The Fabulous Samsung Helix

I've had my Samsung Helix XM receiver for a little over three months now. Here's what I think of it now that the first blush of infatuation has worn off:

Good:

The music programming is great. I suspect that Sirius has a very similar lineup and that this is not a distinguishing factor for satellite radio, but it's worth saying. I drove to Las Vegas for a trade show this week and never had to look for another tape, pick a CD, or hunt the dial for a radio station - I just hopped around between my favorite XM music channels. Also, the 80's station plays one American Top 40 show from the 80's each week, which is an amazing blast from the past.

I really like having a portable music player that surprises me with music I had forgotten about. In my book that's a big plus over any mp3 player.

As a baseball fan, I love the fact that I can listen to Any Game Any Time. There's one small drawback to listening to Angels games - they broadcast the home team feed, which means when they played Cleveland last week I got the Indians play-by-play. Not a big deal, but worth noting.

The ability to record a single song is fantastic. If you hear something that you want to record, one button push takes care of it. You can start the recording up to 10 minutes after the song starts and it will get it all. Granted, the song is recorded only as long as the title tag is up - so you don't always get a clean head or tail on the recording. It sounds like you recorded it off the radio - what a big surprise! You can build playlists and search/sort your tracks by artist, channel, recording session - all the usual stuff.

Bad:

The user interface for scheduling recordings is clunky. The device is described as "Tivo for XM" but it's really more like "pre-VCR Plus VHS for XM." To schedule a recording you enter the time and channel - there's no "program guide" type information to select shows from.

Transferring files onto the unit from your computer (it plays mp3/wmv formats) is also very basic. Unless you want to run XM+Napster, you plug the thing in and it shows up as a USB drive. Personally, I don't buy a lot of music online so the XM+Napster was only going to be useful if it had a good UI - and it doesn't.

XM's metadata (artist/title) is fairly inconsistent. The worst offender is the American Top 40 rebroadcasts. Some weeks it will be tagged "Casey Kasem AT40/AT40" all the way through, some weeks it's "Casey Kasem AT40/(actual artist+title)" Needless to say it's pretty hard to find the one track you want to hear when you have three hours of stuff all tagged the same.

Seeking inside long tracks is pretty crummy. The only functions are "skip to the beginning/end" or "skip 5 seconds." This is fine for 3 minute pop songs but really stinks for 45 minute podcasts. It would be nice if it would start skipping bigger chunks the longer you held the button down.

The built-in antenna is pretty good but doesn't quite cut it on my train ride. I've tried sitting on both sides of the car looking for the best signal strength, but it just isn't quite there along some stretches. Normally this isn't a big deal as I can listen to prerecorded stuff or podcasts, but when the Angels are on the east coast I'd like to listen to the games on the way home.

Ugly:

Sorry, nothing ugly.

Go buy one. Now.