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1 out of 12 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"30GB is too small"
Pros: Looks sleek
Cons: Low capacity
Summary: The product fits nowhere. This needs to be an 80GB - 100GB player at this form factor with color or thinnner than Ipod Nano.
Otherwise, Cowon is going into oblivion just like Rio did.Updated
There are dozens of mp3 player from 20GB to 40GB - all with vey similar features, price and form factors. I am desperately looking for someone to produce a portable, sleek looking player for under $500 that has 80GB or 100GB of space which I can use to listen at 192 kbps or better. I hate 128kbps - those of us who use very high quality speakers can easily spot the lower quality.
The stand outs for the wma crowd are: Creative Zen Xtra and Toshiba Gigabeat for larger capacities of 60GB. Creative's product is two years old. I used to have one and sold it off because I ran out of space. Gigabeat has the standard problems that Japanese companies have nowadasy - proprietary software and clumsy user experience.
I am desperately hoping that someone would stand out. Cowon has the sleekness to be that. But they want to huddle in the middle.
- 5 replies to this review
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vwbuggy79 wrote in reply to criticism: "If you have knowledge and expertise, please use that to counter something."
OK... HERE GOES!!
WHY would 20 GB not be enough for you? Are you trying to put your ENTIRE music collection on your player? If so, I certainly hope that isn't the ONLY place you keep it. The only person I know who was foolish enough to do this accidentally trashed their iPod - all their rips were R.I.P.!!
And if MP3's at 192KB are your idea of good fidelity, you need to clean the wax out of your ears. I rip with LAME at 320KB CBR, which this player supports. Yes, the file sizes are big at that bitrate, but even so, 20 GB is more than enough room to take with me enough music to last for a three-week vacation!
iPods (as well as most other players) do not support gapless playback of MP3's, M4A's or anything else, a deal-breaker if you like live albums, opera or classical music. The only way around this design oversight is to rip the whole CD to one image file, which would be OK, if only Apple iPods and iTunes supported playback from cue sheets, WHICH THEY DON'T!!
I LOVE this Cowon player because it is one of the rare players that supports open-source OGG-Vorbis and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files. And FLACs inherently play back gaplessly.
Moreover, I don't need any dedicated proprietary application like iTunes to move my music to and from the player; the Cowon player mounts in Windows Explorer just like any zip or flash drive - just drag and drop from the "My Music" folder, or any other folder where you might be keeping your tunes.
Ripped to FLAC (By definition of the word, "lossless," FLACs are true CD quality, not "near-CD quality," which is the best any lossy codec can do.), assuming a compression ratio averaging 2 to 1, 20 GB is sufficient for storing over 50 CDs worth of music. HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO CARRY AT ONE TIME, ANYWAY??
I use MP3, AAC or OGG for lossy compression when I don't care quite as much about quality. I won't touch Microsoft WMA's or Apple M4P's, or even Apple Lossless, because they are closed proprietary codecs - you can't play an iTunes download on ANYTHING except an iPod, or a computer with iTunes software, and only then if you have "authorized" your computer first.
This is, of course, assuming I would willingly listen to an iTunes download or ANY commercial download. As you say, the quality is inferior; it's like the 1970's when millions of misguided people paid good money for crappy 8-track tapes instead of making much superior Dolby cassette copies from their vinyl.
But at least those folks didn't have to ask Apple for permission to play their 8-tracks on whatever player they chose! I am an old-fashioned guy; when I buy music, I think I should be able to play it on any device I find conveniently in reach, and to loan it to my friends if I want to - like I would a book - WITHOUT having to clear it first with my record store! So I will have NOTHING to do with Digital Rights Management. So Microsoft WMA and Apple's M4P container format are OUT!!
And lest you think FLAC is just some irrelevant and geeky codec for the lunatic fringe, many of the top home music and multimedia servers on the market, like Olive's Symphony, PONTIS' MediaServer MS300, Slim Devices' SqueezeBox2 and Sonos' Digital Music System all support FLAC and OGG. On the car audio side, in the trunk of my Volkswagen Jetta VR6 is a PhatBox removeable hard-drive-based music server, from PhatNoise. It supports OGG and FLAC, too.
As far as I am concerned, iPods look cool and feel slick, like proper designer jewelry should. But as portable music players they have too many flaws and limitations for me to consider them seriously for my own needs.
The bottom line is that you feel that a person who pays $250 for a portable music player with 20 GB of hard-drive storage is getting ripped off? In today's market? Are you on METH?? Have you forgotten already that up until just before the iPod Nano - just weeks ago - $250 bought you an Apple iPod Mini - with a whole SIX gigabytes? And the Nano, which sells for the same price as the Mini did - though it naturally looks so much "kewler" - comes with just TWO gigabytes of flash memory?
So you want a 80-100 GB music player for under $500?? In 2005? Well, I can understand that people want things... I, too, want things... For instance, I want a BMW 530i, world peace, a cure for AIDS, the harnessing of clean and abundant fusion power, New Orleans rebuilt, Kenneth Lay in jail, the Cubs in the World Series and the Seahawks in the SuperBowl. But I would settle for just never having to look at George W. Bush and that smart-ass frat-boy smirk of his ever again! -
Wow your insightful comments really opened my eyes! What a joke, it is sad yours is the first post that comes up.
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hey, you... it's obvious that you haven't researched anything about mp3 players in a while (maybe years?)... or, you might just be a 10 year old boy saying stuff online as I did, so I'll go easy on you.
First of all, this is a good player for the less tech savvy people who still want good features from a music player. This is not a multimedia machine, but a music player. From cowon's reputation, I expect this to be a great sounding mp3 player. Don't forget that even the ipod series everyone speaks so highly of doesn't have a 100GB memory in their player. This player is about as big as the ipod, and has about the same range of memory as the ipod. You also have the option of getting 35 hours of battery life from this thing if you choose to get the Cowon iAudio M5L.
I would list the features listed on the Korean website, but that would take too long.
I think they've made this player for people who can't necessarily get the X5, but like the design and the music player aspect of it.
Also, Rio players are good. People who know mp3 players for their value like the Rio players, although me myself is a Cowon iAudio fan... I hear audiophiles love the Rio's for their sound quality.
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First of all, most MP3 players are less than 30 gigs and it is the rare individual who actually needs that much space.
Second, Rio is a great company who makes better players than Apple...I've owned two Ipods and just bought my second Rio. After going to Rio I will never buy an Ipod again. Whoever wrote this review has no idea what he is talking about -
lol. Dude, 30 gigs of just music is more than enough. you can fit well over 15k songs on that. If you want a color screen than go for the X5.
and btw, fitting 80-100 gigs in a package as small as the ipod nano would be impossible.
Think before you post, for your own benefit.
[Edited by: admin]
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