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CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 07/20/2005
- Updated on: 01/26/2006
- Released on: 05/15/2005
We love the X5's small size and smooth scratch-resistant exterior, but the player's compact form factor comes with a price: namely, the separate plug-in adapter that houses the player's AC, USB, and line-in and line-out inputs. The small adapter (1.25 by 1 by 0.3 inches) plugs into the bottom of the unit, and you'll need it to charge up the player, record from another device, or transfer music and video from your PC, although you can use the X5's other USB port in USB Host mode (see the Features page). Using an adapter probably allowed the designers at Cowon to make the main device as small as it is, but carrying the plastic plug-in around is a hassle, and losing it would be very inconvenient indeed, though you can purchase an extra for $9.
Back on the plus side, the X5's 160x128-pixel, 260,000-color display looks good, if tiny at just 2 inches diagonally, with vibrant colors and decent detail, although the so-so resolution results in a noticeable screen-door effect. The display manages to pack in plenty of info, including artist, album, and song names, along with dancing sound-level indicators and a progress bar. You can even use an image from your photo library as wallpaper--a nice touch.
Accessories in the X5 box include a set of decent-sounding earbuds with a stylish dumbbell-type design, as well as a USB cable and a minijack-to-minijack cable for line-in recordings. You can also opt for a protective but slightly cheesy carrying case ($19) that takes away from the overall luster of the X5, an in-line remote control with an LCD ($49), or the docking cradle ($29, and highly recommended), which has ports that mirror the included adapter's.
Setup on the Cowon iAudio X5 is relatively simple, but don't expect to play video files directly out of the box. Using the USB 2.0 port on the included adapter, you connect the player to your PC or Mac; the player should appear as a lettered drive in Explorer or a removable device in Mac OS X, and you can drag music and images into their respective directories. You can also use the included Windows-only JetShell application to organize your tunes or create playlists; the X5 supports standard M3U files. For video files, however, setup is a bit more complicated. The X5 can play video at a mere 15 frames per second, so any video files encoded at a different frame rate must be converted using the Windows-only JetAudio utility. In our tests, we had to run all of our video files through JetAudio for them to play on the X5. Luckily, JetAudio will convert batches of video files, and it processed most of our videos at a relatively speedy 5X. That said, Mac users will have to find another way to make their videos compatible with the Cowon, and the current version of JetAudio doesn't work with QuickTime movies.The X5 combines its video and music capabilities into an all-purpose digital A/V player, with mixed results. To play videos, you just navigate to the Movie folder and select the file you'd like to watch. You can then skip to the next file or scan forward or backward (up to 64X). However, the image freezes while you're scanning, leaving you with time elapsed/remaining and a progress bar, and there's no slow-motion forward or reverse playback. And while you can add movies to a playlist, you can't bookmark your videos, which means you'll have to scan to the point where you left off if you're interrupted in the middle of a film.
Playing music on the X5 is similar to watching movies; you either navigate to the Music directory to find your tunes, or you can access a playlist. The iAudio supports MP3, OGG, ASF, the lossless FLAC format, WAV, and protected WMA files, including Janus subscription-based downloads; you can also create your own on-the-fly playlist directly on the player. Not bad but you can't browse your tunes by artist, album, or genre--a critical omission, especially if you're dealing with, say, 10GB or more of music. Cowon's October 20 firmware update (2.10 beta 6) makes the X5 compatible with music purchased from WMA-based online music stores and subscription-based music from Napster To Go and others. Please note that you must use the side USB port to make subscription transfers via the MTP protocol.
You can tweak the sound of your tunes with the five-band EQ (which comes with Rock, Jazz, Classical, Pop, and Vocal presets, as well as a user-defined mode) or with the various sound-effect settings, such as BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, and 3D Surround. We like that you can bookmark your music tracks, which is helpful if you're listening to podcasts, but adding a bookmark is a cumbersome process; you must navigate to the bookmark directory while your track is playing, then bookmark it there. You can use the included JetShell application to move music to the player or create playlists, but you can't sync your PC's music to the X5 à la Apple iTunes.
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