Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0

The Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0 is basically a souped-up version of the 4.0 portable media player. It has a very similar set of tech specs to the 4.0 model, which is in turn heavily based on the Galaxy S smartphone. This 5.0 PMP does, however, have a bigger screen (5" instead of 4"), a flash and a longer battery life. As you'll see from out test results though, it can't match the 4.0 on some key criteria.

Full details of the product's audio quality, design and handling can be found in our review of the Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi 4.0 (and therefore also the Galaxy S smartphone review!). To give you a brief idea though, it has a great design, handles nicely, has decent connectivity and multimedia functions and has a good-quality sound output—even if the headphones supplied are a bit rubbish. It also offers direct access to Android Market and full compatibility with Android apps, unlike many other Android-based portable media players. There's just one drawback to this 5.0 version ... and it's a big one!

Terrible Screen

While the 4.0 version has an S-LCD screen, the Wi-Fi 5.0 has a Super AMOLED Plus screen with a very bog standard panel. That makes for poor colour fidelity (average deltaE 9.8), a colour temperature that's too high (the screen looks too blue), a low maximum brightness, an unstable and inaccurate grey scale and restricted viewing angles.

Oh dear Samsung—it's all gone wrong!



So while this PMP had the potential to run circles around market heavyweights like Archos, Cowon, Dell, etc., it falls at one very major hurdle, as the screen isn't comfortable, pleasant or practical to use. And yet with such a big screen, it would have been logical to make the display a real feature of the product, in turn making web browsing and video playback key selling points for the device.

And so in spite of its good scores for design, handling and audio quality, the Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0 only scores three stars overall while the 4.0 version managed to bag four.