get something different. I love Samsung products anyways.

What I do want to know is if we can install other Firmware on it [esp the Korean Firmware]. I have tons of Korean [and some Japanese] music that'll display the song title and/or artist as boxes because of the text support. I have to have my girlfriend translate the song title and sometimes artist for me so I can rename the files.

Has there been any rumors that video and maybe fm radio might be added to the player in the near future thru firmware updates? Just curious. Also, which has the loudest sound VOLUME level, the Samsung or the Sandisk e-2xx?

I bought both the e200 and z5 and found that e200 sounded a little bit louder. However, both units are plenty loud.

Good luck adding an FM radio by firmware alone. those tend to require at least a little hardware it the player to work. though, if it is already in the player, just disabled, then maybe. I guess. Doubt it though.

Can u reply my message and tell me how i can get my z5 to read chinese traditional on the display screen bbecause all my chinese songs come out in boxes.

Tim: as far as i know the only way you can do that is to update your player with chinese firmware.

Here is thread if this.

oo so a chinese firmware? where am i going to find that?

I just got the 2GB version and it's the best MP3 player I have owned! Much better than an Ipod in my opinion! The screen is fantastic!

My only compaints are:

1. they do not include anything for hanging it around your neck, and a slip case or protective case of somekind would have been nice.

2. This unit SHOULD play video! It would be really cool if it could play DivX! I would transfer a DVD onto it for watching at work! I have heard rumors that this is actually possible but will require a firmware update?

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the BEST.... I give this a "9" !!! Add the video and accessories and you'd have a "10"!

BubbaJones

Great read, some really useful comments which have me on the verge of buying.

Not much has been said about what options you have to actually play the music. I must admit I have never thought about playing tracks ramdomly (shuffle) as I just stick to playing an album in part or full on my existing HDD player. So my question is - can you select and play an entire album or does the player just randomly play tracks (shuffle mode) or play in some kind of alphabetical order ?

I Just bought a 1Gb version too, i like the screen , its bigger. i agree that this player should play video file. but the disappointingest thing is that it DOES NOT DISPLAY CHINESE!!!!!! AHHHHH I hate the squares.!!!!

does this mp3 player let you put your music on cd's on to the mp3 player. and does it let you play copy-righted music downloaded from p2p software? it will be great if someone answers these question's 4 me? thank u

You can play the track by album, artist, genre, composer, playlist, shuffle and all songs.

The playlists have to be made on your computer and transfered to the player - no on the go playlists.

All songs plays the songs alphabetically and shuffle is random play, but it seems to be a song from each album in order but randomly picked. I could be wrong, but that's what it seems like.

I love shuffle! Even though I didn't think I would. I use it all the time. Because I only have songs on it that I love, it's like having your own personal radio station - you don't know what's coming up next, but you like it! LOL!

Actually, you CAN see exactly how the player will play the songs as it lists them.

BEFORE I BUY THIS MP3 PLAYER I WILL LIKE TO KNOW IF IT ALLOWS TO TRANSFER SONGS ON CDS ON TO THE MP3 PLAYER AND COULD YOU PUT IN MUSIC DOWNLOADED FROM P2P SHARING SOFTWARE ON THE MP3 PLAYER? I NEED TO KNOW THIS FAST, SO I WILL BE GREATFUL IF ANYONE CAN HELP ME. THANK U

here is a hint... people will not answer your questions if you type in all caps. its rude. if you cannot figure out that if you can put mp3 on this mp3 player by reading the above review. i dont think you deserve and mp3 player.

