Hands-on with Samsung's YP-T10

We first saw Samsung's YP-T10 at the IFA show in Berlin earlier this year. It's not actually the YP-T9's successor, but the YP-K3's. Like the K3 it has a touch-sensitive control system and a slim form factor. But it's got a vast set of improvements inside the box. For example, instead of the K3's low-res screen, the T10 has a 320x240-pixel resolution display boasting 262,000 colours, and it's exceptionally crisp.

It's a good job the screen's decent, since the T10 has one of the most interesting menu systems we've seen of late, which features a bizarre dancing dog called Sammy. The little critter jumps around various attractive animated backgrounds. It'll mostly appeal to kids of course, so Samsung's included a few more grown-up, dogless menu themes too.

Hyperactive canines aside, our first impressions are that sound quality is excellent. Samsung players have never let us down in that department and it doesn't look like the T10 will either. The only sound-related issue that bugs us is the poor codec support: only MP3 and WMA file formats are compatible. There's no love shown for any lossless formats or even the lossy AAC or OGG options.

On a more positive note it's generally a pleasure to use -- controls are simple, navigation's intuitive and content can be dragged and dropped through Windows, or you can sync it up with Windows Media Player. Battery life is rated at a mediocre 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. It's got stereo Bluetooth, too, along with support for podcasts and an FM radio.

The T10 comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities, costing £59, £79 and £99 respectively, and is on sale now. Hell, 99 quid for an attractive 8GB player is a solid deal!

You can expect our full, frank, fatter-than-a-feeder's-wife review as soon as humanly possible, if not faster. -Nate Lanxon