Cowon iAudio 7 review (8GB, red)

The built-in FM tuner has adequate reception and gives users up to 24 preset slots for saving their favorite stations. An autoscan function found in the main settings menu will make short order of finding available stations and assigning them to your preset list. Radio region settings are also adjustable between U.S., European, and Asian bandwidths.

If you're looking for a flexible MP3 player that can be used on Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems, the iAudio 7 can jump between MSC and MTP USB connection modes for maximum compatibility. Linux users will be especially happy that the iAudio 7 supports open file formats such as OGG and FLAC.

While we're happy to see Cowon finally making the jump to 8GB flash players, we would have been excited to see a memory expansion slot on the iAudio 7 as well.

Performance
Cowon consistently produces some of the best-sounding MP3 players on the market. No other manufacturer offers so many useful and customizable sound enhancement features. Does it sound better than an iPod? No question. Listening to Timbaland and Magoo's "It's Your Night" with a dash of Mach3Bass enhancement made the kick-drum thick and snappy--not just louder. A live recording like Gillian Welch's "I Want to Sing That Rock & Roll" presents a great stereo soundstage right out of the box, but with the MP Enhance setting switched on and the 3D Surround setting turned up halfway, the live sound becomes much more vivid.

The photo viewer is colorful and sharp and allows music to be played simultaneously without slowing down. All the recording functions of the iAudio 7 encode to a WMA file with a Kbps resolution that can be adjusted between 64, 80, 96, and 128. By default, the voice recorder encodes to a 64Kbps WMA file and does an adequate job despite common issues of background hiss and rumbling created by handling the player while it records. FM recording encodes to a default 128Kbps WMA file, making a very clean recording. Line-input recording also encodes to a 128Kbps WMA file, and allows for volume adjustment, autodetection of pauses between songs, and real-time monitoring of the recording through the headphone jack.

We're not thrilled with the idea of watching video on a screen no bigger than a postage stamp, but the Cowon iAudio 7 does an admirable job of presenting video despite its size limitation. It takes a little effort to convert and transfer video onto the device, but the results during our tests were sharp and colorful. Outdoors, we found the iAudio 7 does reflect a considerable amount of glare, so just keep your photo and video entertainment indoors or in a shaded area. We also noticed that the Cowon Media Center video converter places a small Cowon logo watermark in the upper-right corner of converted videos. The logo appears only at the very beginning of your video and disappears after a few seconds--but it still seems unnecessary.

Our CNET labs found that the iAudio 7's battery life is realistically capable of 41 hours of audio playback and 22.6 hours of video playback. While 41 hours of audio playback is still remarkable for an MP3 player, it does differ dramatically from Cowon's claim of 60 hours of playback time. To test the possibility of the iAudio 7's capability to reach the 60-hour mark, we performed an unofficial retest using Cowon's less-realistic playback scenario: volume set at 15 (out of 40); screen brightness set to its lowest setting; and all audio enhancement turned off. Using Cowon's test conditions we were able to coax 56 hours from the iAudio 7, but we believe these playback settings are unlikely for most users.

Final thoughts
The Cowon iAudio 7 delivers an unbeatable combination of size, features, sound quality, and battery life. But if you're looking for a MP3 player with a bigger screen for your videos, the Cowon D2 may be a better option.