Cowon seem to be carving a good niche for themselves with good-design and, judging by the reviews, superlative audio quality. As such, it’s always nice to see a new model from the company, and the P5 PMP just announced in Korea doesn’t disappoint. Packing a 5-inch, 16.7m color 800 x 480 touchscreen, two versions – the P5 and the P5 Study – will be available; the former has T-DMB radio and Bluetooth.
iPod who? Let’s face it, if you’re in the market for a portable media player and you’re less than swayed by Apple’s offerings, there’s never been better choice of rivals, each playing catch-up to the market leader by offering – in general, anyway – bags more functionality. Of course, you may just be tired of seeing the same old iPod UI and having Jonathan Ives’ handiwork flashed in your face on every street corner; in that case, there’s plenty of different, and often just as successful, design out there to choose from. Cowon is a long-term player in the PMP game, and AdvancedMP3Players.co.uk were good enough to send over one of the company’s latest devices, the D2; not only does it have up to 8GB of storage for your music, it also receives DAB digital radio and plays video too.
This thing comes in two variations, a white one, and a black one. What’s the difference? About 6GB, the white one comes with 2GB of storage and the black one comes with 8GB of storage.
As such, the black one can store 9 hours of 1Seg mobile TV, or up to 45 hours of audio in various formats. The battery should last about 7.5 hours, I assume that’s for music, so probably half that or less for video.
The COWON Q5 is finally arriving stateside and has been priced. Its even being called the Super PMP.
You get your choice of 40 or 60 gigabyte capacities both with a 5-inch WVGA screen, 64MB of flash memory, 128MB of DDR2 SDRAM, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and Windows CE 5.0. There is also a voice recorder, photo/text viewer, and support for a ton of different audio, video, and picture formats.
There are some pretty amazing features that come with this PMP too. Lets start with the screen, its 4-inches diagonal, 16 million colors, and has a res of 800×480, that’s as good as my TV.
Then there is the FM radio with built in recorder, a USB host, MPEG-4 video recorder, and up to 1280×720 HD output. Codec support includes FLAC, DivX, and OGG, and I assume there is a sufficiently longer list of other codecs supported as that list doesn’t have any picture formats and no MP3 support in the list either.
You may have noticed that flash-based MP3 players are still lurking around the 4GB-8GB capacity. Someone has got to jump in and bump it up to 16GB eventually, and Cowon looks like they might just be the first ones to do it.
All-in-one gadget is coming like a big storm. Cowon is part of that storm with its L2. The Cowon L2 is a combo of GPS, DMP, and PMP. Sleek design and portability makes this a dream multimedia gadget. Weighting only 512grams and 191×120x26mm dimension, the L2 features 7-inches WGVGA display and 2GB built-in storage.
Blimey, two Cowon D2 posts in short-succession. I just came across these videos of the UI in action thanks to the camera-work of Cowon Systems employee Kevin Kang. Three clips, a starter introducing you to the menu structure and layout, then a more in-depth look at how it’s usable with both stylus and finger, with a final video covering multi-tasking (impressive) and performance of internal flash memory versus SD cards (also impressive).
Video three is after the cut.
Not for the first time I find myself wishing I lived in Korea – because they get some of the coolest gadgets around. This, my beauties, is Cowon’s latest video-capable DAP, the D2. Only to label it that is to do it a disservice; hidden behind that luscious 16m colour 2.5-inch touchscreen display is a T-DMB digital TV receiver, mp3 player with support for various common formats, and video player capable of handling H.264, MPEG4 and WMV9. With the earphones acting as aerial (hence no ugly retractable stub hanging out the side) it can manage 30fps video which is pretty damned impressive.
Optional extras include expandable storage via what looks like SD and a docking station, while the pen-stylus seems to double as a handy stand. Battery life is good for 10 hours of video, 9 hours of digital TV and a whopping 52 hours of music, and it’s available in black, white, red, pink, and lime.
Many more photos of the D2 after the cut.
SlashGear Japan
