5. Palefaces

The 3.5" display - a little less than nine centimeters - has excellent definition. On the other hand, the colors are pale, which takes away from the overall quality. The angles of vision are good for such a small player, and so is the screen's anti-reflective treatment. The built-in speaker is not very impressive; it sounds very metallic and overdriven. On the other hand, the player's audio quality is quite satisfactory, with ample sound that doesn't lose definition. The earphones are about as good as the speaker - the sound is piercing and metallic. We'd have expected better from Samsung. The little remote control built into the earphone cable doesn't do anything to dispel the impression. The money would have been better spent improving the quality of the reproduction.

On The Little Screen

Screening movies on the player is another disappointment. Most transcoded films are jerky. It's not enough to make the player unusable, but it is bothersome. Given the screen's pale colors, the image is sharply defined, but not really pleasant to look at. The same goes for photos, which lack color saturation.

Power is provided by a non-swappable lithium-ion battery. Autonomy is approximately three hours with video, which is barely enough to watch two movies without recharging. File transfers via the Media Player are longer than with a removable disk. For our standard 30 files totaling 100 MB, it took 30 seconds, or twice as long as with the Archos AV 400.

Finally, the most attractive things about the YH-0999 are above all its size and weight. It's sexy and really does fit in your pocket. Beyond that it's fairly disappointing. The screen is just big enough to let you watch a movie, but the quality of the color reproduction and the somewhat jerky motion spoil the fun. And the reproduction is not even that good plugged into a TV. Add to that the poor quality of the speaker and earphones, plus the limitations of the Media Center as regards transcoding, lack of flexibility, and its inability to record, and you're looking at a high outlay for limited performance.