By Kelly Lu - July 31, 2001

Infobox

What? Baby YEPP (YP-20T) Product Page Who? Samsung Electronics Canada Home Page How much? $200 CDN ($130 USD)

While the file-sharing aspect of MP3's is being aggressively attacked, including the MP3 file-sharing original, Napster, having a hard time just coming online again, the hardware aspect of MP3 is alive and well. There are a greater variety of both home, car and portable players capable of playing this popular, yet troubled, music format than ever before. From solid-state players to those that use CD's to players that have a hard drive built-in for storage, the consumer has a lot of choices.

Here at OnePC.NET, we've tended to focus more on the CD/MP3 players, since they present a huge amount of storage in comparison to the other relatively common MP3 player type: the solid state player. It was, however, the solid state players that started the entire hardware MP3 player revolution that we are seeing today, so it is only appropriate that we also cover those players a well. One of the newest players that we're looking at today is the Samsung Baby YEPP MP3 player, which is, in fact, part of the same product line that was introduced as one of the first MP3 players about 2 years ago.

Specifications
Dubbed as the MP3 player you can wear, the Samsung Baby YEPP is dubbed the world's smallest USB-based digital audio player ever introduced-much appropriate for its name. It carries 32MB of built-in memory, which is now considered to be a little on the small side since many of the newer players carry 64MB or even 128MB and connects to your computer through a USB interface for quick and easy installation and data transfer of your MP3's. It comes available in a blue and cream shade of color, which is, again very appropriate for its name.

First Impressions
I never had a good chance of looking at the player before I received it, so I really didn't know what the expect. When I first opened the box, right at the top was this tiny little round thing that looked like an egg. Being used to the much bigger MP3/CD players, I initially thought that the thing was just the remote control for the actual player or something. I was surprised when, after I went through the rest of the 80% of the box that the little thing at the WAS the actual player. Taking it out, I realized, woah, this thing is small! I mean, it's so small, I feel like I'm gonna break it or something!

Imagine playing your MP3's from a device the size of a egg--literally.

The Baby YEPP came with a thick user's manual, which I found out later to be only the same 8 or so pages of instructions in 187,987 (ok, that's a little exaggerated) or so different languages! I'm impressed with Samsung's effort in making this internationally understandable, but I was thoroughly disappointed with the contents of the manual (at least for the English section) as it was confusing and difficult to understand.

It also comes with a USB cable that I believe to be way too short, and a set of oddly-looking headphones, actually, ear buds, that double as a lanyard so that the player can be hung from one's neck (for jogging, etc.) and works surprisingly well. Also surprising was the fact that the headphone's audio quality was nearly as good as my personal Panasonic ear buds, a feat very few headphones have had to opportunity to claim.

The player itself had only a total of 4 buttons and takes 1 AAA battery.

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