Samsung K5

Consider the Samsung K5 the smallest boombox ever. The world’s first digital audio player with slide-out speakers is no bigger than a standard cell phone, and fits easily into the palm of your hand. It also manages to squeeze in some impressive features for such a small device, including an alarm clock, photo viewer, and FM tuner. Just be prepared to pay a hefty price for those speakers.
 
The K5’s 3.8 x 1.8 x 0.7-inch ebony body is about the same width and thickness as the BlackBerry 7100, which is a good size for a mobile phone, but bulky for those of us spoiled by the sexy slimness of the iPod nano. Fortunately, at 3.7 ounces, the K5 is a bit lighter than it looks, so it won’t weigh down your pockets. The glossy black finish is pleasing to the eye and smooth to the touch, but it’s a big-time fingerprint magnet; there will be lots of smudge-wiping if you wish to maintain its pristine look.
 
Once you fire up the K5, the touch-sensitive controls light up in blue and white. Scrolling through menus is a visual treat with the animated icons, which warped and morphed into one another as we cycled through the main menu. Touch-sensitive controls can sometimes be hit or miss, but the K5 made navigation a smooth, painless affair.
 
Included in the box are perhaps the best bundled earbuds we’ve ever had the pleasure of using. These rubber-tip earpieces provided a good fit and delivered a nice, chunky bass when we cranked MP3 and WMA files loaded through Windows Media Player 10. The player featured a few options for tweaking sound, including virtual sound, bass, and vocal boost. Note that you must use WMP, Napster, or Yahoo! to create and transfer playlists; you can’t make them on the fly.
 
The K5’s silver speakers slide out from beneath the body and lock securely into place at an angle, letting you stand the unit on a desk or tabletop and pump out tunes. We were impressed with the speakers’ audio quality, as they delivered clear sound with very little distortion even when the volume was maxed. While we wouldn’t recommend the K5 for rocking out a party, its speakers are good enough to fill a cubicle with your favorite tunes or a hotel room with background music.
 
Speaking of travel, road warriors will love the K5’s internal clock, which lets users set an alarm to a default ditty or to any track that they’ve transferred to the player. After selecting your desired time from the Alarm screen, you select a song, hit the Option button, and select Add to Alarm. Although we couldn’t set the alarm using a playlist (or the FM radio, oddly enough), this is still a useful feature. Snooze options are available at three-, five-, and ten-minute intervals.
 
We like that the 1.7-inch color OLED screen can display JPEG photos while music plays in the background. Unfortunately, the display was a bit dim. You can assemble slide shows, but you can’t adjust the interval between photos or pan or zoom in on photos. Samsung tosses in an FM radio with 30 presets that offers adequate, if unspectacular, reception.
 
Samsung estimates that the built-in, rechargeable battery will grant 30 hours of headphone playback and 6 hours of speaker playback. We put the K5 through its paces with a good mix of headphone, speaker, and radio listening, and the player lasted just under 12 hours.
 
At $259, the K5 is pricey when you consider that you can purchase an 8GB SanDisk Sansa or iPod nano (at twice the capacity) for $10 less. Still, for many music lovers, not having to spring for (or schlep) a set of portable speakers will make this versatile player well worth the premium.

 

Our staff writers kicked it, old-school style, in the Bronx with the Samsung K5. Read all about their K5 adventure.