Samsung YP-K5

You can also wake up to your favorite music with the built-in alarm function by selecting the mp3 of your choice and setting it as your wake up call.

You can be connected to your PC using the USB 2.0 cable and use the player as a portable drive as well. That’s right. You can simply drag and drop files into their respective folders. The 'Media Studio' software provided isn’t necessary, but it does come in handy to convert your non-MP3 music into acceptable formats.

The only complaint here is that the player itself doesn't have a standard mini-USB port. The cable plugs into a proprietory connector at the base of the player.

Sound
The inbuilt speakers did not impress me too much. In fact, the output is rather low. There are plenty of mobile phones out there that sound louder and clearer. My Nokia 3250 does a better job with its loudspeaker. As cool as the player may look with its speakers, the output compared to that with the earphones is bad with a capitol "B".

Sound quality really is quite good using the earphones however. With the help of the presets like – Vocals, Bass Boost, Concert Hall or 3D sound, it only enhances your overall experience of the player. In your crowded Mumbai streets (or anywhere else in the city) it’s a real blessing to have ear phones that block out the yelling, shouting or car horns blaring. You can slink back into your own private world and enjoy your favorite beats.

And thank goodness for the standard 3.5mm headphones jack. Instead of having to listen to music on the tiny speakers, I can easily hook it up to my amp and let the 3D DNSe (which stands for Digital Natural Sound engine by the way) sound engulf me. It sounds great on the earphones and even better when plugged into my amp.

Visuals
What I like most about this player is the graphics when the music is playing. For all you psychedelic people out there – When the player is in Stand-By mode as well, a screen saver is activated, that’s colorful and jazzy enough to look something like an iTunes visualization. Or you can simply leave the graphic EQ on for the Winamp style Spectrum Analyzer to play. The player looks extremely funky when in speaker mode as the display changes to horizontal viewing. Although, it doesn’t stand on its flat base, which is the speaker portion, but rather on the screen part which places it at an angel with the speakers facing you.

Your photos can be viewed as thumbnails or in a slideshow fashion. Although we’re not talking about high resolution viewing here, it’s still clear enough.