Sometime earlier this year my Dell MP3 player (aka The Best Xmas Present Evah!) developed an annoying problem – something in the headphone socket is broken and unless you hold the jack firmly in a certain way it will only play mono. This gets wearing on the fingers eventually, and makes the player pretty much a bust for walks.
So as it is holiday season I decided to get myself a new player. After much reading of reviews I got one of these. It arrived last night, and so far I am very impressed. The sound quality is excellent, especially with my Bose headphones, and the video quality is awesome. I’m still learning my way around the various audio functions, but the mere thought of having an MP3 player that claims to do surround sound is rather cool.
The software that came with the Cowon appears to be pretty shoddy, but you don’t actually need it to use the player – files can be copied to it just like it was any other external drive.
I’ve just tried the Cowon out on speakers and it doesn’t seem to have the pop to drive them effectively, but that’s OK because the Dell has a base station / amplified with a separate audio jack that still works perfectly. It might be an issue using the Cowon with a TV, but I haven’t bought the TV Out cable so I can’t check.
More later when I have had a chance to play with the thing some more.
I think Cowon are fabulous. I have the iAudio 7, as I don’t need to be able to watch video. The sound quality is fantastic – this was a major consideration for me as I’m one of those people who can not only tell the difference between a compressed and uncompressed file, but can hear the difference between, say, a 3 and a 4 MB compressed file. The Cowon meets my pernickety standards. What’s more, the battery life is an astounding 60 hours. This is fantastically useful for listening to talking books when you travel. I managed to pack twenty books in a device half the size of my palm – and listen to them without the battery giving up halfway across China.
I have had the iAudio x5 for about 3 years. Great! ..except it developed the same problem you had with the Dell. So I now I also have a smaller one… and two walkman phones. Practical because they’re always there.
Annoying though that a high tech gadget goes down because of one of the cheapest bits in it…….
God Jul Cheryl!!!
Carolyn:
Thank you! I know my ears are really hopeless, so it is always good to have their judgment confirmed by someone with more talent in that department than me.
Paul:
It is a very stupid piece of technology to have a weakness in, but I tend to assume that these gadget will be obsolete in 2-3 years anyway so as long as they don’t cost the Earth I’m not too worried if they don’t last much longer than that.
God Jul to you too! Hope it isn’t too cold in Sweden.