One bad thing is, I lost the little pads for the earphones after the second day of buying them. That sucked. The games are also interesting.

Well, that’s about all.

Here’s all the packaging in its glory:

And on both sides:

(This page is very image-intense. I apologize.)

So, I take out the main pack from the package (this was just the dust cover!)

…and open it up…There’s the player on the left. Now, there are two compartments on the inside: one holding the USB cables and earphones, and one holding the instruction manuals and EmoDio installation CD. Here are the contents of the package:

…and here’s the actual player. It’s turned off here, and I’m charging it as I write this post.

And also, this was the 8-GB model. If the price drops enough on Boxing Day, I’ll upgrade it to the 16-GB model.

Tomorrow I’ll give it the ol’ test run, and give my overall opinion of the player. It’s not over yet!

The Samsung YP-Q1JC

My parents were urging me to buy the less expensive version of my choice, and I pretty much succumbed. But if there is a lower price anytime, I’ll return it and pay the balance for an exchange to the JE, in case my music collection expands any.

I’ll have the player bought tonight or tomorrow.

The Samsung YP-Q1 vs. The Sony Walkman NWZ-S639F.

Alright, let’s get to the final showdown between these two.

Round 1: Cost Efficiency

The YP-Q1 costs $159.99 for a 16-GB model, while the NWZ-S639F costs $199.99 for a 16-GB model. The Q1 low-kicks the S630 with a facepalming $99.99 for an 8-GB model, while the S636F (also 8 GB) costs $149.99. Winner: Q1

Round 2: Sound Quality

The YP-Q1 is reviewed as “good” (with the DNSe driver behind it all), while the S639F’s quality is reviewed as “excellent”, with a good set of earphones to boot. Winner: S639

Round 3: Video Support

The YP-Q1 has a larger screen for viewing videos, and both players have “super-sharp screens”. The Q1 only supports MPEG4 and WMV, and the Sony player supports WMV and iPlayer files. Winner: Q1, by a nose

Round 4: Interface

The YP-Q1 has a touchpad for buttons, which adds to the appearance, while the Sony’s buttons are tactile controls that leave no room for error while sacrificing some appearance. The tacky icons on the Sony leave much to be desired, but the Q1′s “minimalistic” interface takes the cake here. Both players lack gapless playback, and the Sony player has a dedicated hold switch and volume control on the side, while the Samsung player has no such thing; just an on/off switch that doubles as a hold switch. Winner: Q1, by another nose

Round 5: Battery Life

The Q1 has 25 hours for audio, while the S639F has 40 hours. Audio support is 4 hours for the Q1, and 6 hours for the S639F. Winner: S639

Round 6: Firmware support

The Sony player works on any player with MTP. Apparently, so does the Samsung, but only on Windows systems. I use Windows Vista for lack of a wireless card driver on Linux anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me much. The Samsung player can act as file storage, and supports reading text files as well. Neither has Bluetooth support, but I don’t care about that. Winner: S639

Round 7: Feature Attrition

The Sony player has: Good earphones, SensMe, a 3-month free trial of Napster, an FM radio, a 5-band custom equalizer, and some distractions.

The Samsung player has: Support (without requirement) for EmoDio, a text browser, an FM radio with recording capabilities, a voice recorder, a 7-band equalizer, support for games and other applications, and the FM radio supports “RDS”. However, the earphones are crappy.

Winner: Q1

Round 8: CNet ratings

CNet rates the Q1 as 8.3/10, and the S639F as 8.0/10. Winner: Q1

It looks like the match is pretty even. I’ll get back on Thursday with my final verdict. Stay tuned!

From jon’s weblog:

The new Sony S630 series player is basically the same thing as the S730, but without noise-cancelling. It has an aluminum case, with many different colours, as well as being coated in plastic in some areas. It has a dedicated volume control dial, and its sunken button design makes accidental button presses less likely.

It is bundled with good earphones, and a special USB cable plus a free 3-month subscription to Napster. There are FM tuners and podcast support. As well, it is compatible with BBC’s iPlayer, as well as with WMV files. The SensMe channels will also generate playlists of songs that go well together, as well as with contingent factors like the time of day.

