If you are at all thinking of buying an Ipod Shuffle, please stop, I cannot see that happening. Theres a much better product in the same/little-less cost with more features available.
If you are planning to take a Ipod Nano or higher, this review is not for you. Your choice is good. But if due to some reason you want something small, eg. Shuffle, then you have come to the right page.
Why not shuffle: Ipod shuffle is a fantastic MP3-player but it has a very bad problem of not having a display, it spoils all the fun. Because of this, you cannot even see what song its playing, its almost like an old cassette player. Samsung YP-U1 comes to rescue, it is almost the same cost of an Ipod shuffle of the same storage capacity. Eg. Ipod shuffle 256 MB is around 5000 and Samsung YP-U1 256 MB is 4700.
Why samsung: The best thing about YP-U1 is that it has an LCD Display which shuffle doesnt have. Due to this you get these extra features:
you can see what song it is playing
time left for the current song
seek where you want to go in the song
you can see what is the next song
you can see battery life
song number of total songs
selected presets
set preset (equalizer) in options
shuffle songs
browse songs and play a selected one
select if u want to shuffle, repeat etc.
and more small small things (note that I havnt listed obvious features like volume increase, select next song etc.)
these features are possible ONLY because of the Display; guess what since shuffle doesnt have a display, you dont get such basic and important features at all. All you can do is select next song/previous song, volume control.
Sound quality: Talking about sound quality, I dont need to say Samsung is one of the leading companies in electronics. Sound quality is for granted excellent.
Physic: Its size is like a rigleys chewing gum pack. Thankfully its extremely hard from outside so you dont have to worry about it at all when its in your pocket. Due to its thin size, it can even fit in ur coin pocket. Comes in various colors: Black, Blue, white.
Connectivity: It has a rotating USB connector, which can be connected to any computer running Windows or Linux, acts as a normal USB Thumb Drive. You dont have to install extra software/driver to upload songs to it or for downloading. You can also use it as a USB Drive for file transfer.
Charging: Battery can be charged through USB. Keep it connected and it will take an hour or two to get fully charged. Though I dint find the battery life good. It is able to play around only for 7-9 hours when the box says 14 hours. (However this also can be because of the reason that the ’’light’’ of the display is the cause of battery consumption and I keep it on mostly since I am always mingling with its button :p)
Audio support: Supports MP3, wav, OGG, WMA, AAC. What else you need?
alrite, I dont think I left something, that will be my review! :)