Cowon S9 (16GB)

Pros: Amazing screen with bright vibrant colors and smooth action in videos. Touch controls are spot on. Good menue system. Amazing audio quality. Flash support. Great battery life

Cons: Flash support is so so, video can occasionally stutter on non optimized files, some occasional slowdown between menu screens.

Summary: This is by far one of the best portable multimedia devices I have ever used. The video quality is great and even though there is an occasional slowdown or sputter in the frame rate (it's very rare I've only see it happen once or twice) the over all experience is well above average. Did i mention the screen? Amazing color gamut from this screen and great deep blacks, crystal clear whites, and bright vibrant colors from everything in between. If this is what oled technology (amoled specifically on this device) has to offer I can't wait for it to hit the home theater market. Thanks to the low power requirements of the display the battery life on this device is great. I spent the better part of the day listening to this device then sat down and watched a feature length film and still had more than 75% power left on the system and this was with the display set to the max brightness. The audio quality is simply amazing, I am a big audiophile and have had 4 mp3 players over the last 3 years and have used and tested countless others from various brands including apple, iriver, creative, and archos and this bests them all in audio. In movie and music playback the sound is great and crystal clear through the entire range (I am using the koss portpro headphones). Great audio codec support which is the main reason I purchased this player and plays almost anything you can throw at it audio wise.
This player is stellar but not without it's downsides. Though it's nice to see flash support on an mp3 player it is a bit of a bust as many flash files either run poorly or actually lock up the system. The menue system isn't as intuitive as it could be but is still easy enough to learn. As stated earlier the video can sometimes slow down but it's not a deal breaker and doesn't happen often. Has bluetooth but doesn't offer an option to synch via it, though it could possibly be added in a firmware update it's still a letdown to not have that from the get go with this player.
Other than that not many complaints about this system, great all around performance sleek sexy look that is still easy to identify with it's curved back to stand out from the rest of the ipod touch clones. Minor gripes aside (many of which may be fixable via firmware updates) this is a great player that is just shy of perfection. This is the first cowon player I have owned but probably won't be the last and I am very much looking forward to the follow up to this player. (wifi and browser please)

Updated on Jan 10, 2009

Meant to give this product a 4.5 star rating not a 4