In our standard battery drain test, which loops a video with the screen at 50 percent brightness, it actually managed five hours and 23 minutes. We've gotta give Sammy credit, though, it promised five hours of video playback and it delivered. We ran the Player through our usual barrage of benchmarks and it performed about as well as you'd expect given its year-old hardware, scoring just 17.64 in single-threaded Linpack and averaging just 50fps in Nenamark (Nenamark 2 refused to run). But, as we all know, iOS is fine-tuned to take advantage of the provided hardware - that's not always the case with Android. In fact, even though specs never tell the whole story, the Galaxy Player 4.0 actually sports more powerful silicon than the latest iPod touch which rocks an 800MHz single-core chip and just 256MB of RAM. The average Quadrant score of 1,651 puts it in a league with the aging, but adequate Droid X and the somewhat disappointing Rhyme. Speaking of that Exynos 3110 processor and half-gig of RAM, they still provide plenty of power for handling most day to day tasks.
Then there are the radios, including an 802.11n connection, BlueTooth and GPS. There's also an accelerometer and a gyroscope inside, alongside 8GB of storage (which can be expanded via micro SD) and a CMOS sensor for capturing 3.2 megapixel images. The brains of the operation is a 1GHz single-core Hummingbird CPU with 512MB of RAM to help it along the way. There is no "II" at the end of that title. And, yes, you read that right - Galaxy S. Inside Samsung's Gingerbread-powered media player is essentially a Galaxy S. We still wouldn't want to sit through a feature length film, but a half-hour episode of 30 Rock was pleasant enough. That being said, we did find watching video on the four-inch Samsung much easier on the eyes than squinting at the 3.5-inch panel on Apple's devices. And the difference between those two things is glaringly obvious when you place the Player 4.0 next to its extremely pixel-dense, Apple-branded competitor. As a device primarily meant for media consumption we'd expect that Sammy would want to deliver the best visuals possible and, although it's good, it's not quite great. The WVGA resolution is expected, but still a bit of a letdown. Colors are bright with plenty of eye-popping contrast and viewing angles are excellent, though black levels do leave something to be desired.
Most of the front of the device is taken up by the four-inch 800 x 480 Super Clear LCD screen which, while not quite as stunning as the Super AMOLED Plus panels on its relatives, is still a pretty decent display. The front of the device is home to the ear piece, for placing VoIP calls, a VGA camera and the trio of capacitive buttons found on most Samsung handsets (i.e., no search button here). Up top is the all-important headphone jack and the micro USB port, which is hidden under a strange and flimsy feeling sliding door. The edges of the device are littered with your usual assortment of ports and keys, with the reasonably solid volume rocker on the left and the power button on the right. Also around back is the 3.2 megapixel camera and a pair of speakers. The backplate is one large glossy piece of white polymer that snaps on and off to reveal the removable 1,200mAh battery (the 5.0 bumps that to a stunning 2,500mAh) and microSD slot. Especially since it doesn't offer any advantages, where as going with a dedicated hard drive based player at least offers an obvious advantage in storage capacity.
On the other hand, carrying both a smartphone and the Player seemed excessive and took up quite a bit of pocket space. It might seem bulky compared to some of the tinier (non-touchscreen) media players out there, but if you're moving on from a dying iPod classic you wont notice the size. While a tad on the large size it wasn't uncomfortable to hold or carry in a pocket - at least no more so than a 4-inch smartphone.
The shiny plastic and tacky chrome made it feel like a KIRF - not the premier media player from the company behind some of our favorite Android handsets. Still, we were shocked by just how cheap it felt. Samsung's build quality isn't always our favorite, but we're used to it. It is, sadly, just as bulky as those now aging devices and just as plasticky. It'd be easy to mistake its silver-garnished bezel and curved plastic back for a white variant of T-Mobile's Galaxy S (or, for the more cynical amongst you, a white iPhone 3GS). Looking at the Galaxy Player 4.0, it's clear where its roots lie.