The player is also MTP compliant, meaning that you can drag-and-drop files into the player and it will process them automatically.

Gapless playback is missing, and so is support for lossless audio. But overall, you have no excuse not to buy this player.

From CNet UK:

The product looks so good you’ll want to marry it. The plaer supports Mp3, WMA, AAC, and WAV, but not FLAC or OGG like the Samsung Q1. The player supports podcasts, with a dedicated menu. It has support for BBC iPlayer downloads, as well as an FM radio and real-time album searching.

It’s too bad that there is no gapless playback or Bluetooth support.

Its interface is very simple and intuitive, and its video support is excellent, so small videos are very enjoyable. However, the screen is very small, so watching full-length movies is out of the question.

The audio quality, however, is the best part. It has rich bass and distortion-free sounds, as well as very powerful sounds.

Overall, they think the nano is still better, but they wouldn’t bat an eye if you chose this one.

So, the Sony Walkman S639F certainly seems much better than its E438F competitor, so the E436 and E438 players are crossed out.

From CNet:

The Sony Walkman is a very functional player, with a straightforward design and a tactile interface that has no room for error unlike touch screens. The menu is also very straightforward, leading you to each of the player’s main categories. It’s too bad that the theme can’t be changed. This Walkman has the ability to sort tracks by name and by Album, as well as magnify album art. You can drag-and-drop files into Windows Explorer or import through iTunes or Rhapsody.

For some reason, this player doesn’t support podcasts, but that’s not a major difficulty. It also has an FM radio, with 30 preset slots and a tuner.

Performance is very good overall; sound quality is excellent, and videos look very good on the… small screen. The advertised battery life is 45 hours, which is a lot. For some reason, syncing devices was very slow.

I can’t find any more detailed expert reviews, surprisingly enough. So now, I’ll be looking at user reviews, to find out what’s really good about it.

From ciao.com:

The E-Series Sony Walkman is a competitive advantage and offers a compact design with a beautiful and bright screen. It is easy to use and offers a variety of additions, however desirable, an FM tuner, equalizer, customizable interface and support for Rhapsody To Go at Amazon and video-on-demand. Rated the battery life is very good and the sound quality is very good.

The Sony Walkman E-series of peaks of 8 GB and has no memory. There is no integrated podcast support, underwriting and synchronizes the content is slow.

The Sony Walkman E-Series is a great value. It is an excellent choice for those who are an easy tool, MP3 player with a pocket for the planning, the battery of long duration, useful features and solid sound quality.

[...]

Sony E-Series has a theme, fairly standard, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because the player is very easy to use. Under the 2-inch screen are the main playback controls: one of five numerical control, a return / home button, and an option key is the different context menus. Sony includes a volume devoted switches on the right side – always a good contact – as well as a HOLD. The underside of the device is a standard 3.5-mm jack for headphones and a USB port on the property. E-compact a series of measures by 3.2 inch by 1.7 cm wide by 0.3 inch deep, it is certainly easier to pocket and would not be a sensible thing to your belt or your arm size in the gym. Delivery in a variety of colors, depending on the tastes of most: black, red, pink or blue (only 4 GB).

The next few reviews all say that there are “no disadvantages”. Seems like spammers to me, I don’t really see much I haven’t seen already.

Anyway, the reviews that are actually well written are few and far between this time. Moving on!

From PC Magazine (7/10):

The S3 is a player whose interface is its main selling point. The buttons are backlit and fade away when not in use very often. They can also be a little unresponsive at times. File support and options are the same as the Q1, including FM tuner and radio recording, as well as a world clock, alarms, and some games. There’s also support for JPEG images and text (shame they couldn’t include PNG support, but hey, you can’t have everything).

The video sucks, and the audio is so-so, but buying another pair of headphones will improve it greatly. What’s not to like about the price, eh?

A customer review from Circuit City: (customer reviews are blockquoted because they are usually very short)

I was looking for a sleek MP3 player that had touch controls. The earleir Samsung models had this feature, but did not seem very responsive and had a cheap plastic feel to the case. This new version is so much more improved with a solid metal case and responsive touch controls. It looks like it should cost way more than the $79 it goes for especially with 4GB. Beats the iPod nano. I needed an MP3 with FM radio that could also record off the radio – something that very few MP3 players now offer. This feature works great. I do not do photos or videos so was not so concerned that it does not have the best display compared to the Sony MP3 players. It would be perfect if it only included a voice recorder.

