Customer Reviews:
 T10 6 month review October 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Until recently I have been very happy with my T10, even with fat fingers the interface functions adequately. The screen is clear and sharp (House episodes viewed), the sound quality is fine but I really think the volume is inadequate. I know that there are issues here but it is only just about acceptable when I plug it into the car radio and on my hifi I have to rack up the volume level to what would be deafening levels,(woe betide me if I forget to adjust them to normal levels and switch to CD!!!) By comparison my daughter's ipod plays perfectly in the car without any audio augmentation
Don't bother with all the fancy sound effects they are just a waste of time. I have the 4G version by the way. A2DP works fine with my Bluetooth headphones, what a relief to not to untangle wires all the time. Battery life is excellent and charging is simple and fast.
The big problem for me however has been synchronization. Now you'd probably think that would be simple to do but you don't know Samsung. The Samsung Media player (version 5) that came with the T10 was OK but rather old fashioned and clunky. Although the synch was rapid, uploading podcasts (Datacasts for Samsung) was ridiculously complicated so at the beginning I just copied them into music. After one or two updates they improved on this. When the Samsung Player was replaced by emodio however that's when you realize that the player is badly let down by the support offered. I've only had problems since the switch, so much so that since the last (failed) upgrade my T10 is no longer recognized by EmoDio, in Windows Media Player it bugs on first reading of the files. The EmoDio site moreover is an absolute joke and I'm amazed that samsung gave their OK on something so inadequate.
I cannot play anything from the T10 in Jet or in RealPlayer either
Reinstalling the old Samsung Media player changes nothing. So all I can do now is use it as an extra drive and drag and drop songs into it. I suppose it makes you realize how difficult it is to match hardware and software these days. (BTW I gave up on Apple a long time ago so I won't be going there again)
So all in all I'm left more than a little dissatisfied and annoyed that an otherwise excellent product fails to please more.
Jack of all trades, expert at none (save maybe bluetooth) October 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As the title of my review says, the Samsung T10 sure does everything. Samsung has been focusing on the features part of its products, resulting in DAPs that looks really good on paper, but their actual usabilities are questionable.
Let me first say what I like about this player: bluetooth.
You can actually hook up to your cellphone and use the T10 to speak. It's convenient when you are listening to music and has the phone in someplace not immediately accessible. You can just speak into the player's built in mic. and talk away! The sound is very good, and the other end could hear me clearly as well during my testing.
However, taking points away from the T10 is its menu, control, and overall set-up that makes it not very convenient/accessible to use. Also, the sound quality is subpar which I will cover later.
Comparing the music playing (which is what it's main job) function of the T10 to the Sony NWZS716F, the T10 falls really short of design.
The control is exactly the same with: 5-way Dpad, back button on the upper left and a option button on the upper right.
However, in the Sony NWZ, no matter where in the menu you are, you can press "option" and then go straight to "Now Playing," which is a really neat feature. (Instead of the T10 where you have to back out all the way to the root menu, then go to music, and then go to "now playing").
When playing a song on the Sony, you can go to "shuffle all" very easily. On the T10, you have to again back out all the way, go to Songs---> All Songs---> All, and then set play mode to shuffle.
Also, when playing a song on the Sony, you can go straight to: songs by the artist, album, genre, or year. On the T10, you have to back out all the way to the root music menu, and then search for that artist/album/genre/year, and then go in.
And even though the T10 has a ratings feature, you can't really listen to music by their ratings, so it's pointless and useless. So on the T10 you have to go through A LOT of extra clicks to make it do whatever you want, which is painful because you can mess up on the touch pad EASILY and have to go through all that menu cruising again!
All that extra clicking caused by unthoughtful menu design and the choice of touch control, combined with the slow processing (It takes a few seconds to go into a menu or play a song. It even takes a while when you switch between different EQ settings! The music actually fades and stops, and then comes back again. Extremely annoying when you are trying to compare different EQ settings.)Every single other DAP I've used would play a song immediately after selecting, and they switch between sound settings instantly.
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The T10 has subpar sound quality.
