Since the explosion in flash memory, you can now pick out small capacity MP3 players in virtually every conceivable size and shape. That's great for novelty value, but the truth is that a large majority of these are over priced and a pain to control. The Samsung YP-U2 is tackling the problem head on; first of all, the player is pretty cheap (starting from £49 - more details to follow) and secondly it has a wide range of controls from eight individual buttons.
Format support consists of MP3, WMA and more interestingly Ogg Vorbis. Track information is displayed on a tiny, four line LCD display. Like most of flash players of its kind, it plugs straight into your USB port and can be double up as standard storage device and voice recorder.
There was a serious risk that the eight buttons on the device could have made it a real pain to navigate and control. However, one of the YP-U2's most pleasant surprises is that it is remarkably easy to control. Admittedly these controls can err on the side of fiddly but there's not really much of a way around that on such a small gadget.
People who prefer drag-and-drop will like this player because there is barely any need to bother with the accompanying software unless you need to copy DRM protected content. The rest of the time just dumping the files into it will do just fine.
There's no question that this is a budget player and that is reflected in a few areas. The greatest problem is that the ear phones are dreadful - they are pretty uncomfortable, refuse to sit in your ears and don't sound that great. This latter point is a more serious failing because Ogg Vorbis users especially will find the rest of the sound quality pretty impressive for such a low cost device. If you add a better pair of ear phones, you get a much better time of it, but there is still slight lack of bass power which you can get on more expensive rivals.
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The Samsung YP-U2 has its drawbacks but there aren't any better players in its price range. It is far cheaper than rivals like the iPod nano and will set you back £49 for 512MB, £69 for one Gig or £99 for two Gigs. If you do have the money to spend, seriously consider Samsung's YP-Z5 instead, but otherwise this a great value player.
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