Samsung S3 Review – music player with excellent sound quality

Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 4:31
Mp3 Players
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Samsung’s S3 with 4GB capacity is not among the feature-packed Mp3 players but its low price and good sound quality will definitely appeal you. The player measures 3.7×1.7×0.4 inches and weighs 1.76 ounces and has same size as that of Zune’s, and little bigger than the iPod Nano. The S3’s curvaceous and slim design makes it to easily fit in your pocket.

The S3 sports a touch sensitive 1.8-inch diagonal screen which is a bit small in size. As expected with a touch sensitive device, it only has one physical button for power/hold. When you switch-off the device, you will not see any navigation control on the screen. The touch sensitive screen looks more like a disadvantage than the advantage as it’s not the easiest player to control.

The backlit home screen shows four controls- up, down, left, right which surround a central button that is used for play/pause/select. Don’t be fooled by the assembly of control that looks like a touch thumbwheel. You have to tap on the directional control for navigation which is quite frustrating if you try to scroll through list of songs.

The included headphones gives clear and crisp sound but if you use good quality headphones there is a significant improvement in the sound quality. Other than the normal sound setting, the S3 offers you equalizer features like, Vocal, Classical, Concert Hall, Bass Boost, Rock and Studio. You may want to play with these presets but normal settings give the best sound. The S3 has good file format support. It supports Ogg Vorbis which you won’t find in Apple and Microsoft music players. In addition to that it also supports MP3, WMA, JPEG and MPEG-4. The S3’s video playback is crisp and smooth but you need to transcode the video files using Media Studio software which time consuming. Other features include FM tuner, voice recorder and five preloaded Flash games.

The S3 has a good sound quality and a low price makes it a good deal but the user interface might give you a hard time while navigating. So, it’s better to test the touch sensitive control of S3 before buying.