Intro & Impressions
The new year has come and gone, and with it are a new generation of different MP3 portable players. Some of you may recall that Samsung was one of the first companies to produce a high-end player several months ago, when they introduced their Yepp E64 player. Because the E64 was such a beautiful and impressive player, we were eager to see what innovations its successor, the YP-NDU, would bring to the masses.
Like the Yepp E64, the YP-NDU is a solid state player available in 32 or 64MB configurations. True to the Yepp brand, Samsung has graced the YP-NDU with a sexy, sleek design that rivals the futuristic look of other current players. Samsung has also made the player smaller, and lighter than many other players out on the market, and added USB support , a built in FM tuner, and an inline remote control with LCD display. Fans of previous Yepp players will be happy to note that the YP-NDU uses a D-pad for its core controls, with more buttons arrayed on the side for additional functions.
Everything on the player is digitally controlled, so that volume settings can be changed digitally from the main unit, or from the remote. The remote shares most of the major functions of the unit, including volume control, track seeking, and play/pause/stop functions.
Beyond all the regular features, such as multiple play modes (including A-B repeat), and an 8 mode equalizer, this new Yepp player also has voice recording and the capability to delete files without having to connect to a computer. Neither of these features are unique, but because of the compact size of the player, the sheer number of features is quite impressive. I have to stress that the main player unit is perhaps the most compact and lightweight unit of this class. Players like the Nomad II and Rio 600/800 don’t even come close to offering this level of class and compactness, and yet this compact size is not compromised by a lack of features, as we saw with the I-Jungle (which, admittedly, is STILL the smallest player we have reviewed to date).
Unfortunately, the compact size of the main unit is offset by the clumsy remote, which is far larger than I would have liked it to be. The LCD displays on both the main unit and remote are, together, not as useful as a single larger LCD on the main unit would have been. The large size of the remote is probably due to the LCD and also to the FM tuner, which was NOT placed in the main unit. Since the unit functions fine without the remote, this was a smart design choice that other companies have used in the past.
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