Customer Reviews

Samsung YH-820MC 5 GB Digital Audio Player

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I have been using my YH820 for about 2 months now. I think it is a great value for the money.

Pros:
5 Gb for $200. For now, that is a good deal and certainly a value when you consider the other features the 820 provides

Unlike previous reviewers, I had absolutely no problems getting my unit to synch with Windows Media Player. Select your files and send them to your Synch list, then Synch now, and the files get pushed over. I didn't load NAPSTER, as I don't want 3rd party apps cluttering my PC. Originally I didn't load the Samsung software either, but then I had problems getting the JPGs to show correctly after a direct file transfer via filesystem (not saying that it can't be done, its just easier with the native Samsung software)

Accessible via file system (technical saavy required)

Battery life is satisfactory, about 6-7 hours.

Color LCD and ability to display JPGs and slide shows

Unit has a Line-in, and is capable of recording/ripping from external sources (have a portable CD player, and you dont need a pc to rip songs to your device)

SAMSUNG claims that the software and features are upgradeable on the player, as well as 3rd party apps, but I have yet to see any released software or updates.

CONS

Color LCd, still too small to really enjoy the pictures

Proprietary USB connection integrated into charger. Would have liked a standard micro USB connector.

LOOOONG start up time

Hard drive is formatted with FAT32. Over time, this will prove to be a problem as the file system degenerates.

Takes way too long to synch/xfer files. My first synch was 4.5 GB and took hours.

Overall, I think its great for the price and as a bonus, you get to view pictures (would have been nice to be able to watch WMV's) and record. I bought it and would recommend it to anyone.

First of all, I'd like to say that I have NO idea what anyone here is talking about. I purchased this MP3 player, have loaded over 2000 songs in it, and never ONCE installed napster. the installation of napster is just NOT necessary! i never installed it. i stuck with realplayer, which works VERY well and I am very pleased. I use my mp3 player for hours every day and have NEVER had any problems with it. The only issue I have with it is that it does take about 15 seconds to start it up. But that doesn't make any difference to me. Who needs music to startup right away anyway?! I am not a camera person, but I have used the photo album. I'm pleased with it, but that wasn't the reason I bought it for. In conclusion, this mp3 player is very nice, despite what was said by the crazy people below. And not ONCE have I had an issue with the Hard Drive. This mp3 player might be a little pricy, but if youre willing to spend the amount, the color screen makes it worth it. The headphones included are very acceptable, and I am extremely satisfied with my samsung mp3 player.

Smaller than the iPod mini and has a color screen and relatively easy navigation. A little slow to boot up initially, but this is not a detrimental issue. Definitely glad I researched this before plunging into the iCult. I'm not sure what Bill Waff was speaking of below, but the player is indeed WMP compatible and you do not need to be online to manage your library.

I've used this MP3 player for a few months now and have to say its a very nice little unit. I would spring for the extra $20-30 to get an extra warranty. With mine, I swap it out if something goes wrong...no sending it in for repairs.
So here's a breakdown of what I think of the Sam-pod...
Positive:
Great color screen
Easy to use
Nice size
Sounds great
Looks great

Negative:
Barely get 8 hours on battery
Can't use I-Tunes (but Media Player 10 works well)
Not many accessories
SLOW to start up (as compared to ipod)

I bought my unit after trying two different units in home. I tried the Creative Labs Jukebox(40GB) and then tried another Creative Labs unit. I stayed with this one because it gave me zero problems. I like the color screen that the unit has. Nice and easy software to uplaod photo's to and from the unit. The player comes bundled with Napster software but the software is not necessary to use th player. If you read the users manual you will realize that you can also use Windows Media PLayer to transfer music to and from the unit. It is a fairly fast transfer to the unit if you have USB 2.0. If you dont have USB 2.0 and are wanting to use the player it is going to be a slow slow process for you. I filled up the player to full capacity in less than three hours(dont know exact time....I walked away and went to do some other things around the house). Unlike the Ipod you can delete track by track listing instead of having to erase the whole players memory. Found that a very cool feature. I have switched out songs a few times and never experienced one problem in doing so. When the player gets to full capacity it does run slow(they even tell you this in the manual). This is a drawback to going with a hard drive based unit in general. Every HD unit has this problem so if you think you will avoid it by going wiht an Ipod think again. While using the player I found a few minor problems. The menu system likes to move slow and seems to get stuck at times. If you excersise patience when you player this shouldnt present any problems. I can't seem to get the two second gap in between tracks out. I listen to techno and this does bother me but I will get over it. I recommend this player to anyone who wants a better deal than the Ipod.

