Cowon iAUDIO 9 8 GB MP3 Player (Black) Reviews
Cowon iAUDIO 9 8 GB MP3 Player (Black) Reviews
Other products by Cowon Ratting 4.5 Out of 5.0 Special Offer Total New 3 Total Use 0
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Video and audio player with FM tuner, voice recorder, and text and photo viewer; 2.0-inch TFT LCD 320 x 240, QVGA with 262K colors; Up to 30 hours of music playback (7 hours of video) on one charge; AV Out: Composite/Stereo; BBE+ support
Technical Details
- Video and audio player with FM tuner, voice recorder, and text and photo viewer- 2.0-inch TFT LCD 320 x 240, QVGA with 262K colors
- Up to 30 hours of music playback (7 hours of video) on one charge
- AV Out: Composite/Stereo
- BBE+ support
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By creamyPB (bangor, me USA)
Things to consider good:
1. Sound quality is amazing. I have some Skull Candy buds that are about $15 or so and they do the trick.
2. Plays almost any format. This will handle FLAC, APE, OGG and the lossless stuff.
3. It is a touch player. I was used to having buttons so it took a bit for me to get used to the touch screen. There's the ability to adjust the sensitivity, but i left it on 3 because well, i'm clutzy.
4. There's a nice little screen for showing album art. I am obsessive about the tagging of my music and so I was thrilled to see the pretty pictures.
5. It's a bit strange how to use the interface because there's no buttons. The 'quick setup' manual won't really explain to you about putting things on shuffle, repeat, setting of equalizer, etc. The little CD that comes with it has a PDF manual which explains all this stuff. I would suggest that you read it at least a little bit before you start fiddling around.
6. It's drag and drop which was why I got my first Cowon, why I got this one, and why I will always get one from now on. Most of the MP3 players make you use their software in order to load up the player. This makes me crazy. I will put MY music onto MY player any way I wish thank you very much.
7. The little CD I mentioned before also comes with JetAudio software if you want to use it. I messed with it and it's a decent program, but i have Media Jukebox and didn't want to switch. And yay, I didn't have to! You can sync this with other media players such as Windows Media Player, Winamp. You should NOT try to mess with this thing with iTunes. iTunes encodes their songs with funky DRM stuff that makes some of them play, some of them don't. With JetAudio you can convert the files so that they will play on here but that seems like a lot of work just to hear your music.
8. I have experienced excellent battery life with this. The only time it went really low was when I was lazy and left it in the car. It got cold which will suck the battery. Charge time is about 2 hours i'd say from it being dead. They warn you that this type of battery works best when you DON'T let it go dead.
Things to consider not so good:
1. I haven't bothered to put any video on here and I probably never will. 8GB fills up a lot faster than you think. Additionally this is a tiny screen. For album art fine, for movies no way. If you want a multimedia type thing like that you should get a bigger player. Cowon does have the S9 which is their super fancy player.
2. The volume is not as loud as I'd like. I mean it's loud, but only when you turn it all the way up. The highest volume is 40 and at the gym I have it on 38.
3. The ear buds that come with this are quite terrible (like the ear buds that come with everything). As I said before I have some skull candy ones and they are fine. Don't think that you need some $250 sennheisers or something.
4. Nitpicky thing A) I wish the year was displayed on the MP3 tag. Nitpicky thing B) The display will only show JPG. NO other photo formats. Neither of these things are close to being dealbreakers, but still, these features would've been nice.
Overall I love this player and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone. It's pluses far outweigh the minuses. This is the second Cowon I have owned and I'm every bit as pleased with this one. My first one was the U5 which i loved but after a year a smash on the floor was the end. So I got this one which is similar but improved. A great, basic player for those of us who need great sound but don't want or need all the extra multimedia type stuff.
By Tech fan (Lexington, KY)
Cowon audio quality is far beyond any other players I've owned. Features for the price point are great, The iAudio 9 is highly customizeable compared to other brands in the $100-$150 range. I highly reccomend the Cowon iAudio 9.
By jason_francisco (San Francisco)
the iAudio 9 beats the best MP3 players by at least 2x in the audio quality and the slim look and light weight touch. however its weakness is the battery.
1. significant improvement of audio quality by addition of 30 pre-set equalizer settings, from rock to jazz, club to rap. while user can select the equalizer spectrum and create their own equalizers, COWON has pre-created 10 audio settings based on generic "psycho-acoustic" preferences.
2. light weight and even more handy. iAudio 9 is slim, about 40 gram (1.4 ounces), extremely light but very comfortable to carry and manage. definitely great for travel.
3. better functional keys and user interface. iAudio 9 applies the same COWON concept of functionality. user does not need to relearn new skills. it significantly improves on its manageability. the function keys are easier to see. user can select the degree of "sensitiveness" or "responsiveness" of the function keys. some reviewers stated that COWON's iAudio function key design "needs some learning to adjust to". this is subjective. i personally find the function key design easy to understand and did not need any "training" or reading of the owner's manual to use the device.
two major areas need improvement;
1. battery power. battery is really WEAK. playing WMA music file setting volume at 2/3 to max, COWON runs at most 8 hours even COWON advertises the device as 29 hours. i9 is really weak in battery compared with i7 which realistically runs about 40 hours non stop (COWON advertises i7 as 60 hours). this makes recharging a daily necessity for i9 whereas for i7, you can go for weeks without need for recharging. long distance international traveler may do better to go with i7 than i9 due to the battery issue.
2. USB cable and USB jack. to conform to the slim design, iAudio 9 uses a tiny USB input jack, smaller than your generic USB jack for external hard drive or digital camera. user has to carry the special USB cable when travel. COWON can provide an adapter so that the device can be plucked into a conventional USB cable.
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