Samsung BD-P4600

Product Survey: Blu-ray Players

It might not be the most recent incarnation of the all-powerful Korean giant's genius, but it was definitely worth taking a closer look. Before we delve any deeper, we should warn you that the games console-looks won't necessarily be at home in everybody's front room. You can choose to either hang it on on the wall--next to your flatscreen TV, for instance--stack it on top of other devices, or even stand it up at a 25° angles thanks to a stand that you can attach to the flat surface underneath. You insert discs on the right-hand side, using a drive that quickly swallows them up, rather than a slide-out drawer. Something else that's worth pointing out--and it's very important--is that the connectivity options have been reduced to a bare minimum, with just a HDMI port, composite video out, an Ethernet port and two USB ports. That's right, two, but the second is not just for show. You can use one of them to connect the P4600 to a wireless network using a WiFi dongle. Once you've used one USB port for that, you'll want to keep it plugged in the whole time, so having a second USB port you can use for connecting external storage is a great idea! Samsung's real strength here has been giving the P4600 support for a huge range of formats.