This is a great mp3 player as far as I'm concerned. I bought it refurbished and have had nothing but good things to say so far. Regarding start-up time: it's faster than my cell phone (LGVX6100). (Just a thought: must we have our music so desperately that we are unwilling to wait 23 seconds?) Software: like others, I recommend Windows Media Player, I have v.10, I never even loaded Napster (it's so slow, why bother). The Samsung is smaller than most competitors, holds plenty of music/files/photos, you can record voice with it - the only feature I miss is the FM transmitter. Join the non-iPod crowd, it's just as good (if not better, and cheaper) on the other side.

Pros:
1.Like the buttons better on the Samsung then the Creative Labs Zen micro. The Samsung has a nice pad and I rarely make mistakes with my selections. You always had to put the Zen on hold so that your pants pockets do not change tracks. Touch pad was way to sensitive and I found myself changing tracks/selections even when handling the device. If the Zen had a similar control method it would have been a keeper. Stayed away from the iriver H10 for this very reason.
2.The unit plays very loud.
3.The form factor is great. It has a mix of aluminum and plastic and is very pocketable.
4.The player is compatible with music services that offer music to go (Janus compatible). This is not the case out of the box. Samsung had released a firmware upgrade a week ago that makes it compatible with Yahoo unlimited, Napster to go and Rhapsody to go. The three services and CNET.com do not make mention that this player is compatible. Which is a shame because I would have skipped over this player.
5.Unit has a nice color screen which make menu selections easy to do.
6.The player is a great value. A 1gb flash player can set you back $150. I bought this player for $199 at Sams club and it's even cheaper on Amazon and ebay.
7.Firmware upgrade added Janus music support and fixed a few problems. Before the upgrade it would take 25 to 27 seconds for the unit to boot up and the menu/track selections were not as responsive. After the upgrade it now takes 15 to 18 seconds and the music selection is faster.
8.Can do line-in and mic recordings. Quality of line recording is good.
9.Did not experience any lockups as reported around the internet on this unit. So far it has been a solid player especially after the firmware update.

Cons:
1.Battery power is terrible when using the backlight/color display.
2.Unit uses a propritary cable instead of the mini cable.
3.Usb and power cable is consolidated into one. If I want to charge the unit without having it hooked up to the usb port I have to unplug the cable from the back of my computer. With the Zen it came with a usb to ac charger and the usb port charged the player when hooked up to the computer. The Samsung left me for dead when I forgot to bring my charger to work.
4.It took a firmware update to get the unit compatible with the music to go sevices. Go to software updates instead of firmware to get the appropiate firmware. The Zen had the same problem out of the box.
5.Non user replacable battery. Looks pretty simple to open though.
6.There is no audio sync function (track splitting)when recording via line in with this player. The input is captured as one continuous mp3. I have a samsung flash player that handles this function better than this player (choice of 1,3 and 5 second delay and will stop when no sound is present).
7.No custom eq with this unit. You can select from a few presets.
8.Can not create a new playlist within the player. So far I can add new playlists using Rhapsody and Napster. There is one playlist which you can add tracks to.

So far I rate this player higher than the rest of the Micro hard drive players that I have experience with. I have tried these player first hand and here are the major reasons why I did not go for competition.

Ipod mini - I tunes do not support the music to go which I love so far in Yahoo unlimited and Rhapsody. This is the main reason for skipping over this player.

Creative Labs Zen - Touch pad is too sensitive. It was pretty cool during the first day but I got real fustrated when the player would navigate all over the place while handling it.

Iriver H10 - The cost was higher and it has that touch pad in the middle. The Ipod comes close to being usable but I prefer traditional tactile feedback buttons.

Conclusion: If it wasn't for the firmware upgrade this player would have rated 3 stars. Maybe with additional firmware upgrades it can get close to a five but it still will have the usb/power cable issue.

Pro1: Decent sound with EQ off or on WOW. You can alter the SRS level, the bass level and the treble/mid (focus) level. Compared with the parametric EQ on a Rio Karma, optimized for Sony MDRex71 phones, the sound is fine enough, though still a tiny bit short for me. Also, the sound can saturate and distort easily on low volume when using WOW/SRS or preset EQ settings.

Pro2: It's fairly thin and light for having a color screen.

Pro3: Display is nice, bright and colorful.

Pro4: buttons don't have huge gaps that allow dust under the screen or in other places (at least not yet)

Pro5: recording, mic and line in do work good enough.

Pro6: photo viewer--though I haven't tried it yet.

Con1: While it can act as an USB storage device, the non-standard cable forces you to haul it around. The cable is also the power cord, though it has a separate AC/DC end for plugging into the wall (also non-standard).

Con2: No bookmarks for multiple saved positions. With 5GB this should be a given (I want to have several playlists each with their own bookmark). It does resume position, but only the last one.

Con3: Battery life, due to color screen I presume, is low.

Con4: Startup is slow. My 20gb Karma starts play in about 5-7 seconds from pushing ON. The yepp 5gb yh-820mc takes at least twice or more time.

