Because of the high price nature of this product and that I have no long term knowledge of this product please do not blame me for any information that might be inaccurate in this review.
I paid around $120 for the Samsung P3 Digital Media Player at Fred Meyer when the product was on sale. Regular price at Fred Meyer is around $150. The P3 comes only in 8GB and Black at Fred Meyer while BestBuy.COM carries only the 16GB and 32GB versions in both Black and Gray and BestBuy.COM does not carry the 8GB at all to the best of my knowledge. As always Fred Meyer does not compensate me in any way for writing and posting these reviews. These reviews are to educate people in to making better purchases by providing information that is not often obtainable from the package of the product or from the salespeople at a retail store.
Unlike the Sylvania and Memorex models that I bought before without doing research on them first, this time it was important to do research because the product being purchased was over $100 and the most expensive product that I have reviewed in this blog to date. I was disappointed with the lack of support for playlists and other features on the Memorex and Sylvania models and that is why I researched the Samsung P3.
One of the great review places (or so I thought at the time before I bought the Samsung P3) is cnet.com.
CNET SAMSUNG P3 VIDEO REVIEW
The above link has a video review of the P3 which makes it sound like a good product. This was probably one of the biggest sources of information that led me to buy the Samsung P3 model at Fred Meyer.
Great Piece of Hardware from Samsung!!
The P3 despite its high cost is a great player from Samsung. Comparing it to the Sylvania and Memorex models I reviewed before, the Samsung 8GB P3 model does practically everything that either the Sylvania only did or the Memorex only did or both the Sylvania and Memorex did.
FM Radio
Videos
Music
Pictures
Games
Texts
Voice Recorder
In addition the P3 also has other features the Sylvania and Memorex didn't have.
Alarm
Address Book
Calculator
Bluetooth Compatibility
Calendar
Clock
Subway Maps of Major Cities
Flash Player
This should be a winner in my opinion if the review stopped here. But unfortunately I found out this thing may be a piece of junk which you will find out why by reading on.
Say it isn't so, Samsung!!
After spending a little bit of time exploring the options of the Samsung P3, I started to notice a very troubling trend with the product. The product on different websites on the internet mentions features that were not on my P3.
English Dictionary
Sketch Application
Lyrics Support
Real Text-to-Speech Support (not just the MP3 Sound file of the text)
Unfortunately after buying the product I learned why these features were missing from my P3. They are missing because I bought an American version of the Samsung P3 and the P3 was originally made for the Korean market.
Samsung can fix this, right??
Yes, they can through what is called a firmware upgrade and it is even included as a selling point on the BestBuy.COM website.
So what's the problem with recommending this great piece of hardware?
Samsung uses a software product called Emodio for file transfer and to install new graphic backgrounds to the P3 and the Emodio software is also catered to the Korean and other global markets but not to the US market as much. The software is less likely to get bug fixes in the US (which it does have some bugs here) because Samsung's main support base for the P3 is in other countries and not here in the United States.
So Samsung is going to start supporting the P3 in the US more in the near future right?
Unfortunately, no is the word I am getting from people who are close to Samsung's Korean Division. Which is a shame since they supported the previous P2 model with some nice firmware upgrades.
It appears Samsung has no plans to make the P3 better or just simply make it more American friendly by adding the missing Korean P3 features.
The most likely scenario with the Samsung P3 is that it will soon be replaced with another expensive model with better features or Samsung will completely pull out of the high priced MP3 Digital Media Player market and let Apple continue its dominance with the Ipod line.
So Samsung puts out a great product with very lousy support for their great product. Buy or do not buy then?
Unfortunately I can NOT recommend the purchase of this product to my fellow Americans. If you are in Korea reading this then this is probably a good product. But in my opinion I would have not bought this great product if I had known ahead of the purchase that this product has non-existent support here in the States.
I would hope that anyone here in the states reading this will think twice from now on when it comes to purchasing a Samsung product in the future. Make sure that before you buy that Samsung that it has US support and not just support for some country on the other side of the world.
Because the P3 hardware itself is fine, I will hold off buying another Media Player for a while. But the next one will not be a Samsung unless they make a huge dramatic change.
Anyone have any Samsung P3 stories they want to share (good or bad)?
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