And as far as I know, it does. But the battery life does seem to suck, it’s only about 12 hours, as compared to the advertised 25.

From CNet (7/10):

The S3 has excellent sound quality and good features, as well as a lot of bang for the little buck. The player is very shiny and, oddly enough, smudge-resistant. Beneath that shiny coating lie touch-sensitive controls that light up when you touch them.

Despite the relatively small screen size, screen usage for the interface is a plus, as it manages to organize everything. There’s no Bluetooth support or support for Rhapsody DNA. Another minus is that all media must be transcoded using the “Media Studio” software (bummer; they’ll put DRM on it for sure; if they don’t, it’s no surprise either). As it turns out, the custom equalizer actually has 9 bands instead of 7, and the sound quality is very good, being deep, tight, heavy, encompassing, and still crisp and clear on the higher side.

Well, reviews for the S3 seem hard to find and are very few and far between. It seems that the battery life is much lower than advertised (around 12 to 15 hours on a full charge) and that the sound quality is at least better than decent. Moving on further!

EDIT: (17/12/2008) The S3 has been crossed off my list, as it is (quite obviously) worse than the Q1, and left on my list is the Q1 (JC or JE) and the Sony Walkman S639F.

The first up is the Samsung YP-Q1, the Q1JC and Q1JE of which are in the top 6 list. (Their sole difference is the disk size, ranging from 8 GB to 16 GB.)

From Techradar.com:

It seems that the Q1 is the latest addition to the YP line of Samsung MP3 players. (They also have a computer named the Q1, but I mean YP-Q1 when I talk about it here.) They talk very praisefully about the touchpad on the bottom of the Q1 and how it’s similar to the P2′s touch screen. They also hark the minimalistic look of the Q1, with only a touchpad as the buttons and an on/off switch at the side. That’s it for the interface, but the icons are also nice and big, and there is also a file browser and text browser.

The earphones that they supply are, apparently, less comfortable than even Apple’s `phones, but I can remedy that by buying another pair if the first one fizzles out.

They also have EmoDio, a music store / player / manager, but it is not required to run the player, which is a definite plus above the iPod. Plugging the device into a USB drive, the computer says that the device is simply a USB device, and can act as a storage device, like the Creative Zen. However, unlike Creative, this stored content can actually be accessed using the player.

The player’s DNSe 3.0 driver can produce crisp, clear sounds, and comes with 13 presets for the player, as well as a manual 7-band equalizer if you want to do it manually.

The video player supports WMV, and the BBC iPlayer’s content.

All in all, the site says, this is a very viable alternative to the iPod, if Apple isn’t your cup of tea.

(Note: content is not blockquoted because it is not a direct quote.)

From James Cridland’s blog:

Apparently, in the UK, a lot of people will advertise “works with BBC iPlayer!” when selling this Samsung player.

The touchpad lights up nicely, the screen is very bright, and the FM radio has RDS! (YAY! This means that it will display the station name as well as the “program type”.) You can also record the radio broadcast as an MP3.

The msuic player “just works”, the audio player “just works”, and there is room for extras, includign applications and a “tube map”.

The site also says that what’s really too bad about it is that it only works with Windows and that the connector is nonstandard. Also, the touchpad is too sensitive and the lock button won’t unlock without turning the damn thing off, or stop the LED’s from glowing and wasting batteries.

From CNET UK:

This review is pretty short and sweet. They like the design, screen quality, FLAC support, and the support for BBC iPlayer. They don’t like: no gapless playback (? I want that! But it’s no big deal) a much-too-sensitive control pad (like I haven’t heard that before!), no support for WAV and AAC (meh, I can live with that), and no Bluetooth support.

On second thought, there is a much longer review.

