Ever felt like sharing that one song’s amazing guitar riff with a friend, only to surrender your earbuds or dangle them between yourselves as you both try to listen in on what has now become a miniscule peep? Short of carrying yet another AA-driven pocket weight at all times, there was never really a better alternative, until Samsung smartened up and did something about it. The end result is the YP-K5, the latest in their Yepp line of MP3 players to have crossed our eardrums and clamor for a review.
Stylin’, Slidin’, and Smokin’
In a move for the betterment of portable electronics, the YP-K5 takes a page out of home theater devices by idolizing the color black and ignoring all others. That’s right, with the exception of the power/hold switch, there is not a spec of white or a silver trim to be found on the collapsed unit. The smoked plastic front masks the OLED display and touch sensitive controls when they’re not lit up, and the data cable and earbuds are also black to present a standardized look you won’t find with many other players.
Furthering the home theater similarities, when powered on it becomes apparent that an electric blue is the chosen accent color, evenly lighting the controls and dominating every menu screen outside of the pictures category. Whatever the message is – relaxation, professionalism or elitism, it’s working on this reviewer. The YP-K5 is beyond sexy. At least it was until my fingerprints smudged the surface.
Hidden underneath the base player is a pair of 1" speakers, presumably in the 1-watt range. With minimal force applied (about the same required to open a clamshell cell phone), they slide out on rails to the right of the player and tilt up to angle themselves towards the listener when placed on a flat surface, all the while rotating both the display and the controls into landscape mode. Both drivers are covered by a fine metallic mesh surrounded by a thin chrome border that’s emblazoned with Samsung’s logo. It’s here that we begin to leave the home theater arena and enter the realm of the late 80’s traveling alarm clock. More on this later.
The only real cons to the K5’s appearance are its bulk and weight, accounted for by the slide out speakers. For what it’s worth, if the speakers could somehow be removed from the main unit, the player itself would only be about 2mm thicker than the second generation iPod nano. Seeing as how that’s not the case however, the actual dimensions of the unit are 3.86" x 1.87" x .71" with a weight of 3.7 ounces. That places the flash-based YP-K5 roughly in the same territory as micro hard drive-based MP3 players such as iriver’s 6GB E10. It’s small enough to be manageable, but you’ll definitely notice it in your pocket and probably won’t be able to work out with it.
User Friendly(ish)
The YP-K5 follows a rather simple control scheme, with 4 directional arrows, a select/play button in the center, and two buttons for back and options that change positions depending on whether or not the speakers are slid out. Unlike Samsung’s earlier YP-Z5 that I derided in a previous 
review, the controls behave comfortably and predictably. Accidental key presses were minimal (which is quite acceptable for controls that lack tactile feedback), and brute force isn’t required to activate the controls. However, a slight brush across them with your thumb might accidentally pause or skip the track, so use of the hold switch is advised. The one holdover flaw that the YP-K5 takes from its ancestors is the lack of accelerated scrolling, which can be a nightmare for those trying to scroll through several tracks at once.
The K5’s menu options have also changed significantly since the YP-Z5. The main menu has ditched text in favor of a more cheerful matrix of dots that position themselves to become icons for the Music, Radio, Pictures, Alarm, and Settings submenus. How is that cheerful you ask? Simple, they flicker in sequence like disco lighting! The repositioning of the dots may seem a little slow and no preview is given of the preceding and following options, however after having spent a few days with the YP-K5 I found that I’d memorized the order of the submenus and was able to click through them without waiting for the icons to form.
Moving into one of the submenus of the YP-K5, it’s apparent that Samsung needs a lesson in contrast and readability. Unfortunately, only the currently highlighted menu item is white, while the other items remain a sullen gray on a black background. Considering there’s no brightness control for the OLED display, this means bad news for users in direct sunlight or operating the YP-K5 in the car. The lack of contrast quickly becomes apparent and navigation slows down dramatically almost to the point of unusable if you’re the one driving.
Listening Experience
Sifting through tracks on the YP-K5 is about the same as any other MP3 player using the MTP protocol. Music can be browsed through by Artist, Album, Song Title, Genre, or Playlist (which unfortunately must be made beforehand on the PC, as on-the-go playlists are not available.) Once playing, the majority of the screen is taken up by a graphic equalizer with a scrolling information bar that displays the current song title, album, and artist pulled from the track’s ID3 tags. Again this draws similarities to home theater equipment, although I feel it’s slightly at the expense of usability this time since this space could arguably be better used for displaying album art, plus it takes a few seconds to read the scrolling track information.
Listening to music on the YP-K5 however is a much more invigorating experience, with a wide frequency response and superb audio quality that 
doesn’t break up at higher volumes. Unusually low bass sounds slightly muffled as evident through Cypress Hill’s Dr. Greenthumb, but not enough to detract from the music unless you’re a highly critical audiophile. What does somewhat detract from the listening experience however is the irritating fade-in effect at the beginning of every song, ruining the intros to some of my favorite songs from metal bands like DragonForce and In Flames.
