Samsung P2 Review

By: Grahm Skee on November 4, 2007 7:37 PM

Samsung’s P2 is their flagship MP3/PMP device with many features, starring the full screen touch interface. Bluetooth also plays a supporting role in the feature set, giving the player the ability to connect to wireless headphones and to your mobile phone (in future updates).

The near-buttonless design comes together very nicely with a solid build quality common to Samsung’s portable devices. Wrapped inside this player is a well thought out interface that most people will be able to just pick up and use. Despite a few complaints, the P2 is definitely something to consider even though it commands a higher price than similar capacity MP3 players.

• Quick Look
• Colors: Black, White, Burgundy

• Capacities: 4GB, 8GB

• MSRP: $200, $250

• Supported Audio: MP3, WMA

• Supported Video: SVI 480x272 @ 30FPS / WMV9 SP 320x240 or 480x272 @ 30FPS

• Other Supported Formats: TXT, JPEG

• Screen: 3” 480x272 (16:9) 262k Color

• Size: 52 X 100 X 9.95 mm

• Weight: 86g

• Battery: 35 hours audio, 5 hours video

• Other Features: Bluetooth Headphone Support, Bluetooth Phone Support (November), RSS Feeds, FM Recording, Alarm, Calendar

Accessories

Inside the box you will find a proprietary USB cable, earbuds, a screen protector, Samsung Studio software, and clip.

There are some cases for the player, and there may be some docking stations and speaker docks in the future. Also keep in mind that the player sports Bluetooth, so many wireless headphones and speakers will be compatible with the P2.

Design

I have really appreciated the latest designs from Samsung especially in the latest generation of MP3 players. The minimalistic design is very sturdy and material tolerances are tight. Samsung’s design department is on point and could rival Apple’s. I would love to see them make an all-in-one desktop PC.

The P2 is comprised of two halves, the plastic face - or touch screen - and the back metal plate. The touch screen is very scratch resistant and as long as you’re not laying the P2 face down, the touch screen will hold up well. But if that’s not enough, you can still apply the supplied screen protector. I will note that the glossy screen will show finger prints like they are going out of style, but it is inevitable with gadgets in general and especially with touch devices.

The latter half - or the back metal - is a smooth, semi-matte finish, hard-coat painted. My P2 is starting to show wear in the form of scratches from setting it on hard surfaces. The scratches are minimal and don’t show much, and the hard-coat of paint has not worn down to metal under normal use and light abuse. I was able to scratch down to bare metal with my keys, but with a sharp edge and intent. Overall both materials will hold up well. If you are more wreckless with your players, you can always pick up a case for the P2.

Screen

Samsung has a lot invested in display technologies and continues to spend serious amounts of money on research and development for advancement of LCD, OLED, plasma, and other new emerging technologies. Samsung makes the display for the iriver clix2, which is the first consumer device to tout an AMOLED display- very impressive if you have seen it in person. What I’m getting at is that Samsung doesn’t skimp when putting a nice display in their MP3 players.

User Interface

The P2 is graced with a huge touch surface that controls nearly all of the player’s functions. The right side of the player has a much-needed set of dedicated volume buttons for quick access. On the left side you’ll find the pause/play/power button, along with a hold switch, that will, without a doubt, come in handy from keeping accidental presses at bay.

To Touch or Not to Touch

I personally am not a fan of the touch interface, so take this section with a grain of salt. I find touch to be an unnatural way for us to interact with electronic devices. The touch interface is not as accurate as a full tactile interface where a user can get audible and well as physical feedback. So naturally I found myself accidently pressing the wrong button or executing the wrong menu item on the P2, even though the touch sensitivity well tuned.

However, if you take away my overly-critical interface assessment you have a downright sexy design and fun-to-use MP3 player. For a touch interface it does work well with a touch sensitivity that has been fairly well tuned. Graphical buttons are spacious enough to handle larger fingers. The progress bar with music and video is also very responsive and accurate to touch.

From someone who dislikes touch interfaces, I can still give the P2 a nod of approval.

Graphical Interface

I do have one complaint about the GUI: the back button does not go back to the last used feature. For instance, if you are in the alarm menu and the now playing screen kicks in due to inactivity, the back button will not send you back to the alarm. You have to back out of all the music menus to the home screen then go to prime pack and then alarm again. This is fixable by firmware updates.

Transferring Media

The P2 is an MTP device so you will be limited to Windows XP SP2+ and Vista until someone writes MTP drivers for Linux and Mac. Drag and drop does work with both Windows XP and Vista; this will simply get media on and off of the P2, but if you want more functionality such as playlists and video conversion, you will need to use a media player.