Okay, this review says that the sensitivity of the player can be a bad thing at times, since your finger will undoubtedly press the wrong part of the pad and miss stuff. However, the player is both lightweight and powerful, with a very good video functio and a super-sharp screen. The voice recorder sucks, but it’s very easy to use (almost as easy as the iPod) and has good sound quality, if not as good as some others (e.g. all the others, such as Sony, CReative, or Apple).

All these reviews came from the UK, for some strange reason. But everyone pretty much has the same things to say: They like the overall design, support for both Windows Media types, and support for the iPlayer. They all say that the touchpad is too sensitive, that the player only works with Windows, and there’s no feature that you don’t know about but love once you discover it. I guess this player is a pretty palpable choice. Moving on!

(P.S. I must thank these reviewers. While not for the purpose of me analyzing the reviews, they have provided immense help in helping me make my decision by posting these reviews.)

I took different points of view into account when making my choices. There are a total of 8 lists below.

Top 6 players in all lists:

The Penny Pincher (Cost: 200, Disk Size: 100, Battery Life: 10)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	92.80
Samsung S3JC (8 GB)	91.25
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	88.92
Samsung S3JA (4 GB)	88.02
Creative Zen Mozaic (4 GB)	86.11
Sony Walkman E436F (4 GB)	85.82

The Pauper (Cost: 400, Disk Size: 50, Battery Life: 50)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	93.67
Samsung S3JA (4 GB)	93.27
Sony Walkman E436F (4 GB)	92.83
Creative Zen Mozaic (4 GB)	92.23
Samsung S3JC (8 GB)	91.27
Creative Zen Mozaic (2 GB)	91.03

The Environmentalist (Cost: 100, Disk Size: 100, Battery Life: 200)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Sony Walkman E438F (8 GB)	92.83
Sony Walkman E436F (4 GB)	90.33
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	87.33
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	85.17
Samsung P2JCB (8 GB)	84.50
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	84.17

The Greenpeace Activist (Cost: 50, Disk Size: 25, Battery Life: 500)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Sony Walkman E438F (8 GB)	98.38
Sony Walkman E436F (4 GB)	98.38
Sony Walkman S636F (16 GB)	88.46
Samsung P2JA (4 GB)	88.00
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	87.94
Samsung P2JC (8 GB)	87.39

The File-Hoarder (Cost: 100, Disk Size: 250, Battery Life: 60)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	95.93
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	93.24
Creative Zen (16 GB)	90.19
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	87.64
Sony Walkman E438F (8 GB)	87.53
Samsung S3JC (8 GB)	85.98

The Packrat (Cost: 40, Disk Size: 400, Battery Life: 20)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Zune 80 (80 GB)	104.78
Zune 120 (120 GB)	104.09
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	103.10
iPod Classic (120 GB)	102.96
iPod Touch (32 GB)	102.80
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	101.16

The Egalitarian (Cost: 100, Disk Size: 100, Battery Life: 100)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Sony Walkman E438F (8 GB)	90.33
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	88.00
Sony Walkman E436F (4 GB)	87.00
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	86.67
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	86.67
Samsung S3JC (8 GB)	83.33

Me (Cost: 40, Disk Size: 50, Battery Life: 10)

Brand Name	Score (out of 100)
Samsung Q1JE (16 GB)	93.27
Samsung Q1JC (8 GB)	89.67
Samsung S3JC (8 GB)	88.07
Sony Walkman S639F (16 GB)	87.73
Sony Walkman E438F (8 GB)	86.83
Creative Zen (16 GB)	85.33

Taking the ones that appear in these lists the most, we get:

So, out of all of these players, the top 6 in all categories are: the Samsung Q1JE, the Sony Walkman S639F, the Samsung Q1JC, the Sony Walkman E436F, the Samsung S3JC, and the Sony Walkman E438F.

I’ll have my final decision by this Thursday. Stay tuned!

It’s not that I’ve never had one, it’s just that the ones I’ve had, I never tended to use a lot, and I’ve had the tendency to lose. This time around, I want one that I’ll use more often.

