Buy Cowon S9 32GB MP3 PlayerCowon S9 32GB MP3 Player Product Description:
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
By K. Jamal
First things first...the design of the player makes it a joy to hold. In fact I can't let it go. Each time I put it down, I pick it up again for a feel! And equally important to me, how nice to have a player with simple drag and drop for files.A 480x272 pixel, 16.7 million colour amoled screen beats anything else I have seen. Whether this is better than the Sony X series which also is amoled I cannot say. Can't afford to buy both to compare. 16.7 million colours is obviously good but I am sure a million here or there probably makes no difference at all. Amoled is the latest screen display. It uses less power as it does away with backlight and is also thinner. Also it responds quicker than other displays so movies play much smoother without any ghosting that I could detect. The blacks look really black. The screen is of the capacitative type. Basically what this means is that it needs no pressure on the screen. I have had an Archos 704 for quite a while and I can vouch for the difference. On the Archos screen, you have to dig in your finger or give it sharp taps. And every time I do this, I feel I am going to damage the screen. An additional bonus is rather than everything being touch screen, Cowon has added buttons at the top for volume, pause, play and reverse/forward. This is really good as I can change things while the cowon remains in my pocket.This little PMP plays mp3, wma, ogg, wav and flac. Probably others as well. You can sort your music by the usual tags...album artist, genre and so on. It has a tilt sensor.It is very light for its size. Some may feel this makes it feel cheap as if weight was a measure of quality. An age old hangup with gold I expect!!. For me the lighter a thing is the better. Battery life is great for music. They claim over 40 hours. I have never found these claims to be true on anything I've ever bought because they seem to calculate battery life on MP3s played at 128 Kpbs but even if it lasts 20-25 hours, that's good enough for me.I chose the S9 over the Sony X series after a lot of weighing up. The Sony is cheaper and has wifi but no Bluetooth. The S9 has bluetooth but no wifi. In the end I decided to go for Bluetooth, so I could connect to Bluetooth speakers which I thought was more useful than wifi. I can't imagine I would use the internet on a 3.3 inch screen for too long after the novelty wears off. Unfortunately, trying out the bluetooth with the Linx B Tube speakers (which I have reviewed before and they are great!), I find that connectivity is not upto mark and the sound breaks up over a couple of feet. I have made this point on a cowon discussion board and lets hope cowon addresses this issue. A bit of a let down.I won't go into technical details too much as these are easily available on the internet and I encourage anyone wanting to buy this to have a good read before they splash out on this expensive piece of kit.It is a shame that there does not seem to be any plans to produce one with a flash drive of 64GB or more. 64GB flash drives are getting affordable so why stop at 32? Most people now rip music at 320kpbs and 32GB isn't all that much especially if you want to load high quality videos as well. A 64GB S9 would have run the iPod touch out of town but it seems every company, however good they may be, suffers from an inferiority complex and only wants to follow where the iPod leads.If you are prepared to fork out the extra cash, buy this and let your friends look at you with envy!!
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
By Andy C
Cowon s9 reviewNearly Perfect****I've had the Cowon S9 for about a month now and I have to say it is the best mp3 player I have ever had. The sound quality has to be heard to be believed and the screen picture is crystal clear.There have been comments made about it being "too light" and flimsy but I don't think that is the case, I got the official Cowon leather case for it and it is metal covered in leather, this bulks up the weight and makes it feel more durable.The UI it has to be said isn't as intuitive as it could be and takes a while to navigate your way around although the firmware upgrades are helping with the customisable main menu.The audio quality is fantastic, it will play mp3, wma, flac, wav, ape and ogg, the level of customisable EQ settings is excellent and really enhance the music, especially Stereo enhance which really improves the stereo separation. The Bass is thumpy and clear and the treble is crystal, you might want to dump the bundles earphones and buy a decent pair, I am using Creative's Aurvana Live and they sound fantastic with it. You can view all your album art in landscape mode which is nicer I think than the iPods coverflow.Video is superb and the player has an accelerometer which allows you to view in landscape aswell as portrait. It plays in AVI and WMV but not H264.The radio is funky with a big dial but I haven't found out yet if you can name the stations. Bluetooth is nice aswell and pairs easily with the Sony BT SRS 100 speaker but will only stream music not transfer files. I don't know how to use the Flash player feature but I believe you can play games on it; I have no interest in this feature. The battery life is fantastic although it takes about a month to get it up to its full potential.One of the big selling points for me on this player is the external buttons Play, pause, fwd, rew and vol this allows you to control the player while it's in your pocket unlike the Creative XFi-2 which is totally touch screen. You can also lock the touch screen so it doesn't go on and off in your pocket. I would have liked if the headphone socket was at the top of the player, as having it on the bottom means the headphone jack gets bent if the player is in your pocket, I don't see any locigal reason to have it at the bottom.The only gripe I have is with the Playlist function which is a big problem for the S9. You can only make playlists in mp3 or wma codec but not FLAC (not sure about the others) and the player must be set to MTP mode. If you change back the player to MSC (for drag and drop facility or to send FLAC files to the player) and reconnect it to the PC your playlists are lost, I don't know why this happens and will hopefully be fixed in the next firmware upgrade.The bundled software Jet Media Centre is worse than useless, the basic version you get with the player doesn't rip to mp3 and the player doesn't like wma as it mixes up the tags. Having said that there is a single "Favourites" playlist on the player which does play FLAC and you can easily add songs or video to and that doesn't get lost when you convert from MTP to MSC.There is however light at the end of the tunnel with two third party pieces of software "Playlist Creator" which allows you to make any file type of playlist on your PC and save it to the S9's playlist folder as a m3u file. Also "Claw UI" which you will have to install onto the player and this allows you to make any file type playlists on the player itself. I don't know why Cowon couldn't have come up with this themselves as it the only thing letting down this fantastic piece of kit.Overall I'd recommend the S9 if you want a top quality audio and video player and are not bothered with playlists or wi-fi. If Cowon can get the playlist problem sorted then it is on its way to being a real iPod beater for audiophiles and music snobs everywhere.ProsUnbelievable sound quality with fully customisable EQA-B feature for repeating sections of songs or video and tempo and pitch adjustmentSupports Flac and other lossless codecsCrystal clear screen resolutionAccepts flash and has customisable screenExternal buttons which can be controlled from the pocketBeautiful coverflow showing 18 albums per screenBluetooth compatibility with speakers and headphonesFantastic designContinuous firmware upgradesMassive Battery Life six weeks now and counting between chargesConsPlaylist functionality is limited, it won't let you make playlists for FLAC or under MSC (drag and drop) modeAlthough it plays WMA files it won't recognise the tags so the tracklist will be all jumbled upIt won't support gapless playback unless it's a FLAC file (so you can't have a playlist with a gapless album)You can't name the radio stationsHeadphone socket is at the bottom which can lead to damage of the headphone jackUI takes a bit of getting used toBattery life is considerable shorter than advertised if you are using EQ and large files with large headphones
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
By Jon Hundy
This thing is beautiful. I converted my CDs to mp3s and my music collection outgrew my 8GB mp3 player. I needed a 32GB player, so after hours of googling and forum reading I got this.Stick it in any computer and it acts like a USB stick, just drag 'n' drop your files.It's a bit slow starting when the full 32GB capacity is used, but if you're buying an mp3 player to listen to music then I highly recommend the Cowon S9, the sound quality is excellent.If you're not an audiophile and want to play games, surf t'Internet and stuff, get the Apple ipod Touch.
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