Software

The P2 works with Window Media Player, Winamp, Napster, Rhapsody, and others. Additionally, the P2 is compatible with PlaysForSure compatible ala carte and “to go” music services.

Samsung does ship the P2 with a media player of its own. It works just like the others but provides additional features such as “Datacasts” (more on that below),but really it is just another media player with extended capabilities specific to Samsung products. I did find that Samsung’s Media converter did a better job at converting video than Windows Media Player, in that it converted more file types than WMP did.

The important thing to know is that you have plenty of choices of software for managing your music, video, and playlists.

Battery

The P2 battery is rated at 35 hours for music and 5 hours for video. Video time was accurate; I consistently got 5 hours or a little under. Audio, however, was slightly less than the rated, but it really depends on how much you’re using the touch screen, volume levels, and sound enhancement settings.

Firmware

With past devices Samsung has updated many of the functions and added themes in future firmware updates. For instance, in November they will be adding more Bluetooth functions, so stay tuned to our Samsung P2 forum for updates.

Audio

Playlists

The P2 has the ability to add multiple playlists, but the playlists are limited to five. These five are simply named “playlist 1-5”. They are also limited to 200 tracks. Tracks can be added by selecting “add to playlist” by pressing the menu button while a track is selected.

Sound Quality

The P2’s sound quality is very good and will work well with higher end IEMs and headphones. Sound quality will impress the majority, but for those who are listening to their P2 in quiet listening environments with an ultra high-end setup, I will go into a bit more detail. Being overly critical on sound quality, I find the mid bass is lacking clarity, running into the lower end bass. The highs tend to be very bright, stating this not as a good or bad aspect, but more of a personal preference of sonic characteristics. Again, that was for the audio snobs, the rest of you will be very happy with the P2’s sound quality.

EQ & Sound Effect

Samsung uses a sound technology called DNSe; while I think that it may work well with lower end speakers and headphones (including the supplied earbuds), it will sound unnatural with higher end equipment.

The P2 sounds good at a flat EQ, but for those who want a little more control, the 7-band EQ will do the trick. It works well and is very responsive.

Sleep

I am always surprised to hear how many people like to fall asleep with headphones in their ears. I always fear wrecking my phones or choking myself while I sleep. Regardless, those who leave their lives at the mercy of a three foot wire will be happy to know there is a sleep timer selectable at either 15, 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes.

ID3 & File Folder Browsing

The consensus is very divided on a preferred method of browsing. Samsung did a great job and included both, but I think they did an especially good job in that it was placed right within “artists, album, genre, playlist” screen for quick and easy access.

File folder is great for those who want to keep music organized in folders themselves. It’s helpful if you have incomplete or corrupted ID3 tags.

Video

Video on the P2 looks great especially on its bright, clear screen. It is smooth and the pixels are quick. The player supports two different file types in two different resolutions:

SVI (Video: MPEG4, Audio: MP3 (44.1kHz 16bit Stereo, 128kbps), Resolution: 480x272, Frame Rate: 30fps)

WMV9 (Video: WMV9 Simple Profile, Audio: WMA9 (Max 860kbps), Resolution: 320x240 or 480x272, Frame Rate: 30fps)

One of the biggest downfalls is that the P2 is very strict to these formats, so simple drag and drop is rare, causing you to convert almost all videos. For instance a WMV 320x180 @ 29.97 FPS will not play natively.

Conversion

Conversion is a bit rocky as well. Windows Media Player 11 does a great job of converting but is very fussy with file types and will only convert basic MPEG4, WMV, and a very short list of other common types. It will not convert DivX/XviD. I did have better success with Samsung Media Studio which did convert some DivX/XviD content and more file types than WMP11, but still was not perfect.

Video conversion is a pain for most all MP3 players. However, there is a way to get any video file type onto the P2, but you may have to jump though some hoops to get there and use some other third party converters.

Pictures

The nice , colorful, and great-looking screen will lend itself nicely to showing of photos to your friends. Jumping right into the photo option you will find a matrix of thumbnails and folders. These photos are easily selectable by touching them. In full screen mode photos are viewed by swiping your finger across the screen. However, note that there is a delay between the photos even when at the native resolution. It is not as fast or fluid as the iPhone/iPod Touch.

The photo viewer also has a zoom function. It will allow you to zoom in 2x, 3x, and 4x. While zoomed the photo dragging to different areas is not fast and not fluid. Dragging your finger from the top to bottom will not drag it real time; it will take a second or two to redraw the photo.