HOW CAN I BE RUDE WHEN I HAVE CLEARLY STARTED I WILL BE GREATFUL IF ANYONE CAN HELP ME AND I HAVE TYPED THANK U AT THE END OF MY MESSAGE!. SO I DONT KNOW WHAT UR CHATIIN ABOUT! SO IF ANY ONE IS OUT THERE WHO CAN HELP ME I WILL VERY VERY GREATFUL IF THEY CAN HELP ME ANSWER THE QUESTION ON MY PREVOUS MESSAGE! THANK U AGEN!

it is rude to type in all caps

my mother types in all caps and it annoys the hell out of me (she recently started communicating via email). yeah, it is rude to do that. from the grammer and writing style, he's probably about 10 or 11 years old so just let him be.
question about the player, i know that there are no "on the go playlists". is there an "add to currently playing" function? i don't listen to the same playlist more than once but it would be nice to be able to que up songs. if not, hopefully this issue will be addressed before i end up purchasing a sandisk e270. generating playlists is certainly easier to do on a computer so i have no issue with not having that ability, but a simple song que is a necessity before i purchase an mp3 player. it's amazing how mp3 players and their interfaces are designed by those that don't understand how (some) people actually listen to music.

What i like about this player is that i can personalize the back ground.

Yes background personalisation can be done :) any image you just hold down the centre button

What a well smart well designed piece of kit. Bought if over the ipod which my son has how having seen it is buying one....Any hints / tips would be appriciated

What a well smart well designed piece of kit. Bought if over the ipod which my son has how having seen it is buying one....Any hints / tips would be appriciated

Hi John,

Be sure to check out the Samsung YP-Z5 forum on this site... I just added a "Tips and Tricks for the Z5" tutorial.

Hope to see you there!

Slydini

Cheers, Just seen Z5F wicked a brill mp3 with FM radio how cool

is there any charging devices without using the computer i can buy for my yp-z5

can anyone help me answer this question? does this mp3 player enable you to put songs which are on cds on to the mp3 player (like albums) and does it enable you to put mp3's downloaded from p2p (file sharing) software on to the mp3 player? thank you!

If you couldn't get songs off of cds or from p2p software where would you get them? Are you recording them? Of course it can do either. It also supports all subscriptions services that use Microsoft PlaysForSure.

You could have taken 30 seconds to read the product specs and figure that out.

And for all the peole that are worried about album art: I didn't even care about album art, but after reading this post I glanced down at my new mp3 player and it was showing the album art. I loaded all of my songs from my Yahoo Music subscription. So if you don't already have all of the songs that you want then you may want to look into Yahoo.

I can't get my YP-Z5 to synchronise with my pc even though I have WMP10 installed... it just freezes - and its driving me crazy

My two cents.....

As an avid Applehater I had to wait a long time for an mp3-player with 2GB+ memory. So the YP-Z5 was in my sight for a while. And allthought it's not officially launched in continental Europe the time I bought it (beginning of april) I was glad enough to get my hands on a - propably - US-model.

I was rather skeptikal when i recieved my unit, and became horrified when I read it was XP and WMP10 only. The biggest reason I don't like the wholy Ipod-hype, is that it 's software-dependent and now I got my hands on an alternative and it has the same drawbacks?

When, after unpacking, I discovered that it used a dedicated cable, in setad of the standard usb-D-pin I was expacting, i was redy to send the whole thing back. This kind of thing makes my blood boil.

I decided to give the thing the benefit of the doubt, mainlyu because it's design really appealed to me. Quick enough I found out the whole XP and WMP10-stuff was nonsense. Connecting it to my XP-computer it immediatly recognized and installed the YP-Z5, a window popped up and i could drag and drop without any problems.

Just to be sure, I connected it to an obsolete W98-pc and it did just the same - no WMP10 or XP in sight. USB 1.1 wasn't a problem either, apart for it's obvius slowness. Took it to my job, connected it to an Imac (yuck, I know): the same story. It just gesiters as an extra drive with drag and drop abbility. Itunes, eat your heart out.

So kudos as well as shame to Samsung. Kudos for they've made a very well designed and good looking high capacity mp3-player, shame on them they just' dont mention it's software and platform-independent. Thats really gonna cost them in sales, i guess.

The awkward usb-connector stays a big minus. Knowing myself, i will misplace this cable, and i'm surely not gonna drag it along to all the places where i want to load and unload music or put juice in the battery. And i will not pay $28 for a replacement cable or a travel-charger.

