Cowon's iAudio D2 touchscreen PMP reviewed

CNET Asia just tossed up an "excellent" 8.4/10 rating along with their Editor's Choice award to Cowon's new 4GB iAudio D2 multimedia player. As you'd expect, it gets high praise for including a "crispy and sharp" touchscreen on a digital media player making the "gorgeous" new interface even more intuitive to use. While it works just fine with your grimy finger, they also include a quirky triangular stylus (resembling a guitar pick) which is tethered to the device on an elastic cord. A bit annoying, but beneficial when slotted into the back of the D2 allowing it to stand on a tabletop. There's a long list of positives: the usual audio format support in addition to OGG Vorbis, FLAC, APE; the ability to expand from the on-board 4GB to 8GB via the SD/MMC card slot; the battery which lasted an "astonishing" 46 hours and 23 minutes; and a quick 5.33MB per second drag-and-drop transfer speed. Other than some slight lag when viewing pictures and the occassional "scratchy" radio reception... there's just not much to harsh on. Oh, 'cept the fact that you still can't get one off the shelf in North America or Europe.

[Via Impress, thanks woopieboy]

[metal_slug @ Feb 2nd 2007 12:26PM]

Um... 46 hour battery life?! me want!

btw Cowon, are they korean?

[Tomas @ Feb 2nd 2007 2:08PM]

Cowon, IMHO, is one of the best "unknown" brands in the industry. I have a 1GB player from them that's indestructible and has better audio quality than my iPod.

What would be really cool is if the storage was just a bit bigger. And if you could copy from the SD card to the device. (maybe you can?) It would be the perfect travel player, with music, movies, and the ability to back up a digital camera's SD card.

[Yuri @ Feb 2nd 2007 4:33PM]

Cowon is Korean. They held the mantle of world's smallest MP3 player for a while a few years back (for those keeping track)....

I don't think I could watch movies on a screen this small (2.5"), but it is a pretty slick looking machine.

[Thomas Ricker @ Feb 2nd 2007 5:44PM]

Kev50027,

I said "off the shelf." That means brick and mortar. Of course review units are always available straight from the vendor and through custom importers. You show me a big box retailer that carries them and I'll correct the post.

Thomas

[PeteC @ Feb 2nd 2007 6:04PM]

Advance mp3 in the uk have one for £180 with a free 2GB sd card and it says it'll be available on the 18th of Feb. Now to find a girl that wants to buy me a well cool, slightly late valentines gift!

[Will @ Feb 3rd 2007 12:26AM]

It's available in the USA at http://www.jetmall.net/.

Cowon is the maker of the iAudio range of mp3 player. I think they're one of the best mp3 player companies around, esp since the demise of Rio . The X5 is probably their best known player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaudio

I never quite understood why they were so under the radar.

[Nobuyuki Idei @ Feb 4th 2007 11:07PM]

Not the 4GB, only 2GB.

[carl @ Feb 4th 2007 3:40AM]

looks sweet, but come on, 60GB! enough with these low capacity daps already!

[tekdroid @ Feb 4th 2007 2:58PM]

touchscreens are silly. FLAC, OGG and APE support sure isn't. Neither is native drag n drop...(and expandable flash)

[Nobuyuki Idei @ Feb 4th 2007 11:05PM]

I keep waiting for Cowon to bring out an 8GB player. They seem to be one of the few supporting FLAC. Unfortunately, this one only supports SD, not SDHC, cards, which is a bit stone age these days. Cowon, come on, show us a little GB love. Either give us a player with 8GB, or a player with no built-in memory, but with an SDHC slot. I would be happy with either.

[Will @ Feb 5th 2007 12:07AM]

The 4Gb is slated to be available in the USA via jetmall.net later this month.

It does at least support 4Gb SD cards, so you can potentially have 4 + 4.

[lman @ Feb 6th 2007 9:55AM]

D2 SDHC support will be available with the a new firmware upgrade. I have the beta version already, can confirm it works.. Should be out soon

[mrsean2k @ Feb 14th 2007 7:52AM]

Hi,

Can I ask how you have access to the beta firmware? Is this a UAT phase before the firmware is released? Any other new features worthy of note? Any idea where you could download a PDF manual?

(And please excuse the scattergun approach to asking questions :-))

I've vascillating between an 80Gb iPos and D2, and access to larger capacity SD cards would swing it.

Thanks

Sean

[mrsean2k @ Feb 21st 2007 12:28PM]

The answer would seem to be:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/02/19/review_cowon_d2/comments/