Stock Headphone & Speaker Quality


Remember these uncomfortable things from a few pages back? Well, we took the time and fought through the discomfort to give them a good listen so we could determine the sound quality which they can output. We wore them for a few days for about an hour each day in order to get accustomed to the sound they produced and came away with some lasting impressions (and sore ears)

To be honest, the headphones that come with the S5 do nothing to showcase what this player is capable of. After we switched the headphones out for a pair of Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3 earbuds which were on loan from a friend, we were simply floored by the difference in sound quality versus the stock units that came with the S5. While those headphones nearly cost as much as the YP-S5, even the much more mundane Razer Pro Solutions M100 earbuds showed a substantial improvement over these stock headphones.

Not did this show that this Samsung player is capable of so much more than its stock headphones allow but it also shows that the age-old adage is true here as well: the headphones that come with a media player usually get the short end of the budget. While they are definitely a step above some of the included headphones we have seen with other players (don’t get me started on the things that came with the Cowon…ugh), they provide a bottleneck where this player can’t stretch its legs and deliver the sound that it wants to.


The two speakers that are hidden away on the YP-S5 have a total output of a mere 1.5W but that is understandable since a balance needed to be struck between size, power consumption and sound quality. They are perfect if you want to share music with a friend in a close environment but don’t expect them to fill a good-sized room with high quality sound. For their size, the sound produced is quite good but it has next to no bass and they need to be turned up to ¾ volume in order for the sound to be heard in anything but the smallest cubicle. If you do want to get good speaker sound, hook up the S5 to an external receiver via the audio-out option and let rip.

For their size and the way they are implemented into the hide-away design these speakers are perfect for situation where you don’t want to or can’t use your headphones. While we can’t see many people using these on a regular basis, their inclusion does add a new dimension in the listening options of this player.