Con5: A playlist can be created on the player, but I see no way to make multiple ones with the included software. The whole method of playlist creation is a bit confusing too.

Con6: playback options are limited, in terms of selection by album, artist, genre, etc. A lot of players now let you choose by age, date, etc as well.

Con7: No FM radio, no text reader (the smaller flash player has these)

Con8: mic recordings are only set to 8khz, 32kbps.

The Samsung YH-820MC and related family of iPod-competitors represent a nice attempt, but are not quite ready for prime time. Too bad, really, because with some improvements this could be a solid little iPod-killer. Obviously, this model was rushed to market to capitalize on the iPod craze, and it wasn't really consumer-tested extensively enough. Samsung is shooting themselves in the foot, because with better software and an easier, more feature-rich interface, it would be an excellent little player/recorder.

First the positives: Good sound... not super-powerful, but nice. There are several standard EQ settings (all presets, and fairly decent), and there is a surround-simulator (WOW) and BassBoost. A truly nice feature is that you can also change the player's tonal output to match speakers, earphone, headphone or carpack. The shuffle and repeat play are good, and volume is easily controlled through membrane-keys on the unit's faceplate. The screen is bright and clear, big enough to read without being overwhelming. The unit's size is perfect... it fits well in the palm of the hand, and controls are thumb-reachable like the iPod. It's slightly longer than a pack of gum, and very slim and light. Battery life is realistically 4-5 hours, and charging takes only about 2-3 hours. The unit has a built-in lithium battery, but it may be user-replacable. The proprietary connector includes a red/green LED to indicate the charging and USB interface status.

Now, the negatives, and there are plenty of them to report.

Generally, the biggest and most disappointing problem with the unit is that it *requires* you to use Napster-to-Go for everything. That in itself isn't so bad, except that you also *must* be online to do anything at all with your library (or indeed to even connect to the unit). So, even if, like me, you have no interest in buying music online (sorry, I'm not a pop fan), and you simply want to copy your own mp3 files to the player, you have to sign-in to Napster. This makes all your transfers even slower, as it is communicating god-knows-what about your music library to god-knows who over the net, and possibly adding digital-rights management to the files you already own. Add to the mix a slow connection like my dial-up, and you're in for a long haul just to copy your own music to your own player. Sorry, but this is just too limiting and basically obnoxious. If I own the music I want to hear, I shouldn't have to go home, log on to the internet, wait for Napster to start up and sign me in, and sift through annoying napster pop-up ads... only
to add or change my player's library. Also, I can't use the player at work, since I cannot install or use Napster on my office machine.

Some other problems that bothered me were that the player's controls are clunky. The play/pause/power button often has to be pressed twice to respond, while the back and next buttons are overly sensitive. This made my life difficult when listening to long audio files (I listen to jazz, opera and classical pieces which can be quite long). An accidental brush of the next key skips immediately to the next file, and I'd lose my place in an hour 1/2-long file. Ditto with trying to scan forward or back using these keys... if you don't press hard enough and hold, it would register the command as a skip back or skip next instead. Scanning through files is slow (and constant speed, but it does have a auto scan-lock feature so you won't be losing feeling in your thumb). You'll find that the unit's HOLD switch is absolutely essential.

The interface is workable, but a little clunky. They have tried to make it intuitive, but have omitted any help function to guide you if you get confused. The manual (as per usual in the electronics industry today) is for kindergarden-users only ("to play a file, press PLAY," The End). Only after poking around did I discover that I could access limited file functions (delete, add to playlist, et cetera, but for voice recordings
only). The volume level auto-resets between boot-ups. I often had the volume cranked to hear some mp3s I had recorded at low levels, and the next time I used the unit, the volume would "normalize" to 50% level. This may be a feature, so as to save your ears from being blasted unexpectedly.

Other users have mentioned long boot-up times. This is certainly true, 20 seconds roughly. While this is annoying, it is not uncommon for nearly all the mp3 hard drive players I have tried. I found it worse that it took a long time to shut down. It is easier to simply set the "power off" timer to 30 seconds, then when want to I turn it off I simply hit the pause button.

Another problem is with using the device as a portable USB drive. You have to use the proprietary connector, and any music files you transfer this way are not playable. They are not updated in the unit's playlists, accessible only through Napster (See my "for geeks only" note below for a technical work-around for this problem). There is also no seperate USB-mini port. You have to use the proprietary connector. Even though the unit will function on battery/USB power, I found that the unit's operational speed was increased greatly when the power adapter was also connected.

