The P2 did great guns for its manufacturer, allying a nice design with a touch screen and quality audio. Its successor is here, the P3, a direct descendent of the previous model. But there’s plenty of competition out there.

Brushed aluminium, glass screen: classy!

Bundles are becoming decidedly light. Headphones, USB cable, an installation CD and the player itself are nevertheless supplied. No doubt, ecological considerations… The player looks very good with its brushed aluminium back and a large glass screen circled in black. Kinship with the P2 is confirmed.

At the top of the player is the on/off switch, volume controls and the external speaker. On the other end are the headphones socket and the proprietary USB cable connector. We don’t have any problem with placing the USB connector there, but whose idea was it to put the headphones socket so far from the command buttons. There’s also no way of starting/stopping the player without using the touch screen, which is a shame.

On the interface, there’s an embarassment of display effects. The screen is excellent but to be honest, the animations going off in all directions all the time quickly becomes tiring. Not to mention the clock that vibrates and the regular appearance of butterflies. Access to menus and features is also in animation which tends to slow features down somewhat. The Apple influence is clear on the main icons page: completely personalisable, you can organise, add and delete icons to suit your usage.

The screen is "haptic", which means it reacts to pressure and confirms that the right command has been received. Some users like this, others don’t. However, Samsung had the "bright" idea of using these vibrations to synch with the music. This is fun for about two seconds max.

Still no Wave or Monkey’s Audio

The list of formats supported has been increased, which is a good thing. We particularly like the fact that OGG and FLAC are now supported, however PCM and APE files are still not listed. Note also that playing is not gapless; there’s a small gap between songs. The player interface is well conceived and with good legibility overall. Navigation of files is available either via name or folder. You can also create as many playlists as you like.

In tems of audio quality, the P2 had raised the bar high, but suffered from a slight hiss that we found pretty disagreeable. Nice surprise on the P3, the hiss is no longer there. Coupled with DNSe version 3.0, you have to say that the audio experience really is fine. You will however need to replace the headphones the player comes with straight away; even a pair of PL30s or EP-630s will do better.

Lastly the radio: FM and RDS, it works very well and you can record it at any time.

Plays nearly all video formats

Able to play most current formats without re-encoding, the P3 handles video very well. It will also restart viewing of any video from the point where you stopped before. A detail? Maybe, but very nice to use. The big 3 inch screen is of good quality. It’s a shame it’s shiny…

Now lets have a look at some of the added features: there’s a flash player and bluetooth support. There’s also a text viewer (when will it support .doc and .odt formats?), a calculator, a worldwide clock, text-to-speech, games, a memo feature, a calendar, underground maps etc. Most of them are gadgets and only a few will be of any use.

Note that in bluetooth, all effects are disactivated. In any case, as almost always, audio quality is pretty average but seeing as there are very few compatible peripherals, this isn’t too serious.

The P3 is a direct descendent of the P2. It’s a shame that it hasn’t taken things on as far as it could have with every feature. You might have expected a bit more, especially considering the tough competition from Apple / Cowon / Sony.