The Samsung YP-U1ZB is equipped with an integrated microphone, and as a voice recorder is not particularly revolutionary. The microphone is monophonic, and has a bad habit of picking up some 'finger sounds' as you grasp the player for dictation. Regardless, it's nice to have the ability to record verbal messages if ever necessary.

To do this, just hold down the 'REC' button for a few seconds and the YP-U1ZB will start up a voice memo recording, displaying the current time recorded and remaining available in minutes and seconds. Voice recordings share the same space as MP3's, and if the memory runs out the recording will automatically cease.

Voice recordings are stored with a generic 'V001.wav' naming structure. The sampling rate is a lowly 8Khz. Sound quality is muffled, but that's not really unexpected given the small condenser microphone used here. Recordings can be immediately played back if desired, or pulled off the unit when it next connected to a PC USB2.0 slot.

Samsung Media Studio Software

As we've mentioned, the Samsung YP-U1Z connects to the PC via a standard USB2.0 port, and it shows up as removeable hard drive in WindowsXP so there really isn't a need for any specialized software to drag-and-drop music files onto or from the device. It acts like any other removeable storage device, so Windows XP users can just plug and play. There are USB drivers on the inlcluded CD for Windows98/2000/ME systems.

Normally the software bundled in with MP3 players is pretty horrible; difficult to use or just really poorly layed out. Not so in this case. Samsung Media Studio 4.0 is a refreshingly easy to use and well featured software program. The software allows quick and simple ripping to MP3, WMA or Ogg formats, and one-stop shopping for playback of digital audio files.

Media Studio has built-in playlist creation tools and a direct line to CDDB so you'll never have to punch in album and track names ever again for correct ID3 tags (with internet connection of course). It gives uers the flexibility of ripping tracks to the MP3 format at 32-320Kbps, WMA at 48-192 Kbps, and OGG at 0Q-10Q (64Kbps-500Kbps).

In our own tests with the software, we found Media Studio pretty much a breeze to pickup, and appreciated how it's hard wired to go directly to the Samsung YP-U1ZB when it is connected to the PC. Windows Explorer will do the exact same thing, but at least with Media Studio there is a no-fuss interface for dragging and dropping files to and from the YP-U1ZB, organizing playlists, and even playing back MP3's from the device over your own set of computer speakers.

Best of all, a search bar lets you quickly run custom keyword searches through your massive list of MP3s by artist, title or album. The software looks nice, is dead simple to use, and works. Compared to some of Samsung's past attempts with bundled software, this is how things should be.