Propably Samsung is working on add-ons like a docking station, but that's not gonna sweeten this mistake for me.

In more detail: i would like to be able to make playlist omn the player itself, insted of only importing then, and in nthat respect I do miss a function to browse on folder-level. But those are thing Samsung can put right in an update.

I have loaded music from cd to my YP Z5 but some of the tracks have transfered with interference and the tracks play distorted. Is this down to the transfer speed?

i don't have this product, because i'm still debating whether to get an apple ipod or this z5. well, i have some questions, and if you have this product maybe you can help me?
ok so..

first of all, can i still transfer downloaded music from like say limewire onto the mp3?
second..is it really thick compared to the ipod? if i carried it around in a purse PLUS a motorola rokrE1 (that being quite thick itself already) would it weigh down my luggage?

anyways, i really like how this product looks, and if the features are just as good as the ipod then i'd buy this one instead. so..what would you pick...ipod nano..or samsung z5?

-Yes

-it is a bit thicker, but if you were to put a nano in your purse, it would get scratched to shit.

-z5

thanks. i think z5 would be a way better choice than nano since everyone has it.

can SOMEONE tell me how to put the pictures you have loaded on it, as a background PLEASE.

thx.

can SOMEONE tell me how to put the pictures you have loaded on it, as a background PLEASE.

thx.

nvm. done. BUT slydini i need your help as im very confused on how to do that little shuffle trcik you were talking about.

I bought this product (4GB) a few days ago and I love it. It took me 5 minutes to put 250 songs on. Each artist has a folder, and inside that is a folder for each album. Inside each album folder is album art. So now for every album, I have a image of the cover. I also love the wallpapers, with a nice slideshow as a screen saver.

All in all, it's small, has 35 hours of battery life, looks great and the music sounds crystal. The Software is easy as it's windows and media player really, and it's very fast.

I do like Apple, but I bought a Nano and it was terrible. It got scratched and had a really low battery. This Samsung is one of the best on the market. 10/10 from me - a really great buy. (Amazon is cheapest)

@ Tray: Choose a picture in your Z5 and open it. Then press the middle Button (at the center of the touchpad ;) and hold it, till there is a short message at the bottom of the display. Enjoy !

If you have more than 1 photo in the folder where your photo is located on your z5, you can switch the backgroundphoto with the the two touchpad buttons left and right of the center button (the small points °, they are also touch sensitive like the arrows ) while you are in your z5 menue.
sorry 4 my english ;)

does this mp3 display korean characters? cuz most of my music are korean songs with korean characters. if it doesnt read korean, then what type of mp3 should i buy that can read korean characters. thanx

does the YPZ5 support Napster to Go????????????
can anyone help please

Very dissapointed with this. Looked good on paper but when I acctually had it for a whole day it made me get a refund. I use Shure E4C's and they are very loud even if the volume level is set at 1 bar, secondly the EQ does not improve sound in any way, it just distorts the sound to unbearable levels.
REALLY try it out before you buy it or else you'll be dissapointed like me. Also using WMP to sync with this device seems to be a waste, I would rather use proprietery software then WMP to transfer files.

My final word is, samsung may have made a good looking player but software wise both on the player and for the computer its really dissapointing.

I've read the posts and I'm still confused on this... The review says that Windows Media Player is the only way to get songs into the Z5. Rhapsody's web site says that it is compatible. Currently I am using Rhapsody to catalog my mp3 collection and am quite happy with how user friendly it is (I am not using the Rhapsody-To-Go subscription service, only the basic service for downloading and managing songs). If I buy the Z5, can I just connect it to my PC and download my library straight from Rhapsody, or will I have to transfer all of my songs to Media Player? Thank you.

Probe,

I use Winamp to copy individual songs to my player. It copies them with folder path in tact in the following format:

[Music folder on Z5]\Artist\Album\Track No - Filename.ext

So, if you can save a playlist from Rhapsody, load it into Winamp, and then select the songs and right click to transfer to the player, you should be fine.

I haven't once needed to use WMP to transfer files or "sync" my player.

I want to answer to Geezer