It has been a long time since we've seen an MP3 player that can draw gasps of geek envy from the team. Most of the time, new MP3 players that enter our domain are nitpicked to death. The YP-K5 is different. Pictures do not do it justice, either. Though it's certainly thick for 2GB--the onboard speaker panel makes up half of its heft. The other half of the YP-K5 has a cool black exterior and touchscreen physical controls to up its charm.

Design
Pick it up. It feels surprisingly light for its size. The 1.71-inch OLED screen is bright and clear. Even under direct sunlight, we could discern the display, only barely. But it's certainly better than most OLED panels which blank out when viewed under sunlight.

	YP-K5 next to the iPod nano Click for larger image

Closed, the YP-K5 resembles a fat piece of dark chocolate. Turn it on and you get a pleasing visual experience--shades of blue lights serving as indicators for the touch-sensitive controls. Otherwise, the layout of the buttons is not revolutionary. A center select button sits in the middle of four arrows arranged in compass directions. A Back and Menu button rests on the adjacent two corners, while the bottom edge of the player houses the headphone jack and a proprietary USB port.

The touch sensors are well-spaced-out, very important to prevent accidental activation. Despite its susceptibility to smudge in the YP-K5 prototype, we are happy to report that the final retail version has been treated to minimize this. That's a good thing, too, since no cleaning cloth is provided.

	And against the Creative V Plus Click for larger image

Controls are minimal yet offer decent functionality and control. We find the graphics user interface (GUI) to be organic, much akin to the iPod and Creative Zen players. There's a button that calls up a contextual sub-menu based on the current active feature. And unlike the Creative Zen V Plus which does not include sound equalizer controls in the sub-menu, the YP-K5 does.

The YP-K5 is decidedly chunky at 98 x 47.5 x 18.1mm and weighs 106g. But while it does not possess a voluminous hard drive or a huge screen to justify its bulk, it does pack a set of built-in speakers. These are cleverly concealed in a sliding mechanism which, when opened, angles and tilts up at a good angle for sound projection.

The mechanized slide motion of the speaker panel is addictive. For a good 5 minutes, we were incessantly obsessed with it in the same way a listless smoker flicks his butane lighter. Samsung calls it the "slide and tilt" motion. Smart move. The tilt angle of the panel doubles as a stand for the unit. The display also reorients itself to a horizontal plane once it detects the speaker panel sliding out. We've seen MP3 players with built-in speakers before, but none have shown this kind of ingenuity.

Features
The YP-K5 supports ID3 tags and this shows in its content management. Music is arranged by Artists, Albums, Playlists and Song Tracks. We also like the visual presentation. A bouncing sphere hops to indicate the highlighted item and category selections in the main menu are jazzed up with animated blue dots that rearrange themselves into different icons.

	MP3 idol? Click for larger image

As you shuttle through the options, the dots morph into the next image. It's just a little visual effect, but it adds a certain flair to the K5 and makes it fun to use. We also like the fact that when we switch over from speaker to earphone mode, the YP-K5 automatically readjusts to medium loudness to suit earphone volumes.

Another cool feature is that the interface automatically rotates when the speakers are pushed out. And we're totally smitten with the K5's interface in general. The playback screen is dominated by a large EQ graphic, below which song information scrolls (you also get a battery meter and a time-elapsed counter on this screen). When you don't touch the controls for a while, this display fades to a screensaver of your choosing (analog clock, various animation graphics, photos).

	How Samsung classify your music Click for larger image

It's a pity the YP-K5 does not include video playback. Like the YP-Z5, the screen work well for pictures and it's too bad support is not extended to videos. Besides picture viewing, the YP-K5 also doubles as an alarm clock, but there's no actual snooze button to bang on in the morning. So users who have a violent reaction to their slumber being disrupted should take care.

The new Media Studio software that's packaged with the YP-K5 is frankly gorgeous. Most of the flab from the earlier versions have been ironed out. In version five, the Media Studio has undergone a few aesthetic improvements, notably a clean spaced-out feel, elegant graphics user interface and tab browsing to access different features.

In a nod to the music sommelier feature found in Panasonic's music management software, which analyses songs by their acoustic characteristics, the Media Studio has a scaled-down version called My Music Style. Clicking the My Style button will have the software analyzing all songs in the active window and classifying them according to four styles: Passionate, cheerful, sweet and quiet.

	Auto albums vs smart playlists? Click for larger image

In our test of the software, it was spot on, sometimes. Beverly Craven's Promise Me was classified as "sweet", while Garbage's Why Do You Love Me was seen as "passionate". Pretty much what we expected. However, the Media Studio did manage to surprise us when it classified Garbage's Boys Wanna Fight as "cheerful". We think it's a lack of categories that's limiting the software. After all, fighting can be considered a cheerful activity in a violent sort of way, depending on who's on the receiving end.

Besides being able to burn CDs, rip music and edit ID3 tags, the Media Studio also has a song rating feature, though it's not available on the YP-K5. Like the smart playlist feature in iTunes, Samsung's own is called auto albums. It allows users to input multiple rule filters such as song ratings, play count and artist name, and import the playlist into the YP-K5.

Performance

The YP-K5 works well. The touch-sensitive controls are not overtly sensitive, yet do not exhibit any noticeable lag time. The new earphone design provides a modicum of noise-canceling properties and sound quality is rather good. We experienced rich mids, tight bass and clear highs.

Eschewing what Michael Bull has said about how earphones on a portable music player can protect the user from external noise, the YP-K5 has to be his antithesis. Samsung wants people to share music with it and, boy, is it loud. At full volume, it is enough to overcome the noise of a train rumbling through a tunnel and draw the aural attention of passengers within the same carriage. As fellow commuters would attest, the lungs of the YP-K5 are very impressive for its size.

Yet for all its volume, it's understandable that to the ears of an audiophile, quality will invariably suffer. On Massive Attack's Angel, we heard poppy bass and splashing cymbals, while Diana Krall sounded hollow with a lack of warmth. This was probably due to the fact that the drivers are small with no space to drive the low end. But for most users, the YP-K5's speaker sound quality should suffice. When we auditioned the YP-K5 to our friends (non-audiophiles), they were very impressed.

We roughly measured the drivers to be 12mm in diameter each (two), which surprised us no end. Pitted against the Creative SBS Vivid 60 speakers, the battery-powered YP-K5 overpowered its AC-powered competition.

We obtained a transfer rate of 3.38MB per second using 240MB worth of assorted MP3 files which is slightly above average. FM auto scanning was pretty good with the YP-K5 missing only two major stations. Battery life remained impressive at 32 hours 42 minutes for audio playback.