Digital Trends

Samsung P2 4GB December 27th, 2007 | by Mike Kobrin

Sights and Sounds

Videos and photos look sharp and clear on the 3-inch touchscreen, and playback is smooth with well-synced audio. When Windows Media Player crushed our high-res AVI files down to a WMV format that the P2 can read, the resulting files had compression artifacts, but the P2 rendered everything in the file very accurately, including color.

Despite excellent video performance, Samsung’s main goal with the P2 was clearly to build a better music box. The P2 has stellar sound quality, as well as an excellent set of sound enhancement tools.

The included earbuds are good for what they are, but the P2 was made to drive higher-end cans. Our Etymotic ER4 in-ear headphones simply sang, especially when we tweaked Samsung’s versatile and effective DNSe settings (we liked the Studio preset the most, though you can also set the EQ manually), beefed up the output volume with Street mode, and set the Clarity enhancer to medium.

Extras

Oddly, most of the P2’s extra features are under the heading of “Prime Pack”. They include a text reader, alarm clock (which would be more useful with a built-in speaker, read-only calendar, and a world clock. From the main menu, you can also access the file browser and FM tuner. Radio reception in New York City was about average; fringe stations like 88.3 (WBGO in New Jersey) were static, but bigger stations were crystal clear. We were told that Samsung would be adding FM recording capabilities in a January ’08 firmware update, so stay-tuned. Since the player doesn’t have Wi-Fi, it makes sense that Samsung left out features like contacts sync and song sharing (à la Zune), but an editable calendar would still be nice. 

Conclusion

At $200 USD for the 4GB model and $250 USD for 8GB, the P2 isn’t the most aggressively priced player out there, though the 8GB version is still cheaper than the 8GB iPod touch. The convenience of built-in Bluetooth is hard to overlook, and using the P2 as a surrogate handset may intrigue gadget-aholics. We wish Samsung would include Mac OS support or at least a USB disk mode for the Mac, not to mention broader file format support. But for Windows users this is a truly awesome player, even without Wi-Fi, thanks to top-notch sound, attractive styling, and an effective touch screen.


Pros: 

• Excellent sound quality
• Flexible and effective sound enhancement options
• Built-in Bluetooth supports multiple headsets and call taking
touchscreen is sharp, bright, and responsive

Cons: 

• Sound enhancement and Bluetooth eat away at battery life
• No Mac OS support or USB disk mode
• Limited audio and video file format support
• No Wi-Fi