The supplied earphones are a welcome surprise. A crossover design from conventional earbuds and the higher end in-ear earbuds, these miniature hair driers are not only more comfortable with their flexible rubber tips that fit in your ear canal, they also provide superior bass response that really works well with classical piano and drum hits albeit with the added dampening of extremely high frequency notes – a tradeoff I’ll gladly take any day of the week. Just be careful as the in-ear design can prove to be quite loud, deafening even, when compared to traditional earbuds.
What really surprised me were the built-in speakers that also surpassed my expectations considering their micro form factor. While tinny and lacking bass, they are leaps and bounds ahead of the other MP3 units I’ve seen with built-in speakers, maintaining quality to about 2/3 volume and getting quite loud. While not something you’d want to use to say turn your room into an auditorium, for sharing music between a few friends they certainly get the job done. They’re also incredibly handy for personal use. Just the other day I was listening to the YP-K5 through my car stereo while returning home from shopping, and was able to keep the tracks going even when putting away the groceries – all without fumbling with earbuds or skipping a beat.
Fans of EQ settings will be disappointed with the YP-K5 however, as Samsung has cut back the presets available with their DNSe sound engine. Only four presets exist (down from the YP-Z5’s 11) – Vocal, Bass Boost, 3D Sound, and Concert Hall. Acoustic, electronic, rock and pop settings have all vanished, and no custom EQ exists to make up for them. Considering the provided earphones gave an extra kick to the already good sounding music, I found myself leaving the EQ off for the majority of time, although I’d occasionally opt for 3D Sound or Bass Boost when using the built-in speakers for a more fulfilling sound.
There are two other design quirks that caught my attention with Samsung’s latest 4GB player. The auto-resume feature that continues playing where you left off after having shut off the player will ignore what artist selection you were last listening to if you selected a song through Some Artist > All Tracks. It will finish playing the last song, then move on into All Tracks from All Artists. Also, volume settings are reset after power cycling the device or switching between earphone and speaker modes.
Return of the Radio
Say what you will about the state of RIAA-controlled radio playlists today (I tend to dislike them myself), but every now and then I find I grow weary of what’s in my MP3 collection. I need to be able to listen to something new, or at least tune into the classical and NPR stations every once in a while. Thankfully the YP-K5 brings FM radio back to the Yepp line, something the previously reviewed YP-Z5 was sorely lacking. The FM tuner does a fine job too – auto scanning for presets is incredibly fast, the reception is amazing (and configurable, with options for low, medium and high sensitivity), and the analog graphics work nicely. There are three detractors from the radio however: as the antennas the earbuds will need to be plugged in even when using the built-in speakers, FM recording (and voice/line-in recording for that matter) is missing, and the radio cannot be used in conjunction with the alarm clock.
K5 as a Photo Viewer
In addition to simply sharing music between yourself and a friend with the built-in speakers, like many other MP3 players the YP-K5 is also capable of sharing photos while listening to music. Arranged in a 2×2 overview matrix, the photos can be quickly scrolled through, although actually knowing what you’re scrolling through is a different story since the preview thumbnails are generated on-the-fly rather slowly.
The pictures themselves look quite vibrant on the 1.71" OLED display, although tainted slightly yellow. Transitions between darker colors are amazingly well preserved, something other MP3 players have yet to accomplish. Zoom unfortunately is not available on the unit, however the orientation of the picture will change between portrait and landscape mode depending on the dimensions of the photo in order provide more detail. Additionally, by clicking the options button while viewing a picture, it’s possible to use it as a screensaver.
Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring, YP-K5!
One of the features I feel Samsung should have paid more attention to in their advertising campaign for the YP-K5 is the Alarm Clock. I absolutely love it! While other MP3 players from iriver and company also have alarm clocks, you either had to have a pair of speakers plugged in or attempt sleeping with earbuds in place. Not fun. With the K5’s built-in speakers however, the alarm actually becomes usable. In fact, the earphone jack is totally ignored by the Alarm Clock, only utilizing the speakers (which will work even if they’re not propped out).
Alarms can be set with one of three short ringers provided by Samsung, or a single track of your choice, and programmed to recur Once, Everyday, Monday through Friday, Monday through Saturday, or Saturday and Sundays only. It’s even possible to set the snooze timer to go off every 3, 5, or 10 minutes. When the alarm goes off, it starts out about mid volume, and progressively gets louder. Just try doing all that with your cell phone’s alarm clock, I know I can’t!
For actually displaying the time, the only way to do that is by use of the Analog Clock screensaver, which kicks in after 15 seconds at earliest. It’s rather cute, displaying a bright blue sun during the daytime, a moon sliver at night, and a red sunset in the early mornings and late afternoons. Unfortunately though, even with the alarm on it’s not possible to keep the clock display on at all times unless you have music playing, as the auto-shutoff feature will kill it in time. A digital clock is not available except when the snooze alarm goes off.
