COWON J3 32 GB Portable Media Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)My Creative Zen:M was getting old, and I had already replaced the battery once so doing it twice was too much for me so I decided to upgrade. That's where the Cowon J3 came in, after doing my research I decided to take a chance on a brand I'd never heard of before.PROS:
- Touchscreen is fast and accurate to the touch
- Beautiful AMOLED screen even when the brightness is toned down
- Plays AAC,MP3,FLAC,WAV,etc etc etc
- Video looks great and is smooth
- Plenty of options for video
- Plenty of options for music
- Recording, speaker, and mic are surprisingly decent
- Jet Effects 3.0 has tons of EQ presets and 4 customizable user options
- Alarm and Radio work great, you get tons of stations
- 3 ways to view everything on your screen, you can switch between them instantly
- Lock option on the side makes it easy to not accidentally turn on the player while it's in your pocket
- Play and volume buttons on other side of also make it practical when you don't want to turn on the player to change tracks
- Sound is amazing, especially with the BBE+ options as mentioned before
- Battery life is great so far, I get tons of hours before a quarter of the battery is even used
- Switches from horizontal to vertical back and forth with ease
- MicroSD slot
- Screen is very durable, it's gorilla glass just like the Cowon S9.
- Did i mentions there's tons of options for the user on this? well there's a ton, it does not disappoint in this reagardCONS:
- Album art does not show up when you change to horizontal view*
- screen is very prone to finger prints as well as back of player, essentially the whole thing
- when you're listening to the radio and want to change the dial up(numbers ascending) you have to press the back button instead of the forward**can be corrected with a nice firmware update.
One thing I do recommend is that you don't purchase this directly from jetmall. Well, that's unless you like multiple charges on your credit/debit card. Amazon is the best way to go, as usually is the case. Overall this product deserves the praise it's been recently getting, just for the sound alone. It's so easy to use the design is simply great. If you want the white version of this though, you're not going to find it on Amazon yet, but it looks just as great from what I can tell and I expect Amazon to make it available soon. About the only thing I could find wrong was how easy it is to smudge the screen, but that's expected with any touchscreen, I'd recommend an anti-glare screen for this problem. Any other problems can be corrected with a firmware update. I have the 2.21 version right now, but I'm sure more are in the works as is per usual with these things. I recommend this product to any music fan, good luck on your search though, it never hurts to keep looking although I'm personally sticking with this one.
EDIT:
JUST DOWNLOADED FIRMWARE UPDATE 2.2 AND THE ALBUM COVERS ARE NOW VIEWABLE THROUGH LANDSCAPE MODE(HORIZONTAL).

Click Here to see more reviews about: COWON J3 32 GB Portable Media Player (Black)


This sleek media player from Cowon boasts a brilliant 3.3-inch touchscreen, playback of a serious list of a serious list of video and audio formats, FM radio and voice recording (or even line-in recording), and 32GB of space for all your favorite media. Not enough? Pop in an SD card for a little extra.

Just Plain Slick Too many media players forget about what's on the outside. The J3 is just 9.9mm thick and features a brushed metallic bezel that's ultra-stylish, and downright attractive.

3.3-Inch AMOLED Display The J3 boasts a 16 million color, 3.3-inch AMOLED display with a 480 x 272 pixel resolution. Thanks to the low-power display technology, the screen is viewable from virtually any angle. It looks great in the dark and even in direct sunlight. AMOLED turns electric signals into video 1,000 times faster than the speed of conventional LCDs, leaving no ghost images while playing video.

Intuitive Touchscreen Interface The COWON J3 boasts super-intuitive touch controls, with gesture recognition features like zoom-able album art, pictures, and text; TrueType fonts for clear visibility at any zoom level; and more. Get where you need fast directly from the durable anti-scratch touchscreen.

Video Playback The J3 plays AVI, WMV, and ASF video files, with codec support for DivX 3/4/5, Xvid SP/ASP, and WMV 7/8/9. That means less conversion on your end. Enjoy all your favorite clips and shows, and just tilt the unit to switch to 16:9 widescreen viewing.

Grab the optional video out composite cable, and you can send your signal to a television for some full-size viewing.

Enjoy Your Music The J3 is a full-featured music player, and it's definitely one for the afficionados. With support for MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, WAV, and APE formats, you can play back most any file. Get detailed track info on the J3's screen with meta tag support, and view LDB 1.0 and 2.0 lyrics files while you listen.

JetEffect Music Enhancement Dial in the perfect sound no matter what you're listening to with Cowon's various sound enhancement tools:

BBE: Refines sound quality
Mach3Bass: Provides deeper, tighter low-end
MP Enhance: Sonic restoration for compressed music formats
3D Surround: Provides 3D sound effect
5-Band EQ: Customizeable equalizer with adjustable band and bandwidth filter

FM Radio and Recorder Enjoy your favorite FM Radio programming using the J3's unique "jog shuttle" touchscreen control for selecting stations. Store your favorites in up to 39 user presets, and record live radio for later listening.

