Along with the YP-55i MP3 player comes a driver CD, stereo headphones, USB cable, carry case, direct-connect USB adaptor, mini-headphone line cable, instructions, neck strap, warranty card and an AAA battery (yay!). Most of this included gear is self explanatory, but a few accessories are worth focusing on.

The 'direct connect USB adaptor' looks like a USB plug with a tiny metal connector on the other end. The adaptor plugs into the base of the YP-55i, quickly allowing users to connect it to a PC or notebook without having to carry around the more cumbersome full-length USB cable.

As the Yepp YP-55i doubles up as a USB hard drive too (it has 192MB of storage after all), Samsung have thankfully improved on past Yepp models, and software is no longer required to communicate through the USB1.1 connection.

Recording a song off the radio directly to MP3 format is quick and simple to do with the YP-55i. Sound quality is pretty good, with encoding options of 32-128kbps. Up to 20 radio station presets can be programmed, incidently.

On a WindowsXP test system, the YP-55i quickly configured itself and showed up in Windows Explorer as any USB removeable disk might. Transferring MP3 files, or any files really, to the YP-55i is as straightforward as copying them from one drive to another. Additionally, any FM Radio recordings you may have encoded on the fly (encoded at 128kbps, 44kHz for those wondering), can be played right back from the YP-55i through the desktop PC.

While the YP-55i is connected via the USB port, it is powered entirely by the USB connection - a nice change from past designs which tended to always rely upon the internal batteries.

The one caveat to this is that you cannot run the YP-55i off the power from the USB connection and listen to anything through it - say for example if you run out of batteries, and your PC doesn't have a sound card. When it is hooked up to the PC, the YP-55i functions solely for transferring data.

Equipped with a standard 12Mbps USB1.1 connection, the YP-55i will take about 5 minutes to fill up its onboard memory with a roster of freshly uploaded tracks. Of those tracks, it will gladly play any 48kbps - 192kbps encoded WMA files, or MP3 tracks encoded at 8kbps - 320kbps, including VBR, with equal tenacity. Samsung suggest that WMA files encoded under 48kbps won't play, though I don't think may people would want to listen to songs recorded so roughly.