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June 21, 2005

Review: Samsung YP-T7X MP3 Player

One of Samsung’s latest flash players is the T7X. The T7X is periwinkle in color with a bright screen that features nearly 65,000 colors for vividly rich effects. But does it have the audio quality to match its feature set?

The first aspect of the T7X that stands out is its periwinkle, or purple-ish color; this is one of the few MP3 players with such a different color scheme. Unlike its MT6V counterpart we evaluated earlier, the T7X is equipped with a 65,000 color vivid screen with rich graphics and quite a few additional features, which we will get to later on. The front of the player is rather clean with a mere screen and a four-way joystick. This appears to be a common Samsung feature, as the company has implemented something parallel to it in almost all of their flash players. The concept behind the joystick is that it’s actually a single button that moves up and down for the respected directions and sideways for skipping forward and backwards between tracks. You must also press the joystick to navigate through menus within the player itself.

The screen is saturated with the general time, track, track number, recorded bit-rate, file format, time left, battery meter and other such features that are fairly common in quality portable audio players. The unfortunate thing about the T7X is that it, too, is packaged with a substandard pair of earphones. They are uncomfortable, and as you might expect, the audio quality is crippling. We understand that the reasoning behind including a pair of earphones is to retail a complete kit to the purchaser, but since many audiophiles would opt for a new pair anyways, it becomes a ineffective right out of the box. Though there isn’t a specific suggestion to remedy this situation, we can only hope that companies can work out this pessimistic problem.

Unlike the MT6V, the right of the T7X is equipped with a headphones jack with nothing else occupying the same area. The left side, however, has all the other buttons that you would use constantly. The respective buttons include play/pause, AB and Rec. in addition to the hold slider. Samsung has integrated a recording capability with this particular player as well. Even though we are usually cynical about hybrid products, we must admit that Samsung has done an above average job to make this is a usable feature. The static was unnoticeable and the quality was actually quite decent. As always, we don’t recommend you use this for any serious work. A dedicated recorder will always be better than an implemented solution such as this one, unless the manufacturer has taken appropriate precautions to make all the features inside a product just as powerful.

Features:

Despite its impressive physical capabilities, the T7X is perhaps one of the most feature-rich MP3 players we have seen in the market. To start off, the first attribute in line is the JPEG Image and Text Viewer capability. Alongside these features are the animations that go along with the actual traits. When you navigate through the menus, there are various images associated with their designated characteristics that animate. It’s a minuscule element, which looks pretty impressive and utilizes the 65,000-color screen. Even though Samsung gives you the option to view JPEG images, they are not as worthwhile. We certainly wouldn’t recommend viewing an entire photo album on the MP3 player. However, it will be useful to show a quick picture or two to family members or friends without your standard digital accessories. The text viewer is much the same way in regards to its usefulness. Don’t get us wrong, both of such characteristics are perhaps only exclusive to Samsung players, but there isn’t a pragmatic use for them. Unless you want to quickly glance over something, more like a list, and show a quick image, these are just add-ons to lengthen the features list.

Another integrated capability that is actually useful is the Clock Function. You can set the clock to an alarm mode with a standard alarm or you can select the FM Rec. which would start playing a radio station at whatever time you have selected. This is indeed a useful function. Moreover, the T7X is equipped with various equalizer settings to enhance the audio quality in relation to specific genres of music. Now that we are on track information, the player supports MP3, WMA, Secure WMA and ASF audio formats in addition to the JPEG format for photos. Once again, there’s no Ogg Vorbis support, but other than that it is capable of playing almost all sorts of popular audio formats. Like MT6V, the T7X can also be used as a mere storage device for transferring files back and forth to the computer. The FM tuner and voice recording capabilities are also present. And as we had pointed out earlier, the voice recording is actually pretty good. The FM tuner is similarly acceptable to the MT6V model and presents channel information in a laid out fashion with solid scanning potential and limited static disturbance.

With so many features and a bright screen, you would expect that Samsung would’ve paid close attention to the battery-life, but unfortunately that’s not case. Unlike the MT6V, which offered 42 hours of battery-life, the T7X only proposes 10 hours with a rechargeable battery. Undoubtedly, this is one of the only serious flaws in the player. All these features are next to nothing if the player doesn’t last long enough for the user to actually take advantage of all the integrated functions.

The package comes with the standard cradle, earphones, line-in cable, charger, belt clip, install CD, USB adapter, user manual, quick setup guide and a warranty card.

Performance Summary...

As we had stated earlier, the battery life isn’t spectacular. We tested the battery to be little over 9:30 hours after rigorous usage. The text viewer and image quality were vivid and rich in detail, which was certainly a pleasant surprise. We have already mentioned our thoughts on the FM tuner and voice recording functions, but just to recap they were fairly well integrated and performed well over our expectations. The concept of a multi-purpose joystick with smooth navigational menus and animations was perfect as well.

As far as the audio quality is concerned, the player performed exceptionally well. The sound quality was almost perfect from a player this size. The independent equalizer settings along with TruBass and SRS effects really supported the sound and made it sound above our expectations with each genre. The notes and pitches were precise and to the point. Furthermore, there was little to no static and the volume levels did not exaggerate the audio quality much, although we do recommend you don’t listen to the player at its highest volume setting to further refine the notes. This is even more critical when you are listening to genres like Hard Rock and Metallica where the emphasis is usually put on dominating sounds.

Despite the battery-life being our pet peeve with this particular portable audio player, the delicate exterior of the T7X is discouraging as well. Even though Samsung includes a plastic casing with the player, it doesn’t protect the face side of the T7X, which is quite unfortunate. Other than that, there’s not much we would’ve wished Samsung changed with this player. The bundled software does what its supposed to do, and then some. The accessories complete the package surely, except for the earphones. They are definitely not the best in the market in terms of audio quality and comfort, but we had already expected that.

The average price for the Samsung T7X 512MB version is $130.00, which is definitely not bad. You won’t find very many players, if any, at this price. We understand that the battery life is poor on this product, but we figure you can charge it regularly alongside your cell phone. Therefore, we wholeheartedly recommend the T7X to anyone looking for an excellent portable audio player with flash storage.

Buy it NOW at Amazon.com: Samsung YP-T7Z 1 GB

Posted by mp3fan at June 21, 2005 5:11 PM