I decided to go to RadioShack (now called “The Source, by Circuit City”, but I like the former name better) one day (November 29, 2008, to be exact) to shop around for a player (to make note of which one I’d include in my wish list). I found a saleswoman who gave me a “tour” of all the players they had, putting special emphasis on the hard-drive iPods and Zunes, which each cost about $240. And the saleswoman told me that one of the good things about the Zune was that it used .wma! I see something fundamentally wrong with that. Not with the saleswoman, whose identity is not known to me, but with the concept of playing something up that’s actually a bad thing. WMA is just not a standard.

I’ve decided to do a little bit of research on what MP3 players to buy. I want to devise a rating scale first:

The Stats:

Currently, my entire music library is about 1.5 GB, but I plan on getting a lot of stuff from Newgrounds in the future, so I want at least 4 GB on the player, although I could do without.

I want an MP3 player that supports the .mp3 format. (Obviously.) I’m not going to use it for much other than playing MP3’s and storing files, and I won’t use the built-in software uploader, so I don’t need video file support, although it would be a bonus.

I want an MP3 player that does not put DRM on every song it downloads. (Most MP3 players follow this rule, but I also want a player that does not have its own store associated with it. I’m looking at you, iTunes.)

I want an MP3 player that does not have wireless capabilities, and does not connect to the Internet. You’d be surprised at how annoyed I am at a feature that’s there, but I can’t use. I’m looking at you, iPod touch.

I want an MP3 player that has an interface that has more than 4 buttons. I had a CREATIVE® MuVo that had only a tracking wheel to scroll. I had to scroll about 20 times to get to one option I wanted. Not exactly horrible, but still…

My budget is probably around $200, but I can get anything up to about $300 if the price is really that high, because I can then use my own money.

You know what, I could probably make a manifesto out of this:

The MP3 Player Manifesto

I want an MP3 player that does what I tell it to.

I want an MP3 player with all the features that I use and none more.

I want an MP3 player that is free of restrictions.

I want an MP3 player without DRM.

Or, a computer manifesto. Ahem, getting back on topic…

I decided to compile a table of all the MP3 players out there and what they had to offer. Here it is below:

Criteria for all players: They have some sort of interface screen (unlike the iPod shuffle or the Samsung Pebble) and have at least 2 GB of data space. They must support USB connectivity (which ones don’t nowadays?) and Windows XP and Vista.

Sites to search: (company sites of) Best Buy, Future Shop, Costco, The Source by Circuit City (Since RadioShack’s store only sells to the US and I live in a cold, frosty igloo in Toronto, Canada.)

The info was removed because it was too encumbering for this page. If you still want it, it’s part of an Excel file now.

I did a survey of MP3 player usage at our school on December 2^nd. The results were:

10 of the 74 people I surveyed don’t use a portable audio device.

The last two in quotes are obscure Asian brands. But now, I need to create a general weighted rating system to make the final decision.

Here are the criteria I’m thinking of including:

1. Cost

Obviously, cost is a minus unless I’m selling the player on eBay. I want a system that fits my budget. My budget is $250, but I’d prefer a player that costs around $120.

2. Disk Size

Disk size is another telltale plus. I want one that has a size of about 4 GB, maybe more if the space requires.

3. Battery Life

   This one is slightly less obvious. A longer battery, as long as it’s at least 24 hours, shouldn’t matter much, but to me, the more the merrier. (And the merrier, the better of a Christmas it is.)

4. Features

   A touch-screen interface is a plus.

   A graphical interface is neutral.

   Any sort of touch interface or dynamic scrolling is a plus.

   A custom equalizer and FM tuner are a plus.

5. Penalties

   A non-graphical interface is a minus, and a non-visual interface is a big minus.

   Any sort of DRM is a minus.

   If the player only supports a certain piece of software (I’m looking at you, iPod), this is a big minus.

   If the player has a store associated with it (I’m looking at you, iPod and Zune), this is a very small minus.

6. Weights!

   I don’t care much about cost (except that it doesn’t go over $250… I don’t like that kind of player either, and most of them don’t go over this.)

   I care a lot about disk size. As in, a hell of a lot. Even more than cost.

   I practically don’t care about battery life, as long as it’s over 12 hours, and most players have this.

Check Tuesday for updates. See you soon with my decision!

I’ll have 6 interim decisions hammered down by Sunday night.