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Samsung Nexus review: Samsung Nexus

Samsung Nexus

Brian Nadel
5 min read

Since the debut of the Sirius S50 last fall, XM Satellite Radio has been behind the eight ball, lacking a combo satellite-radio receiver and digital music player for those who want to listen on the go. Enter Samsung's Nexus family of player radios, which, along with the company's Helix, is equal parts digital music and satellite radio. Like the S50, the Samsung Nexus YP-X5 can play your digital music, but you can tune into satellite programming only when the unit is in its dock, which would most likely be located in the car or your home. Small, light, and a relative bargain, the Nexus holds merely 1GB of music and is Windows compatible only, and it can play audio for just a bit more than 7 hours per charge. Since you can't listen to live XM radio on the Nexus without the dock, it's not the right product for those looking for ultimate portability (see the Helix). But those who spend time in their cars should definitely take a look and listen.

6.7

Samsung Nexus

The Good

Small and light, Samsung's Nexus 50 provides space for up to 50 hours of digital music (25 hours for the Nexus 25), as well as recorded XM radio programming. The easy-to-use Nexus ships with a decent set of accessories, and the dock's small, removable XM receiver can be used in a variety of scenarios and locations.

The Bad

The Samsung Nexus's monochrome screen and capacity are uninspiring, and the unit needs to sit in its cradle to receive XM broadcasts; plus, its Windows-only Napster/XM software is frustrating to use. Worse yet, it runs out of power after just more than 7 hours of listening.

The Bottom Line

The Samsung Nexus is no bigger than most digital music players, and Samsung adds satellite radio to the mix with a cradle-bound XM radio, but you can listen to live radio only when the Nexus is docked. In addition, it comes up short on battery life.

While it lacks Sirius's cute little doggie logo, Samsung's Nexus is a small wonder that puts the S50 to shame. With dimensions of 3.3 by 1.8 by 0.7 inches, the Nexus is smaller than the S50, and at just 2.6 ounces, it weighs half as much. What you give up is the S50's larger color screen; the Nexus has a 1.6-inch blue-monochrome display that is functional and readable. We applaud the S50's clean look and lack of switches on its face, but the silver and black Nexus has a more practical design, with well-placed volume-up and volume-down buttons, pause/play buttons, and a four-way navigation control. It also has a switch at the top for on, off, and hold.

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The Nexus comes with a cradle and remote, among other things.

The 1GB Samsung Nexus 50 sells for $269, while the 512MB Nexus 25 is priced at $219. The comparison with the S50 becomes complicated because the Nexus ships with a desk dock, an antenna, an AC adapter, a remote control, cables, a belt clip, and earbuds, but it lacks the car installation kit that the S50 includes; the S50 does without the desk dock. Samsung sells a car kit for $70, and Sirius has a home kit for $100. The bottom line is that the Nexus sells for about $50 less than the S50. However, if you buy a satellite radio for the programming, XM is currently the leader--both in subscriber base and content choices--with 170 channels of programming, from a variety of music genres to Bob Dylan's reincarnation as a disk jockey to most Major League Baseball games. Sirius counters with 125 channels, which include an equally diverse assortment of music, Howard Stern, and NBA and NHL games; both require subscriptions for programming that run $12.95 a month.

While we prefer to have live radio, the Samsung Nexus's dock-and-record system is second best and well worth it, considering its size and weight. You can either listen to on-air programming via the dock's line-out jack or pick when and which channel to record, and the device does the rest, regardless of whether it's the BBC overnight news, XM Kids, or the network's uncensored comedy routines. Recording a few hours of a channel is the perfect way to reacquaint yourself with the classics or introduce yourself to new music. While both buffer the audio stream enough to capture entire songs, neither can tap into podcasts directly.

The 1GB of flash memory that the Samsung Nexus carries matches the S50 bit for bit, and both can hold about 50 hours of programming; as the name implies, the Nexus 25 can hold 25 hours of content. This is just enough to make for interesting technology but far too little for a musical library. You can connect the Nexus to a PC and transfer your own MP3 and WMA tracks, or you can download tunes from Napster. Unfortunately, the bundled software is often frustrating to use, and it's not compatible with Macs. In addition to not recognizing that you've changed a CD, the software interface doesn't let you know if the device is full, and all transfers to the Nexus start at 50 percent and proceed from there; this is due to the fact that you can use only half the device's storage for non-XM digital audio files. Oddly, Windows Explorer lets you move songs directly to the Nexus, which gets its own drive letter, but MP3 files won't play because Nexus uses and transcodes your music into XM's native AACPlus audio format.

As small as it is, the Samsung Nexus could be a big step forward for satellite-radio technology, since it is the first to use a removable radio receiver. Called Passport, it is the size of a matchbox and as sensitive as Delphi's MyFi, and it has the power to save some cash for those who like to listen all day. Because a single radio can go from home to car to work, it can save on extra hardware and subscriptions to XM, but only if a variety of envisioned equipment for it comes out. Samsung has four home-theater systems that can use the Passport radio, and we've heard rumors about Passport-enabled car stereos, boomboxes, and maybe even notebooks and PDAs. If it catches on, it could change the face of satellite radio. If not, it could be the next Betamax format: a good idea that's quickly forgotten.

Like the Sirius S50, the Samsung Nexus comes with a one-year warranty, but it's too new to have much of anything available on the company's support site. We expect this to change quickly as Samsung adds FAQs, downloads, and personalized help, although you'll need to register. The device comes with English and Spanish manuals, as well as a quickie setup sheet, and Samsung has an e-mail link and a 24-hour phone line for questions and help.

As far as audio quality goes, the Samsung Nexus delivers loads of sonic detail, but its acoustic balance is a bit disappointing, particularly compared with other digital players and Samsung's larger Helix model. There is an equalizer with preset profiles for different programming, but it can't make up for the hollow and sometimes harsh high end and anemic midrange present in its playback.

Once we got used to the idea of having to record satellite-radio programming, the Samsung Nexus became part of our daily routine. We set the device to record our favorite channels at different times during the day, then pocketed it for our day in the real world. We prefer live broadcasts, but it's a small price to pay for such a small device. It never got hot, and we were generally impressed with its reception, which was on a par with that of the Helix and the MyFi units we've used. Transfers using the included XM+Napster are excruciatingly slow, with 10 songs taking nearly 5 minutes to move from PC to Nexus--twice as long as similar action with the Helix. With 7 hours, 15 minutes of playback time, the Nexus is disappointing but offers nearly double the battery life as that of the S50.

6.7

Samsung Nexus

Score Breakdown

Design 8Features 7Performance 5