Photo and Document Viewer View or share slideshows of your favorite JPG images, and read your TXT text documents wherever you are.

Bluetooth Freedom The J3 features built-in Bluetooth 2.0 support (A2DP, AVRCP Profile) for use with various wireless devices. Get rid of those cables and enjoy the benefits.

Digital Clock With Alarm Set an alarm to play your music or FM radio, and use the sleep timer to drift off to your favorite songs. You can also use the clock to schedule FM recording for a particular time.

Voice Recording Record voice memos, lectures, meetings or whatever else you need for later using the built-in microphone. The J3 also supports line-in recording, for grabbing audio from external devices like CD players.

Energy Efficient Entertainment The J3 will give you a whopping 64 hours of music playback, and up to 11 hours of video playback, a single charge of its lithium-polymer battery.

Flash Player The pre-installed Adobe Flash Player lets you enjoy Flash games and other utilities, along with the Flash content present on many web sites.

What's in the Box
Cowon J3 32 GB (Black), Earphones, USB 2.0 Cable, Quick Start Guide, Manual CD

Get 4% OFF

Click here for more information about COWON J3 32 GB Portable Media Player (Black)

Read More...

COWON X7 160 GB MP3 Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)**********EDIT******
Ok...after 4 days of ownership......would purchase again!
~touch screen very sensitive.
~It does play my flac and wav files
~Tagged album art and it did show up on those that wasn't
~Converted movies to WMV and AVI and watched a few, video quality outstanding for this resolution.
~Battery life is unbelievable, I have not recharged yet, watched 3 movies, dozen music vids and many hours music!
~screen size is GREAT!
~I love the Retro design!
I will now sync it with Media Monkey
**********END EDIT***********
Finally, a device to hold my entire library and not have to charge all the time
I was looking for large storage space MP3 video player. This was exactly what I needed.
I didn't expect great quality from this device or good touch screen. It was better than expected.
Pros;
*Sound quality is the best I have heard on MP3 player, (I have had 2 ipods and 3 creative labs)
*Large screen
*Large storage space- 160g HDD and 2g flash
*Firmware updates
*Sync mine with media player, went flawless. Media player actually converted some media while syncing to operate on this device. But it has a wide range of formats it works with. See specs and cowon.
*Drag and drop files and create folders
*Read documents, photos etc.
*Has some decent features I didn't need like alarm clock, notes with typing or writing on screen, comic viewer, timer, calculator and more.
*Many equalizer settings, easy to do and again sound from these were more than outstanding.
*FM Radio...love it.
*Quality build. Impressed with this.Cons;
*Video quality is only 480 x 272....in todays high def world, Cowon screwed this up.....this is old technology. This is where they blew it on this kind of device of large storage capacity meaning lots of music and video. It is decent to watch but not what it should have been by any means. Cowon wasted this screen size. This was a blunder by someone.
*A little bulky, was bigger than I thought but I have gotten used to it, and I wanted this screen size with storage.
*I didn't like the ear buds. I always bring my own anyway, Bose has a good set for about $99.
*Album art takes up more than the screen, you can't see the entire art, but I think they will repair this with a firmware update. I did one firmware update and it was easy. Copy paste files.
*Proprietary USB connection, I wish companies would not do this. Use a generic one please.
*Price.....it should have been about $279 maybe.
Neutral;
*Navigation took me a few times to get used to it but after that it was easy. While playing song or video you click open to go to library and then up in the file order. very easy once learning curve is complete.
*NO wifi....but has bluetooth which worked great. I didn't care anything about wifi so this didn't matter to me.
*Touch screen OK....I thought it was not going to be sensitive reading about the kind it was so this was a pleasant surprise. better than expected but not as good as IPOD.
Summary;
If you want great sound/audio and large storage capacity, this is your device. A little bulky but screen size pays off. All in all, I am happy with the purchase. Cowon needs to make this HI Def and then they have an excellent item. Build quality is outstanding.
It should not be compared with IPOD touch but with IPOD classic since it is used for storage space.
Sync this baby with media player and you can't go wrong. May sync with songbird too. Although, you can just drag and drop onto it but I like syncing so changes will be automatic and flawless. I added songs to my library to see how it synced after a change, sync was perfect. I was going to give 4 stars but gave 5, someone gave it a 1 and this is an opinion but a 1 is unrealistic, a 5 is too so maybe this will balance it out.
Thanks Cowon for capacity, sound and screen, but, come on!! do better on the video quality, HI Def this device and you will nail it. This was my only disappointment.
Peace

Click Here to see more reviews about: COWON X7 160 GB MP3 Player (Black)

Get 6% OFF

Click here for more information about COWON X7 160 GB MP3 Player (Black)

Read More...