Recording is a breeze, and is acutally a little too easy. There is a record button on the side of the unit, which when depressed for more than 2 seconds, sets the unit to recording. To my surprise, I accidentally recorded a lot of stuff without realizing it, because the button is in a spot that makes it easy to hit it by mistake. The soft-touch button is small and you may not notice when it is pressed. Several times, I found that I had activated the record when I pulled the unit in or out of the belt clip. The line-in recordings work well, and let you encode directly to mp3 (max 160 kbps, 44 Mhz). The voice recording always defaults to 32 kbps, but the mic is clear and sensitive. There is a 3-hour (180 minute) file limit to any recording. Line-in recordings are done through the included patch cable (mini stereo male > micro stereo male). Record levels are decent and controllable on the fly. You can use line-level or headphone-level as input. Headphone-level sources are trickier, since the volume of the output device can overmodulate the record levels.

Lastly, the unit claims to be Windows Media compatible, but it is NOT (despite the manufacturer's claims above). WMP 10 (with the most updated drivers) does not even recognize it, even if the system can see the unit as a USB drive. Tech support at Microsoft also says they have no plans for including this unit in their "Plays For Sure" device interface feature. Interestingly, the package for the Samsung states that one of the system requirements is to have Windows Media Player installed. Why, if the unit isn't recognized by WMP? The answer is that when this model was previewed during the Comsumer Electronics Show last year, it was announced to be WMP compatible... but that must have changed, and perhaps MS rejected the unit as a supportable player. The Samsung's package also mentions nothing of requiring the use of Napster (it only says that it is "Napster compatible"). This means that it must have been a last-minute change of interface software to get around losing WMP certification. So, isn't that false advertising?

As a consumer, I feel angry that I am only told after the purchase that I also have to use software that requires me to register and be bombarded with ads... and I can't use anything else. Neither ITunes nor MusicMatch can recognize the unit, either. It's like buying a TV, and then once you get home you find out that it will only work with one cable company's signal, and you can't even play your DVDs on it without subscribing to that cable service. Deceptive and underhanded, to say the least.

Many of the interface problems can be fixed if only Samsung makes the attempt. The firmware release is 3.01, so I am holding out hope that they are going to continue to improve the functioning of the unit. It still has a chance of being a reasonable iPod-turnative. Dropping the Napster requirement and adding Microsoft WMP compatibility is an absolute MUST (especially since they already advertise it as being so). Samsung is also seemingly too concerned with appeasing the RIAA to care to make things easy or usable for the consumer.

Are you are listening, Samsung?


Note: For Geeks Only
If you are more of a techie, you can overcome the Napster problem by downloading gUSB.exe, a freely-available USB utility for Windows XP (available here: http://winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=139125). Once installed on your computer, this makes the Samsung's entire drive accessible through the Windows File Explorer. You can then transfer music directly to the (hidden) system folder SYSTEM/MUSIC on the Samsung's drive. But, that in itself won't make the files playable... you then have to run the Samsung's Windows Utility (included with the unit) and select "rebuild the library." This will read the files in the Music folder and add them to the unit's track listing. Likewise, if you delete or rename anything in the Music folder, you have to re-run the utility to re-update the track listing. This is sometimes time consuming, but is still faster than using the Napster software (and you don't have to be online to do it). This also works for the line-in and voice recordings as well. But beware, without using the Samsung utility afterwards, the unit will not operate correctly and will freeze up, requiring a hard-reset (there is a pinhole reset button on the back of the unit). With the gUSB utility, you can also play the files directly from the Samsung's Music folder through any Windows mp3 player (WMP, Winamp, MusicMatch, et cetera). Be very careful not to delete any of the other folders on the unit, otherwise you will have to reformat the unit through the Samsung utility. Also, like any XP drive, you have to "safely remove hardware" or "eject" the disk before disconnecting to avoid losing data and having to reformat.

I purchased a YH-820 in June of 2005. For approximately four months, the device worked perfectly and its features had me convinced this was the best mp3 player ever created. That is what I thought until October of that year. It was in that month that the device's HDD (Hard Drive Disk) crashed and would shut itself off (the screen would state that it could not HDD initialize). The HDD had crashed once before, yet I managed to get the device to operate, just that one time; now, the device refuses to function. Being that I NEVER abused the contraption and I spent $230 on the damn thing, I, of course, was pretty ticked off. And when I say ticked off, I mean that I am PISSED OFF out of my mind. Now, after completely abandoning my faith in Samsung, I am looking to get a new mp3, such as a Creative Zen Micro. To summarize what I have just said, the device has magnificent features that lure you (the customer) into buying the mp3. However, after some time's use, the device's HDD WILL, and I mean WILL, crash on you too. Forget what other people say (for they most likely have just bought theirs and do not suspect anything wrong yet) and forget all the hype (for I once campaigned to promote this device). DO NOT BUY THIS THING. I am trying to warn you so you do not make the same mistake I did. I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. Now, I do not know if this problem has been looked into by Samsung, so you might want to check that out. So my advice is, if Samsung says it has addressed the problem, then give the player a shot, but keep your receipt in the event of future device failure. But, if Samsung says nothing, then DO NOT BUY IT!!!