Digital Trends

Samsung YP-T9 2GB January 30th, 2007 | by Brandon King

Setup and Use Part 2

The Photo browser initially displays three thumbnails along the right side, with a large, though distorted image to the left. Once selected, images can be set to the current track’s background, zoomed (from 100% to 400%), or set to the first image of a slideshow. There is no control over the speed of the transitions. JPEGs under 3MB can be viewed on this tiny gem.

Video playback is smooth, but lacks customization. Only bookmarking, fast forwarding and reversing is supported. Still, impressive for a player this size. The T9 supports MPEG 4 at 15fps at 208x176 resolution, which is converted to SVI format using the Samsung Media Studio program.

The two games included on the T9 are mostly useless. One is a baseball game where you play the pitcher or batter, and requires nothing but luck. The other is a paperboy type game where all you go is jump over things. Hopefully Samsung will release a few decent games in the future. Also worth noting is that playing games will turn off any music in the background.

The recording feature, which records to MP3 format, is a nice added addition. The internal microphone recorded with respectable quality, and the bit rate can be adjusted to either 32, 64, 96, or 128Kbps. The higher bit rates allow for better isolation of voice in noisier environments, and of course make the file sizes larger. Most quiet lecture halls will be served well by 32 or 64 Kbps. FM Recording can be set to 96, 128, 160, or 192 Kbps. Recorded files can be accessed directly from the Record menu.

And finally, the Settings menu allows for many customizations found within the relevant sections, and is divided into Music, Record, Time, Display, Language, and System. Of particular interest are the timings for LCD off, screensaver activation (the screen saver is an easy to read clock with date), LCD Brightness, Color theme, Resume mode, Volume limit, and button sound (whether the button presses make and audible beep).

We briefly used the Samsung Media Studio 5 application, which is convenient if you will be using the video playback feature often. Otherwise, we opted for good ole’ manual management. Transfers felt a little pokey, but not exceptionally slow. Battery life is rated at approximately 23-25 hours. Even with the LCD set to maximum brightness, we used the player daily for over a week before needing a recharge. The battery is rated at 30 hours of music, and we found it to last for approximately 26 hours with the LCD set to time out after 5 minutes and playing music at ¾ volume. Music quality was on par with other MP3 players we’ve auditioned, including iPods, and the volume output is higher than most.

The Samsung YP-T9 is thinner than a AAA battery