Almost iPod, but in the end a Samsung

By David Pogue
The New York Times

Published: March 11, 2006, 6:00 AM PST

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All right, we've now entered Year 5 of the iPod Era. Apple's rivals have had plenty of time to study the iPod, figure out what makes it such a hit and offer reasonable competition.

As you may have noticed, however, that hasn't happened. Of every 100 people walking by in their little music isolation bubbles, 78 of them seem to have telltale white iPod earbuds. Year after year, the iPod's market share drifts upward, leaving its rivals to fight over the scraps; call it Snow White and the 20 Dwarfs.

The iPod's competitors have wasted years of opportunity by assuming that they can beat the iPod on features and price alone. They're wrong.



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In fact, at least six factors make the iPod such a hit: cool-looking hardware; a fun-to-use, variable-speed scroll wheel; an ultrasimple software menu; effortless song synchronization with Mac or Windows; seamless, rock-solid integration with an online music store (iTunes); and a universe of accessories. Mess up any aspect of the formula, and your iPod killer is doomed to market-share crumbs.

This week, Samsung is the latest company claiming to have cracked the iPod formula--specifically, that of the wildly popular iPod Nano. Its new Z5 player has the same-size sleek facade as the Nano (3.5 by 1.6 inches), comes in a similar choice of colors (silver or black), is offered in two of the same capacities (2GB or 4GB) and even costs the same ($200 and $250).

Samsung wouldn't be the first; Archos and Creative offer Nano clones. And featurephiles await a similarly sized SanDisk Sansa player, arriving later this month, that will have FM radio recording, removable battery and memory card, video playback and 6GB capacity (a first among memory-based players).

But Samsung took one additional step: To design the Z5's software, it hired Paul Mercer, a former Apple employee whose software toolkit was used to design the iPod software. The result is the easiest-to-navigate software since the iPod. Here's the familiar main menu (Music, Pictures, Playlists and so on); here's the center Select button; here's the button at the top that backtracks toward the main menu. If you've ever used an iPod, you'll feel instantly at home. (In fact, at first, I caught myself tracing circles on the Z5's face with my thumb, turning a scroll wheel that wasn't there--a reflex that Samsung acknowledged isn't uncommon among first-time users of the Z5.)

Credit: Samsung

Samsung's Z5 digital audio player

Instead of a wheel, the Z5 has a big square button surrounded by a clickable frame. The frame's four edges precisely replicate the clicky edges of the iPod scroll wheel: Menu at the top, Play/Pause at the bottom, Next Track and Previous Track on the sides.

Inside the frame is a touch pad. You step through lists by lightly tapping the pad; you hold down to scroll quickly. The best part is that your thumb doesn't have to move between scrolling and clicking; after scrolling by touching, pushing harder to click--in exactly the same spot--does the trick.

Samsung has even improved on the iPod's design in several important ways. For example, you can adjust the playback volume even when you're not on the Now Playing screen (such as when you're adjusting the settings or perusing your music list), thanks to dedicated volume buttons. The name of the current song appears at the bottom of every screen, too.

More thoughtful touches: Whenever you highlight a song or album name, a thumbnail image of the CD cover appears right there in the list--a handy visual aid. Holding down the Menu button takes you all the way back to the main menu, so you don't have to tap it repeatedly.

And you know that iPod moment of befuddlement when the buttons don't seem to be working--and then you realize it's because you've engaged the Hold switch? On the Z5, pressing any button makes a tiny padlock icon glow on the screen to help clue you in.

Finally, the Z5 plays music for a staggering 35 hours between charges, according to Samsung, which is 2.5 times the duration with the iPod. Unfortunately, that beefier battery means that the Z5 is no Nanoesque wafer. At just under half an inch thick, it's two-thirds thicker than the Nano.