- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 55 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
10 out of 10 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Here is what you need to know!! AMAZING PLAYER!"
Pros: Great sound quility plus BBE, Mach3Bass and 3D surround! Long battery life! Easy to carry! Great Smooth Video playback! Great features including Real-time Lyrics+ Cool Softwares, All you can ask for!
Cons: Retail Package doesn't come with a wall charger!
Summary: This is the player of the decade! It uses the latest Telechips' Processing Unit TCC770, which are the top-end media player processors running at 200Mhz tops with great crystal clear outputs. (A low-end would be Sigmatel chips made before 2006)(The apple iPod Nanos uses Portal Player chips which are primarily designed for Hard-drive players instead of Flash players).
The U3's amazing sound quility is then carried out by the Ultra Powerful CIRRUS LOGIC CS42L51 which will bring you a 60mW total sound output that none other players can achieve now!! This will increase the treble and Bass to a never before clarity!
The iAudio U3 media player like any other leading flash players uses SAMSUNG flash storage chips, different capacities (512MB/1GB/2GB) has different a model number so I'm not going to get into that here. The player features a huge 16MB cache alowing the player to play basically anything it can without a pause or sudden "stops".
The iAudio U3 has a powerful digital FM radio which also use a top-end chip, the Philips TEA5767 chip, which not only conserves power but brings cutting edge reception technology with clear stereo sound.
If you ever wonder if this player is a "power sucker", it's NOT! It uses a Philips
PCF50606HN PMU(Power Managment Unit) which clearly proved it's conserving abilities allowing the player to operate a TRUE 16.5 hours tops at full charge with backlit on for 30 mins playing 128kbps 44KHz MP3 . (I know this isn't the 20hours on the ad, but that's different with backlit off and all that. Who would keep the backlit off for 20 hours of playback anyways...?)
Another thing worth mentioning is that this player has a 95db SNR! Isn't that something? I can't prove that like the other facts since I don't have the equipment but I don't think they can lie about this!!
I don't know if this is against COWAN in any way(s) to put all this REAL technical information on a public site, but if it is then just delete it. The only con I found about this player is that it doesn't come with a wall charger. You can buy it for about $10 online.
Have fun with this great media player!!
It gets 97 out of 100 from me.
For comparison:
A iPod Nano gets 82 out of 100 from me.
- 1 reply to this review
-
First of all, great job of a review. Very detailed. I just returned a Sansa e250 after having it for 3 days. It's really buggy. I have been strongly considering the U3. I have read all the reviews and forum post that I could find. That leads me to my question. Even the people who love it say that the reception could be better. One said that he occasionally experienced static even with a fairly strong signal. Most agree about this issue but when I say most I am still only talking about a few reviewers. This issue is very important to me as I record lectures and conferences from locally broadcast FM. I wonder about the difference of opinion. This a shot in the dark but there is one thing different in your review; headphones. If the headphones are the antenna (are they?) and everyone else was useing the stock pair could that account for the difference? It makes sense that if two headphone have different wire length, different jacketing and different guage wire, that it's properties would be different. It sounds plausible to me but I have never heard anyone talk about it. Since recording is very important to me, this is a question I feel the need to adress before I buy it. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
%20user%20review%20and%20rating%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/cowon-iaudio-u3-2gb/4864-6490_7-31589099-2.html){kind=small}