FM Radio

Reception was ok but did from time to time have static even on the strongest stations. There is a really cool feature that I was drawn to on the radio’s interface. The 30 presets are displayed as 5 sets of 6 buttons, so selecting a preset is a very natural press of a button.

Datacasts

Datacasts currently are a fancy word for RSS feeds ,and in order to use them you need to install Samsung’s Media Studio. As of now data casts work by downloading and syncing RSS feeds, placing them on the player as organized text files. With podcasts synching it seems to be possible but downloaded files needed to be manually done by pressing “download” for each item in Samsung MS. I was unable to get them to automatically transfer to the device once downloaded. I’m not sure if this is a half-baked feature that is going to be updated, but right now I find syncing feeds more of a pain than it’s worth.

Prime Pack

Samsung places a menu item called “Prime Pack” on the home screen. This is basically a menu for an assortment of additional features. On some foreign sites they have already shown off other useful applications like a dictionary, so you can expect to see some additions to this in the future.

Text

The text view is as about as feature-filled as a text viewer can get. Text size can be selected in small, medium, and large. Nine different styles can also be applied to text. These nine vary the text color and background from plain color to denim and even graph paper. A single bookmark can be added and recalled for long documents.

Alarm

The alarm function is as extensive as it can get. You are able to create a list of alarms for various times: “once”, “everyday”, “mon~fri”, “mon~sat”, “sat~sun”, and “off”. There are three different tones that can be selected as alarm sounds, but you can use any of your music media as an alarm sound. The P2 will also wake from “off” to sound the alarm.

Calendar

The calendar function is very basic. It is a simple view of the current month with the date highlighted. Future and past months can be selected by a swipe of the finger across the screen.

World Clock

For the jetsetter there is a simple but useful world clock. This will show your time zone and a world map. Time zones are selected by swiping horizontally across the screen with the time zone selected showing at the bottom.

Voice Recording?

Voice recording was a feature in the T10’s Prime Pack but is absent here. I don’t know what happened, but it may be added in future firmware updates.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth will connect easily to any Bluetooth headset. I tested it with a Motorola headset and it worked just fine. At the time of writing this review, this was the only Bluetooth feature available; other Bluetooth centric features will be added with future firmware updates.

Future Bluetooth

The P2 will be getting an update in the Bluetooth department in November to add phone connectivity as first seen on the T9. This will allow you to use the P2 as a Bluetooth headset, speaking though the P2’s mic and listening to the caller though the headphones. It will also allow you to dial, answer, and receive call ID on the P2 while your phone is tucked away in your bag or pocket.

If the phone interface goes down as advertised, I am really looking forward to it. As I sit here at the local bookstore/coffee shop plugged into the P2, I would not miss a single call, nor would I have to remove my headphones. I would simply press “answer” on the P2 as it notifies me I have a call. Music would be faded back in when the call was done. No interruption or work, seamless and convenient. This would even play well with other scenarios such as walking down the street or in your daily commute. Your phone could be in your briefcase, backpack, or pocket and still be tightly integrated with your music player. I think it is a brilliant use and implementation of wireless technology.

There are also plans to implement wireless file transfer between P2 as well as mobile phones. Many other cool yet-to-be-announced Bluetooth features may include may include wireless games as seen on foreign versions of the T9, or maybe even wireless sync. Again, these are predictions based on past hardware.

File Browser

The file browser allows you to look at exactly what is on the P2 just as they are in folders - a nice feature for those who rely on folders for organization. While browsing files they are all playable and have the same functionality as if you were to play files in their respective menus.

Conclusion

The P2 commands a premium price compared other similar capacity players and rightfully so, due to all the packed in features like Bluetooth and a brilliant large screen. But I believe that the price premium is also justified in the quality of the hardware. As I described above, it is a well-designed and well-built player.

Keep in mind you are trading a little bit of usability for the coolness and fun factor of the touch interface; the P2 is not something you can use blindly in your pocket or without looking. I, as someone who doesn’t like touch interfaces, still believe that it was well thought out and executed with precision, despite a few minor gripes.

Overall I can recommend the Samsung P2, especially since there are plans to continually add more features and functions with firmware updates.

Pro

• Sturdy Design
• Good Sound
• File & ID3 Browsing
• Multiple playlists
• Lots of Features
• Bluetooth

Cons

• Strict video file types
• Touch Interface
• User interface could use some tweaks
• Limited Playlists
• No Bookmarks

Purchase

The P2 is available at many brick and mortar stores but can be found online with free shipping and no taxes at Amazon US (Amazon UK). For the UK, EU, and the rest of the world, AdvancedMP3Players can take care of you as well.