Synchronization
As far as music formats go, out of the box the YP-K5 is capable of playing WMA and MP3 files only, but this includes DRM10-protected tracks purchased from online music stores such as URGE, Napster, Rhapsody, or MusicNet. Subscription downloads are also supported, although unfortunately the YP-K5 lacks the ability to play back Audible and lossless content such as tracks encoded in either WAV or FLAC. For those willing to take the risk it’s possible to flash the player to Samsung’s Korean firmware and enable support for OGG Vorbis among other features (most notably UMS file transfer support for Mac and Linux), however this may void your warranty and will remove the ability to browse through tracks by their ID3 tags.
Songs and pictures may be transferred to the YP-K5 via any MTP capable application, including Windows Media Player 10/11 and Winamp. Samsung ships their own Samsung Music Studio 5 software with the YP-K5, although it’s not required and I actually prefer Windows Media Player’s interface over Samsung’s since it’s far easier to sift through large collections and manage playlists. On top of that, Samsung installs yet another useless startup application into the system tray (with no user friendly way to disable it, thanks Samsung!) and an unnecessary MP3 codec (LAME for ACM) by default. To add insult to injury, Samsung installs MarkAny ContentSafer (maagent.exe) to run at startup, a worthless DRM component that’s installed without notification or permission, and comes with no uninstaller. Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Samsung!
The YP-K5’s transfer speeds are above average, as I was able to fully load the 4GB MP3 player via Windows Media Player 10 with 699 songs of mixed bitrates, totaling over 52 hours of music or 3.64GB of data in less than 32 minutes, about 15.6Mbps. Of course when dealing with smaller files, transfer speeds can be hampered. To test the device’s raw throughput I transferred a 3.64GB ISO to the unit via Windows Explorer, which completed in 10 minutes and 30 seconds. That’s roughly 47.4Mbps, placing the YP-K5 faster than both the older Samsung YP-Z5 (36Mbps) and the new iPod nano 2G (32Mbps). A data partition for file transfers between computers that don’t have Windows Media Player 10/11 is not available.
Battery Life
Samsung labels the YP-K5 as a 30-hour player when using earphones, and 6 hours when using speakers. Of course, this varies with the volume level and the bitrates of the songs being listened to. In actual practice with a mixed bunch of MP3s (mostly 160kbps to 192kbps), I actually achieved 30h:45m when using headphones with the volume set slightly above 50%, and a whopping 9h:10m when using speakers set at half volume. As usual, your mileage may vary on this one, but it’s nice to know that Samsung’s actually underrated their battery life. What isn’t so nice, although not really outside of the norm either, is the fact that the YP-K5’s battery is not user-replaceable. Considering Samsung’s twelve month warranty doesn’t cover "replacement of parts due to normal wear and tear" (not that the battery would lose its recharging capability in less than a year anyway), plan to eventually replace the unit in 2-4 years unless you manage to snag a more comprehensive extended warranty from your local retailer.
Recap
Samsung certainly did a fine job when it came to engineering the YP-K5, the hardware is top notch! The sound quality is excellent, the alarm clock is actually useful, the innovative earbuds have bass that rocks, and the built-in speakers sound better than I expected. What hurts this particular player however are a few small quirks with its firmware, which doesn’t seem to have been receiving many updates outside of Korea. The issues I found aren’t big/numerous enough to prevent my endorsement of the YP-K5; however they are noticeable and leave me yearning for improvement. At $250 for a 4GB unit, the YP-K5 seems to be a good deal if you actually intend on using the speakers fairly often, otherwise there’s slimmer, more mature players out there that offer an increased storage capacity for the same price. Just don’t install the bundled software.
Pros
* Excellent sound
* Bass-enhanced earphones
* Better-than-you’d-expect speakers
* Simple controls
* Makes a great alarm clock
* Fast and sensitive FM tuner
* 30+ hour battery life
Cons
* Bulky
* Few EQ presets
* No custom EQ
* Poor readability in sunlight
* No accelerated scrolling
* Can’t turn off the fade-in
* Lacks on-the-go playlists
* No FM recording
* No USB mass storage partition
* Optional Samsung Media Studio software is misleading, bloated, and difficult to use
Veredict
If you love to share music with friends or simply prefer portable speakers over headphones, the YP-K5 is a great player with a few quirks you’ll have to live with. Otherwise there’s better equipped options on the market.
Essential Specs & Stats
* Dimensions: 3.86" x 1.87" x 0.71"
* Weight: 3.7oz. w/ battery
* Screen: 1.7" OLED
* Playable format(s): MP3 (320kbps), WMA
* Battery life: 30 hrs. (earphone jack), 6 hrs. (speakers) (We got 9 hrs. with speakers)
* Storage: 4GB built-in flash memory
* FM / Voice: Yes (No FM recording) / No
* Line-in recording? No
Package Content
* YP-K5 4GB MP3 Player
* Proprietary USB data cable
* Earbuds
* Dock adapter
* Quickstart guide
* Installation CD
Reviewed by By Scott Clark
