MP3 Players Review

Cowon 16 GB Portable Multimedia Player (Black)

Customer Reviews

Perfect

Where to start... Well first off my experience with MP3 players in general... I have had 3 Ipods (1 4th Gen 2 5th gen (one of which was a 5.5 comp upgrade from the apple store because they didn't have any regular 5th Gen there), and borrowed another Ipod Nano. I have also set up my brother's M:Robe Not to mention, I have been given, Sansas, and Zens, and not to mention Irivers... All of which I messed around with shortly after. In comparison to those I can make a few comparisons. First off GUI. Needless to say some of the best GUIs came from apple, they are gurus at the interface. Intuitive and so easy a baby could use them with little trouble. I am also quite fond of the m:Robe too, its different but simple (and that red screen is nice too, who needs color if its just an MP3 player?) I'm not going through all of them, all in all in comparison, the D2 is slightly more difficult. But there are only a few quirks to get used to... Like the number of touches to actually get it to play music (I counted 3 from the selection screen) Next sound quality: What can I say, the best I have heard other than the sansa Clip. And hands down it is THE best EQ. 5 band plus a plethora of enhancements. A notable is MP enhance. Now that doesn't mean its only for MP3s... its for EVERY lossless format. What it does it corrects any losses from conversion in the player. Its pretty noticeable difference too. So for this player it gets top scores for SQ. BTW, its better than all others unmodified (modified ipod 5th gen has one of the best, (look up IMOD)). Battery life is one line... BEST. I have had it for a month. I have charged it once. After one week I had to charge it (note I did NOT charge it out of the box). Since then its been 3 weeks since its last charge (minus the updates, and the putting music on). Its FANTASTIC! Features. Hands down the BEST. Lets list: Dictionary (with korean firmware which is entirely worth it), drawing application, calculator, scientific calculator, voice recorder, fm radio.... Not to mention flash capability. Text viewer, and of course pictures and video. Video is good but not why I got it, but it looks really nice and I have no problems with it. Anything else? No need for any software except for video conversion. Oh and I love the OS they used. Which is a heavily modified version of Linux, open source and awesome. No apple or windows proprietary software. It's beautiful. I think thats it. I will never go back to Ipod, and I'll never touch a Zune either. I hope this helps any of you hopefuls searching for a new PMP. This is the best i have seen/used.

Fantastic player...but not for everyone....

(Initial Disclaimer: I am a big fan of most Cowon products.) The D2 is a great A/V player, but I honestly have to say that I can't recommend it to everyone. If you want a flawless GUI, up-to-the-minute firmware, extensive playlist capabilities, compatibility with AAC files, bluetooth connectivity, superior FM radio performance, high-quality stock earphones, and name-recognition, then it is probably not for you. These are all D2 weaknesses. Fortunately, most of these don't mean much to me. I don't really even care that much for the video capabilities (though they are pretty good for the size of the unit.) I want true drag-and-drop capability for media files, multiple playback formats (including FLAC and OGG,) superior battery life (EVERYONE admits that Cowon owns this one,) high power output at the phones jack, and superior (not necessarily audiophile) sound quality. The D2 has all of this. I traded up to the 16GB D2 from a 8GB i7 and I must admit that I miss a couple things about the i7. For one thing, the touchscreen is annoying. (Don't misunderstand me...the touchscreen on the D2 works fine. It's just that ALL touchscreens are annoying to me. Would you prefer to use a mouse on your desktop, or to reach up and use a touchscreen monitor? A touchscreen is wasteful of motion, often difficult to use when your finger blocks your view of the screen, and ends up providing you with a nice fingerprint-filled display. Fortunately, the D2 display shows prints only at certain angles and is very easy to clean.) I also like the size and shape of the i7, which, being built like a little brick, has no wide surfaces to stress and no large display to protect. The D2, on the other hand, has a lovely (fairly-large) display and several firmware features missing from the i7. Both models are available in 16GB versions, with the i7 being slightly less expensive than the D2. The sound quality of the D2 is very comparable to that of the i7, though I would probably give the D2 a slight edge in transparency. The output is more than enough to drive most earbuds, earphones, and low-impedance headphones, but you will definitely need a high-quality headphone amp if you use less-efficient headphones with this unit. My Sony MDRSA3000s and Ultrasone HFI-700DVDs definitely need the help, but my Grados and Ultimate Ears IEMs sound fantastic without the amp. Frankly, I was looking at both the the D2 and the 16 GB Sony NWZ-A729BLK. The Sony is probably at least as good as the D2 in terms of sound quality and slightly better in its GUI, but the Sony is $60 more than the D2, doesn't have the EQ features of the D2, and won't play FLAC or OGG audio files. (Most of my audio files are encoded with OGG as I find that OGG files usually sound just as good as MP3 files, but with a 20% reduction in size.) I haven't yet had a chance to check the battery life of the D2, but if it is anything like the battery life of the i7, it will be nothing less than astounding. My i7 will run for more than 35 hours, playing audio continuously. One last comment...see the cute little pick-shaped stylus that comes with the unit? Do yourself a favor and just leave it in the package. Unlike most PDAs, the stylus does not fit into any sort of slot or recess in the D2. You're supposed to hang it by its little cord around the carrying strap (or somewhere.) Very irritating. It also functions as a little rest that allows you to lean the D2 at two different viewing angles on a desktop or table. The D2 is very unstable when you do this. If I were you, I'd just forget about the using the stylus altogether and use the back of my nail to select items on the screen. So, there you go. I won't tell you that the D2 is the best thing since canned beer, but it does the things that I want extremely well. If I hadn't wanted to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB, I probably would have stuck with my i7, but the D2 made a lot of sense when I started looking at the avilable flash players.

Keyword : iriver