Lustrous and slender, it's easy to see why the Samsung YP-K3 MP3 player is a CES Innovations 2007 Award Honoree. The speaker-less version of its older brother, the YP-K5, the K3 is 2mm shorter, 3.5mm narrower and 11.45mm leaner, and looks set to become Samsung's new flagship portable music player.
Together with black, the K3 is also shipping in lime green and wine red. And yes, it was a fingerprint magnet with its reflective surface but not scratch-prone. When dark, the 37mm x 29mm OLED screen and back-lit controls could hardly be seen at certain angles, making the K3 look like a pure black eye-candy bar.
The touch-sensitive back-lit controls consist of up, down, left, right, back and menu buttons. The back button was especially useful; hold it down and you'll exit to the main menu of music, radio, photos, text or settings. While a touch-sensitive pad added to its unique flat design, the lack of tactile feedback is an acquired taste—you need to become precise with your finger-fu. At the beginning we rued how our fingers would glide on the surface and accidentally press or over-press the buttons, but you get used to it.
The hold and power switch is on the bottom right side, slide up to hold and down to power on/off. Having both functions tied into one toggle saves space and adds style, but be careful; we've accidentally switched the K3 off when we meant to hold it instead. The user menu for the K3 is beautifully designed with some neat animation; the equalizer graphics especially deserve some mention.
Connecting to the PC is drop-dead easy, play and plug via USB and your PC will recognize it as a removable drive. Without even installing the bundled Samsung software you can drag and drop files into the K3 via Windows Explorer, although you'll need the software to create playlists. The radio function performed well and you can set up to 30 preset stations.
Where the K3 didn't perform were its photo-viewer and the text-reader. The K3's text reader didn't recognize our PDF or Word documents and only reads text files. The photo explorer was difficult to scroll through, slow, without any viewing options like zoom. With the limited 128 x 160 pixels resolution on the OLED our photos turned out pixelated.
Sound quality was excellent on the K3 with the supplied Samsung headset. There are 5 different EQ settings; Normal, Vocal, Bass Boost, 3D Sound and Concert Hall. While 5 EQ settings might sound limited, they eached performed well, with clear crisp details and good bass. There was no blowout on the earphones through the 5 EQ settings at high volumes or strong bass. Too bad there's a fade-in to each track that can't be switched off, and the volume will reset to mid-range whenever you switch the K3 on and off.
While the K3 is slightly bigger than the iPod, the size-war needs some perspective: this thing packs up to 8GB of space with a FM radio receiver is thin and light enough to slip into your pocket unobtrusively—and it's gorgeous. The sound quality is good and you're not locked into iTunes with the K3. With the YP-K3, Samsung has dropped a fine wallop of a beauty into the MP3 player arena.
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Singapore / English
