“Works with BBC iPlayer!” says the sticker on the box.

“Works with BBC iPlayer!” says the accompanying leaflet next to the box.

“It works with the BBC iPlayer”, says a nice man from Samsung, who’s sidled up next to me to show me their new Samsung YP-Q1 digital media player. “Look!” he says, turning the unit on, and playing a piece of BBC iPlayer content on it. “It’s from the BBC iPlayer!”

It’s pretty clear that Samsung have spotted an opportunity here. The blisteringly popular BBC iPlayer now offers downloads for portable media players. And the new Samsung Q1 works with the BBC iPlayer, lest there were stll any confusion here.

About sixty quid for the 4GB version, when you pick up and hold the player it feels small, smooth, and good looking. The touch-sensitive controls light up alluringly when you use them; and the screen is bright. In terms of specifications, it’s quite good too. It plays video (MPEG4, WMV), music (MP3, WMA), pictures (presumably JPG), has a text viewer for books, an FM Radio, a voice recorder, and some games on it.

My first destination on any of these devices is… the radio. Naturally. What does the radio experience look and sound like?

Surprisingly, this unit has RDS – showing both the PTY (programme type) and the PS (the programme service, or more commonly, “the radio station name”). It’s pretty quick at decoding it, too. Shame it doesn’t also download the RT (radio text – a 64-character equivalent to DAB’s scrolly DLS text). The radio’s hissy, but not too bad in terms of reception. And if you dive into the menu, you can even record FM radio onto the unit itself (as an MP3).

The music bit ‘just works’; the video player ‘just works’; and in something called ‘Prime’ there are a few interesting applications, including a very non-official tube map application. It’s nicely well-specced.

So. What’s wrong with it, then?

Let’s gloss over the fact that the unit does nothing when plugged into a Ubuntu box, or a Mac. (Well, it charges. It doesn’t mount, though). It only claims to work with Windows, after all. And if we were feeling charitable – very charitable – we could also forgive them for using yet another non-standard USB cable. Doubtless they want to be part of the iPod accessory gravy-train, and have developed yet another non-standard connector to earn them more money – however annoying it is. Grr. There is a USB standard for a reason, y’know.

The unit proudly brags “Designed By Samsung” on the back, but the aforesaid design entails a power-switch which also has a ‘lock’ function where it’s impossible to take the unit out of ‘lock’ without switching it off. The volume control works differently on music and video – so you skip videos, or music, when you don’t quite mean to. There’s no Apple gloss on this unit – no nice little tweaks that you’re grateful for when you discover them. The unit doesn’t turn on when inserting headphones; the touch-sensitive controls are simply too sensitive, turning accidental brushes into definite presses, and the ‘lock’ button doesn’t stop the glowing LEDs around the controls from working.

I also had awful problems synching BBC iPlayer content to this device – not Samsung’s fault, and one that Microsoft should be ashamed of. The lack of AAC support is a shame, too, for audio files: no moving away from the iPod for me.

But, while the screen’s small, it was perfectly acceptable watching Buzzcocks on the tube journey home. While the music player’s nothing innovative to write home about, it played files perfectly well. The short-comings with the user interface don’t turn into a huge annoyance. And for the price-point, this is a good machine to allow you to download content from the BBC iPlayer to watch it on the plane, on the train, or on the bus. Is that enough to make the difference for Samsung? Think what a winner this could have been if the user interface was more polished, the USB connection was a standard one, and if it didn’t require Windows to work.

Disclosure: I attended part of a press launch for this unit, and a video camera, in connection with this blog; however, I didn’t promise to review it as a result, and also didn’t promise to be positive.

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