Cowon O2 Review

Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 9:16
Mp3 Players
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Cowon’s ambitious media players are known for their performance but they are very pricey. But the Cowon have tried to make amends with its affordable portable media player O2 which supports various audio and video formats, and has impressive battery life.

The Cowon O2 is available in 8GB ($219), 16GB ($249), and 32GB ($299) memory capacities. The 16GB and 32GB models are available in both, black and white while the 8GB model only comes in white. The device easily fits the pocket, with a 4.7-inch-by-2.9-inch-by-0.7-inch body. The O2’s 4.3-inch LCD touch-screen is surrounded by plastic frame that acts as scratch resistant. The volume rocker on top and power button on right side, are the only mechanical controls. In addition to these, the O2 has a headphone jack, DC power input, mini USB port, SDHC card slot, pinhole reset switch. An extra cable, that you need to buy for $19, can be used to connect the mini USB to your TV.

The real design beauty of O2 lies in its user interface. It only takes 8 seconds for O2 to boot up. The main menu of O2 is appealing and items are spaciously arranged unlike the Q5W and Archos 5 in which too much is crammed into the menu. The O2’s menu features; Music, Documents, Video, Pictures and a Recent files folder.You can access the lesser used features through the arrows provided above and below the menu icons.

However, when you go past the main menu, the user interface starts loosing its appeal. The files are listed in tiny fonts and you need to be dexterous with your fingers to select them accurately. Another disappointment is the file organization as you can browse through the files only using the artist. So, if you are used to browsing the files using genre or album, you need to spend time crating the playlists.

The O2 is basically video player and it supports almost all the video formats like AVI, WMV, MP4, OGM, ASF, MKV, DAT, DivX, MTV, MPEG-4, MPEG-1 and many more. The audio features are equally impressive with its support of format like AC3, AAC, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, Apple Lossless, True Audio, Monkey Audio, MusePack, WavPack, G.726, and PCM. The sound quality is also fantastic but the earphones don’t do justice to the audio playback. The Cowon has rated 8 hours of video playback which is quite impressive.