I did a side by side comparison using: Zune 30, iPod Nano Gen 2, Sony NWZ-S716F, iRiver Lplayer, Sony PSP, iRiver T10, to compare to the Samsung T10 with the same songs. The headphones I used were: Shure E2c and Ultimate Ears Super .fi Pro 5, both properly burnt in and I have been listening to them forever. All sound enhancing settings were turned off during the comparisons.
I have to say that when I was listening to vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Harry Nilsson, and Micheal Buble on the T10, their once smooth and rich voices just sound flat, as were their accompaniments. The plucking of the cello, the trumpet, the sax, the drum, the piano, etc etc. The instruments were on the same plane as the voices. It is as if they all originate from the same sound source, except the instruments were a bit quieter while the voice is louder. There was not a sense of... a full surround stage with the T10. The T10 does a great job emphasizing on the little details in the music that usually is hard to hear. I could hear a lot of breathing and mouth-smacking and other details like that. However, on the Zune and Sony NWZ I could feel where the singer was standing and his displacement in relation to all his accompaniments, whether they were sitting behind the lead, around him, or above him, or whatever.
When I compared the T10 to Sony and Zune, it became obvious that the T10 was unable to produce sounds as rich or full. Again, the details are there, but they are not where they are supposed to be. I realize that the T10 is a really small and thin player with bluetooth, but the Sony NWZ-S716F is smaller and just as thin, minus the bluetooth and mic. compartment, and it sounds much better than the T10. The Samsung sounds very superficial. This is true when I listened to other artists such as Beatles (rock), Guster (alternative/pop-ish), Coldplay, Eagles, and Bach. Again, it is amazing that in the T10, all the little details that you don't usually notice are all fleshed out, perhaps a bit too much, but I was very conscious that I was listening to digital music without any sound processing. It's as if the T10 doesn't have a sound chip at all (except one for the DNSE thing, which helps in making the sound richer but even more artificial and superficial than before).
Ironically, the Samsung T10 somewhat matches the iRiver T10 in sound quality. The let-down of the iRiver is that there is a lot of white-noise when using the E2C and UE 5. You could hear a lot of "processing noise", I guess is what I would call it. Engineers from 2-3 years ago didn't realy anticipate those high end headphones being commercialized, I guess. The other players are pretty good about not having that noise. So there, Samsung wins out. However, there is a little bit white noise when turning on the DNSE features.
Anyway, during the comparisons, the Zune really stood out with the the Sony NWZS716F being a close second, which shows that it's not about the size ;p. You really get the sense that the voice and the instrumental accompaniments come from different places of the stage. There is like a sense of displacement between the different sounds, yet they don't sound too far away to make the music sound flat and thin. I didn't really like the Sony PSP, it had too much artificial manipulation of the sound and didn't sound natural - it sounded fantabulous at first, but extended listening is not particularly pleasant.
Oh and I am neglecting even mentioning the iPod because well, it's just crap....
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So you get a player with subpar sound quality, slow menu control, unthoughtful layout, annoying touch control.
On the upside, it's cheap, pretty solid build quality, pretty screen, and bluetooth! For those merits, I give a 3 star.
Just okay September 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
PROS:
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1. Small sleek package
2. Nice crisp screen
3. Easy to setup and use
4. Stereo bluetooth (did not test this)
CONS:
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1. Absolutely HATE the touchpad. Much prefer tactile buttons
2. Takes too long to power on and power off
3. Black surface smears and scratched easily
4. FM reception is terrible. Live in suburbs of Chicago.
If I could do it all over again I would look for a different player.
 Best for little fingers September 6, 2008
The only drawback that I could see is if you have very thick man hands, touching the right sensor may be difficult.
Nice features, irrititing control unit August 25, 2008
I own both a Zune v2 8 and a T10. The T10 has a nice constellation of features lacking on the Zune v2. The T10 is plug 'n' play. You can drag and drop files to it like a drive. It can host text files and lets you read them (great for just dumping in a bunch of names/address, todo stuff, etc). It can play games and has a nice equalizer. The only thing that cripples this device, however, is the control surface is a touch sensitive glass. You get no feed back you've pressed something. You can't feel the controls when it's in your pocket. The controls are so uber sensitive that it's very easy to accidentally press a control when handling the device.
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