Looking to Buy New MP3 Player

If you're serious about video you might want to look into a hard drive player like the A2 or upcoming Q5. The Q5 is looking absolutely incredible, too bad it runs WinCE.

 

Nope, I'm not serious about video, maybe ill have a couple of 15min clips on it, thats about it, the rest music.

 

I've read that the hard drive players have problems with skipping/crashing much more than the flash drives. The capacity is nicer on the hard drive versions, but seems more problematic. ANy truth to that? Or is it wrong?

 

I have both a Cowon A2 as well as a D2. I've had no problems with crashing/skipping with either. At the same time though, I don't use either while moving much (unless you consider sitting in a car moving).

Theoretically, a hard drive player has higher potential to skip/crah than a flash based one. But, I imagine you'd have to shake or hit a hard drive player pretty hard before it skipped. A drop would do it I think, but if I dropped one, there are other things I'd be more worried about than the music skipping. As for crashing, I think the firmware has more to do with than the hard drive.

 

That's been my experience. The upside of the hard drive, besides capacity, was much faster file transfers. I don't know why nobody can make a flash player write at the 15-20MB/s that thumb drives can.

But anyway, if you're using the player more or less stationary, which you certainly would be for video usage, or most of the other uses a larger player like the Q5 is good for, I don't think it's so much an issue.

 

The A2 is an awesome player if you want a hard drive video player. Its screen is great quality, and you can do multiple things at once, such as read e-books and listen to music at the same time, which would be nice if you had the e-book and the sound tracks of the book. If you turn it off while watching a movie, when you turn it back on then it continues. And the AV feature is nice(The AV cables are included, unlike the creative players) The carrying case that it comes with is rather nice also. If your looking for a video player, I'd suggest the Cowon A2 above all the others that I've used(including the Creative and Archos players)

 

I third that decision. COWON makes the awesomest players. I've been with them since the CW200 (have 2 CW200s, 1iAUDIO 5, and 1 iAUDIO X5 20GB). And honestly, I think hard drive players are plenty durable. I've times my X5 dropped several times while playing music and gave it a lot of vibration over it's more than 3 year lifetime. In fact, there's even a major dent on the bottom edge (makes inserting the subpack a bit harder since the connector is a bit caved in) and it still works. Some sturdy stuff right there.

The REAL advantage with flash are the faster read rates.

 

My friend has a Cowon iAudio7 and is in love with it. I borrow it when I go to the gym and its a pretty nice mp3 player. I haven't seen any video on it.

The D2, however, looks very nice. I would like to see it in person first though just so you can get a feel for it.

Either way, Cowon does make good products so you can't really go wrong.

 

Currently I have a Zune, which works well enough. However at one point I owned the COWON iAudio X5L. Technically I'm still an owner of it, but it's been decommissioned by my graceful friend dropping it onto concrete from above-head-height.

I'm still looking forward to re-purchasing an X5, that player was near perfection for me.

 

^ Your name reminds me of the Nevermore song called Sentient 6.

 

That's where I got it from, actually. It's also been the inspiration to a couple of my tattoos.

 

I've got the D2 and am loving it.

You'll be pleased to hear that the D2 has good bookmarking support which also works with video.

I feel your pain with the Sansa, a friend at work primarily listens to podcasts and it's a real pain shuttling through 2.5 hours to get back to where you left off...

If you're feeling adventurous, you may want to look at the Sansa E series port of Rockbox. I ran Rockbox on my old iRiver player, and once you get used to it you'll never look back. Excellent playlisting/bookmarking, replaygain support, gapless playback(!)... the list goes on and on.

The 16GB iAudio7 isn't due for release for a couple of months yet, at least. Besides, if you're interested in video, it's 65K colour OLED screen isn't nearly as good as the D2's LCD.

 

I guess I will wait till early August, if there is no news about an 8gb D2, I'll most likely buy the 4gb D2.

Cool.

 

Finally got a Cowon D2 4gb Black DAP.

 

Nice! but doesnt the screen seem a little washed out in those pics? Viewing angles are either the same or a bit worse than my archos it seems

 

I was in bright light by the window to take the pictures with a reasonable shutter speed as not to induce blur to my pics, also, those little wavy lines record when a picture is taken with a digi cam.

But in indoor lighting the screen is great, bright and excellent colors.

 

does the cowon have expandable memory? like for SD or something

 

Yeah, it takes SD/SDHC/MMC cards.

8gb SDHC cards are available for around $69 allowing you to have a total of 12gb of all flash memory.

 

thats not bad, cuz it would seriously suck if it didnt give you the chance of extra memory when its needed.

 

The Cowon D2 is awesome. I really like it - great apps, equalizer, great sound, plays movies flawlessly with great color. I've been watching movies on it for a few weeks and really like it for that.

I don't like it for carrying around at the gym or walking around - a little too big and heavy for me.

So I bought a Cowon iAudio U3 for carrying around and the gym. Have been using it for a day.

Dang it's sweet! 4GB, great sound, equalizer, great color screen (plays movies and shows pics, too, but screen is very small), dynamic playlists (can create on the device). I've adjusted to using the little joystick in just a day. Music synced with no problems (but I hate DRM and will probably convert everything to MP3).

 

Agreed! , except I just think its the perfect size!

 

I can't believe that the Iriver Clix has only gotten 1 mention. Ok, I'm gonna go right out and say that I believe that the Iriver Clix 2nd gen is the best flash mp3 player out there. Although, I think it's only 4gb right now. In terms of durability, there are never any worries, being flash, plus the casing is tough and sleek. And you can get it for around $200.

OP, I really hope you do yourself a favor and at least give it a chance and check it out.

 

*Whips out her Rio 600 32MB MP3 player* I'm a big fan of flash based MP3 players.

I think it's been mentioned, but I highly recommend the Zen V Plus. It's an awesome flash based MP3 player that holds up to 8GB. Unlike the Zen V, the Zen V Plus does have FM radio. Often times you can find the Zen V Plus 8GB model for $150 online.

If you ask me, form factor is the deciding factor when it comes to MP3 players (aside from specific features which are becoming fairly universal anyway). The Zen V Plus is not an awkward shape like most others I've played with. Even the Nano feels like it could snap in two in your pocket. The Zen V Plus is small and feels rounded and sturdy, even though the casing is somewhat cheap plastic. I find the Zen V Plus comfortable in my hand and pocket, which is a first for me.

If you've never seen or held a Zen V Plus in person, I recommend taking a look at it. It's a lot smaller than people realize. Sometimes this makes it more appealing (I loved it) but sometimes some people find that it's too small, especially the joystick controls.

That's my 2 cents.

 

Thanks but I prefer the Cowon D2 after checking out the Iriver Clix 2.

My only gripe so far about the D2 is the inability to set Folder/File browsing as the default rather than the ID3 based Music Library.