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The Samsung YEPP YP-30S design is more suggestive of a futuristic pocket watch than a portable MP3 player. The circular, easy-to-read LCD on the face of the unit shows the date and time like most pint size pagers/beepers. Shaped like a lighter and measuring 1.73 by 2.56 by 0.57 inches, the YEPP fits very comfortably in the palm of your hand. The unit is so small and light (1.2 ounces without the AAA battery) that it could easily be stored in a shirt pocket & you wouldn't even notice it was there. It comes with a neck strap, arm band and a belt clip; all great ways to store the player for taking along on morning jog to a casual walk to school. The layout of the unit's Forward/Backward wheel button makes it easy to control, plus additional two buttons press to change the volume.

Specifications

Overall Dimensions:	1.73 by 2.56 by 0.57 inches
Weight:	34g (1.2 ounces without the AAA battery)
Processor:	18MHz, 20 bit RISC
Memory Capacity:	64MBof built-in memory
File transfer speed:	7Mbps
Noise Ratio:	85dB with 20HzLPF
Battery:	1 AAA (Alkaline battery lasting 5 hours)
Case:	Aluminum/Plastics

The Installation and Test

The unit connects to your PC or Mac via USB rather than an outdated serial cable. Even though you would think this is the norm nowadays, believe me, there are still a few players out there today which come equipped with such an ancient transfer device. The customized RealJukebox audio manager software used for transferring files and ripping CDs to the YEPP offers some nice extras. For instance, if you have a CD-R/RW drive, the software allows you to burn CDs based on your music play lists.

Installation of the player was a pretty smooth process, except for the fact that the player cannot be powered through USB alone. This means that the battery must be installed first before connecting the player to your computer. Once you install the battery, the player basically remains permanently on, although it just displays a clock with the time and such, which can be useful at times. I would have preferred an off button, since, even in the clock mode, the battery will eventually run the batteries dry. An optional off feature might save some of the cells' juice.

The YEPP includes the Samsung YEPP Explorer, a very user friendly program for transferring MP3 files to the player. It takes about 10-12 seconds to transfer a 3MB MP3 file to the player, which is quite acceptable. I found that, with the 64MB of built-in memory, about 15 songs can be placed onto the player for about one and half hour of music, which is adequate for most cases, but would certainly disappoint on a long trip. Unfortunately, probably due to it small size, Samsung didn't include a way to expand the memory, such as Compact Flash support, so you'll just have to live with the 64MB of memory and about 80 minutes of music.

The YEPP's user interface is elegant, mostly due to the fact that Samsung didn't hamper the player with a multitude of buttons. One simply uses the Forward/Backward wheel button to toggle which song you want to listen to. Fortunately, once one gets used to the player's interface, there are loads of functions to play, such as backlight control, EQ setting, as well as the standard play modes such as repeat, random and intro-play. Additional features include a 3 lines LCD, which displays multi-language music file name, elapsed time and song information, an 8 pre-set equalizer with DBB (Dynamic Bass Booster), and a voice recording mode with a built-in microphone. It supports 320 kbps high quality sound (usually MP3 support 96, to 196kbps) but it takes more memory space. It can run on 1 AAA batteries for about 4-6 hours, depending on the quality of the batteries. The LCD display includes a backlight, so you won't have a problem being able to see the names of songs in the dark.

The LCD screen does a very good job of displaying useful information to the user, even performs a little animation as well! Something that I would have never expected out of such a small player is that the LCD screen displays multi-language the filenames of the files being played. The YEPP also displays useful information such as the song's ID3 tags (The part of the file which stores Artist, Album, Track Title info). The player not only supports the MP3 file format, but also the WMA (Windows Media Audio) file format for those who have taken a liking to WMA.

Sound quality was very surprising for such a small device. I felt that the sound quality was very clear--of course, that's all dependent on how good of quality your MP3's are. Overall, I found the sound reproduction from the earbuds to be quite pleasing.

Conclusion

One of the best features of this device is that it doesn't have any mechanical parts. If you're looking for a small, inexpensive MP3 player, the YEPP is worth considering. This being said - I can't confidently recommend any player limited to just 64MB of memory. Instead, I recommend Sonicblue's Rio One which is larger in size but offers expandability for the similar price. However if you want lots of music on a budget, you may prefer to opt for the CD-based MP3 players. You can store 650MB of music on 1 CD. Have a look at SonicBlue’s RioVolt or AVG Soul DMP-01 MP3-CD player for lower price.

Ultimately, those of you who are looking for a hip & stylish looking player that is light, ultra small & something neat you can show off to all of your friends.. I would recommend this player to you, otherwise if you are looking for a player which you can fit tons of songs onto & weight/size is not an issue, go with an expandable memory based player or an MP3-CD player - my personal fav.

Overall Score: 79%

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