- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 9 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
0.5 stars
"Defective Product"
Pros: compact, fm radio, color screen, easy interface
Cons: defective product, horrible customer service, difficult product registration process
Summary: If my new iAudio U3 (noble white) actually worked, I'd give the product an 8++. I'd give it a 10 if Cowon had a better on-line registration and technical support website/phone line. In theory, the device is incredible and I cannot find anything else that packs so many functions in such a tiny device. Unfortunately, my device doesn't actually work and I've owned it less than a month. When I only had about about 7 songs loaded, it worked fine except it would occassionally stop playing songs. I didn't think much of this since it worked when I pressed the play button again to power it back on. Unfortunately, I loaded an additional 200mbs of songs this weekend and the thing hasn't worked since. I've tried reformating the device, reinstalling the firmware and reloading my music with no luck. I'm in the process of trying to return the darn thing; but, I'm very disappointed. The device showed so much promise. I read the reviews prior to purchasing the thing and had really high hopes. I'll have to start using my clunky Dell 20G DJ again until I can find something with the theoretical functions of the U3 but actually works.Updated
In order to receive customer/technical assistance with this product, you have to correspond with a service rep over a period of serveral days via email. I'm used to dealing with companies that provide same day assistance so this is unacceptable to me. In addition, none of their recommendations worked so I have to send my product back to them to see if they can fix it. Personally, I'm tempted to ask for a full refund as I never want to deal with Cowon's limited customer/technical service options again; however, I'm torn. What if they can actually fix it? The other users seem to be happy with their devices and don't seem to have experienced any malfunctions so it is possible that I just happened to receive the one in a million problematic, malfunctioning devices. Who knows? It really would be a revolutionary, compact device if it worked. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
- 1 reply to this review
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I think you did get the one in a million defective players. You could also try the iaudio 6 it has all the features of the U3 and a few extra like USB host and the swing touch. Those controls should also be more durable. The iaudio 6 also has more memory. Maybe you should have tried the newest version of the firmware version 1.21. Maybe you turned it off while it was doing the uprading. You have to make sure you don't turn it off while it's upgrading. After you load on the new firmware you turn it on and wait till it automatically turns off. Hopefully you didn't turn it off prematurely and caused the firmware to malfunction. That might not have been the problem, but if it was then it wasn't the products fault.
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