COWON iAUDIO 7 MP3 Player

Reviews: Multimedia

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
COWON
Sep. 24, 2008

Specifications

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Extra Features

Voice recording, for me, is a terrific addition. It's not overly complicated and you can easily copy and share audio with other people. You can also record FM, which is handy for a few.

Watching video or looking at photos is possible, but not impressive. It's not that the display is of poor quality--it's beautiful and crisp--but you can cover it with a coin. 1.3 inches is pushing it for video and way too small for photos, unless you design icons for a living.

Conclusion

COWON's iAUDIO 7 is a purist's player. It's not playful, it's pragmatic. It's not easy to use. But it's light, has amazing battery life (I confess, I lost track after the 50-hour point) and unparalleled audiophillic qualities that make it the only player some people would even consider owning.

The features go one step beyond including rudimentary video playback and voice recording. Reading text on the player is surprisingly easy to do and it even supports bookmarks, even if there's no way to pre-load playlists. For every great innovation there's a drawback, and that's why most people don't know what a COWON is.

Firmware support is constant, with performance tweaks pretty well-covered, but no sweeping UI changes or improvements.

I don't hate the player, and I'm certainly not disappointed with it. I just have a hard time recommending it, unless you know you're willing to spend time with a machine and learn how to really manipulate it, as opposed to going on intuition. As silly as this is, I will be happy with this player and even happier to buy the next COWON player that takes the iAUDIO 7's place. Because for all the stupid mistakes that they made with their UI and the layout, the function of the player, with regards to music, is perfect.

They've got nowhere to go but up.

The Good

Very small

Tremendous batter life

Great construction

Music separate from other types of audio

Platform-agnostic

Best audio playback ever

Features out the wazoo

The Bad

Tiny display

Choppy, counter-intuitive UI

No playlist support

Bad allocation unit size

Uncomfortable controls

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Page 3 of 3

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Page 1: Introduction, First Impressions
Page 2: Navigation, Playback and Software
Page 3: Extra Features, Conclusion

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Add Comment

1 User Comment

1 - Posted by amyt on November 23, 2008 - 6:31 am

I just purchased the iaudio7 and cannot seem to get the downloaded audiobook in WMA to play. Any suggestions?

Amy

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