SAMSUNG P3 PALM THEATRE PLUS 16 GB MP3 PLAYER

Review: I am very disappointed. No manual. The screen smudges easily. The keys are stiff and barely functional. The only plus is the audio: it is clear and bright. The phones that come with the set stink. The Samsung YP-P3JES Black 16GB P3 Bluetooth Palm Theater Plus Multimedia Player With Touch Screen is not worth the money. Go elsewhere.
Rating: 1 / 5

Review: I got this as a Chirstmas gift. After researching for a long time, I decided to go with this one because I don’t like how iPod and Zune tether you to their software and require more money to get all the features.

The sound and screen quality are fantastic. I loaded up a ton of free flash games and some of them are really great. Others are incompatible, but that is the game’s fault, not the P3. The speaker is good for what it is.

Emodio, the Samsung software, will not work for me. It typically crashes as soon as I try to open it. Once I finally got it working I loaded some music to test it out. When I came back to upload more, it wouldn’t let me. Eventually I tried just going through Windows Explorer and dragging files, but it would tell me the device was not functioning or was unplugged (which it was not). Again, after unplugging and replugging dozens of time, it appeared that I had to transfer files within the first minute or so of plugging it in for it to take them. Otherwise it stopped responding – yet still allowed me to browse the folders in Explorer.

So I got all my songs loaded up (after hours of manually updating album art since Emodio either didn’t have it or wasn’t working) and I started enjoying it, figuring I can live with the uploading quirks. However, I tried playing it in my car. I have USB plugs in 2 cars that play directly through the stereo. Both work great with an old iPod and an old Samsung mp3 player I have. The P3 however, will only play the first 255 of my songs. And it will also only play for about 30-45 seconds before disconnecting and changing sources.

I went to the Samsung site and registered it and then attempted to get some help or suggestions. There is nothing of the sort on the Samsung site. The only help is the form to send it in for service (at my expense). I tried using the web site to set it up but it wouldn’t allow me to type in the address field and only allows 200 characters to describe your problem. I ended up calling and getting an address to send it to. I am hoping it isn’t just returned to me stating they could not duplicate the problem.

I will update this review as the progress unfolds.

Update – 2/15/10: after a month and a half I decided to call Samsung to find out what’s going on and I’m told my service order request was canceled because there was no return address on file. So it would appear my P3 has been sitting the whole time with no service done. The process is starting over. I guarantee that I provided my address when I first called got the ticket before sending it in – and my address was also listed on the package and inside the package.
Rating: 2 / 5

Review: I waited awhile to upgrade from my creative zen V. I thought this was the perfect replacement. It is larger, but has loads of new features and works with Rhapsody (required). It, as of now, does not work with Audible (lame).

Overall, it is good. But there are some things that really bug me:

1. The touch screen is very picky. I often tap on what I want and nothing happens. I do it again…again nothing. Basically, if you touch the screen with the slightest sliding motion, it thinks you are trying to scroll, so it doesn’t select. I have real trouble with this.

2. When listening to some album or artist, if you hit back, it goes to the list of artist albums. That is ok. But if you hit back again, you don’t go to the artist list now, you go to the home screen. This is retarded. I then have to go into music, sort by artist, to get to the screen I want. I don’t know why on earth they thought they should skip back to the beginning in such a circumstance.

3. The gesture idea is catching on, and often poorly. Here, you can set the screen so that a swipe either fast forwards some amount (choosable) or skips to the next track. Well sometimes I want to skip, sometimes I want to fast forward. But you can only set the swip to do one. This means that to do the other, you have to look at the screen and carefully choose the appropriate small button.

Overall, they could vastly improve this product if they:

1. tried not to make it a PDA. (I am not going to use this for anything but music and maybe video, but def not for calendar, notepad, games, or anything else.)

2. Made all buttons on the screen bigger. My fingers are not huge and I have real trouble picking the button I want.

3. Studied how everyone uses their mp3 player and make all of the functions that 90% of people use do-able or possibly do-able. They have a habit of choosing one thing and forcing everyone to operate the same way (Apple-syndrome).

Overall, when it comes to usability, the Creative Zen V wins. I could do all kinds of things with it without looking at the screen. This is very good when working out or while driving.

I will likely replace this within a year when I find something better. My new Droid seems to do everything this can do…and better, except rhapsody (for now).
Rating: 3 / 5