Cowon S9 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Touchscreen (Titanium Black)

Comment: I've been a Cowon fan since the X5...I've played many different types of audio and audio/video players. Cowon has always had the best audio quality of any portable audio I've ever heard out of the box. The S9 is no different, audio quality...superb. If your an audiophile, anything Cowon since the X5 is your audio music player. The S9 is no different. The sound level can be put up to 40 max. It sounds louder then most other mp3 players I've heard. But you can make it even louder using the EQ settings. Loud enough to make your ears ring. The sound quality is so good that it takes alot before the music starts to distort. Thats what helps the EQ standout from other EQs on mp3 players. So while 40 is the max, if you tweak your S9 player just right, you can achieve about what could be the equivalent of a 50 max loudness setting without suffering audio distortion. I'm a big OGG fan and I always loved that Cowon embraced OGG files, S9 is no different, built in support. It's nice to see it supports ape as well. A great lossless file format. When it comes to audio format compatibility, Cowon always was better then the rest and still is.

So the S9 is a fully functional audio player that is as close to perfect as it gets, but it does alot more. Thats where I ran into some great features and also some problems...

Video player format issues, they include a fully functioning JetAudio Media Center with a fast converter for audio and video files. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. I tried converting a high quality .mkv file using the S9 conversion profile. It seemed to convert fine, played on my pc fine. I moved it over to the S9, wouldn't play. Threw me an error message. A .wmv file and .avi file I converted using the S9 profile played fine and the video quality when a file plays does look spectacular. Better then a PSP screen and most other portable video players I've seen. But conversion problems have been an issue with cowon products for as long as I can remember. Its very hit and miss. When I bought my Cowon X5 years ago, I gave up on the video portion. Who cares, X5's video screen stunk anyway. But with this new generation type of portable player, I would like to use the video much more then I did in the past. Show off the brilliant video quality and screen. There is nothing that kills fun more then waiting an hour for a file to convert and then it doesn't work. Waste your time and lets you down.

The touch screen here is good, I think its better then I expected but with that said, when I go to hit something it only works about 6 out of 10 times. I imagine your finger size can play a factor, I got big stubby hands. You can see reviews on youtube of the product, you'll see them constantly having to retap the touchscreen to get the player to respond properly. Its imperfect and many touchscreens are imperfect. They include a button layout on the top and bottom of the player, that in most cases can be used in lieu of the touchscreen. Thats another odd issue, most portable audio players I've used have the controls either on the face or to the side. Putting them at the top makes the player a little odd. I have a tendency to want to grip an mp3 player from the top and bottom. That can cause major issues when command buttons are on the top and bottom. What kind of makes it worse is that the OS is setup that basically you'll want to have the player vertical for audio and horizontal for video. You can play it either way but it looks better for video horizontal and the audio player design is much nicer for the vertical setup.

As much as I love Cowon's audio quality, their product quality in the long term is always worrying. Battery issues and durability issues are always a problem. Its heaven on earth for the first year and a half. After that, well. Most cowon items seem to falter after a year and half. But for now, I find the S9 to be well made with great battery usage. I do have one little nitpick about the design, the sides which I must hold the player by are slippery. I've dropped it twice, I'm not a butter fingers type of person, so I couldn't help but notice that. This is a unit, I would dread dropping face down on its screen outside on a concrete or asphalt ground. There is another potential problem I worry about for long-term usage, the player can sense when your looking at it vertical upright, horizontal left AND horizontal right. Which is a Great feature. But already I notice the sensing is a little off. I turn it to only a bit the left....immediately it goes horizontal. Yet I need to turn it half way to the right to make it go horizontal. So the sensing is inaccurate and I have a hunch, that with time, it could very well fail. Either staying in one position permanently or becoming overly sensitive and changing positions with the least little movement which would be extremely annoying. There is by no means a guarentee but I do worry about it and based on how Cowon products durability tend to degrade over time. Its a very real possibility.

Theres plenty of other little features worth trying. Built in flash player which is sorta flat without an internet to download stuff for it. Yes you can copy flash material over to the unit. But it can be a bit annoying. Flash is supposed to be something instant, not just another video-like format. It has games...but the touchscreen is not accurate enough and the system is simply not built for playing any sort of power hungry games. So your limited for that as well. The built-in recording is standard fare but it works quite well. Would probably suffice for any sort of seminar recording or the like. The line-in option is always a plus. Radio and Radio recording, it works fine but its all stuff you can find on a budget mp3 player. Really not that special. But its an option and works fine. Thats all that matters. Not having Wi-Fi I believe really hurts this player. It has so many options that would have benefitted from it.

Overall it's a spectacular audio player and good video player. Thats all people really care about. The rest of the features are either standard fare or stuff that just doesn't matter much. I don't feel the price is worth it for basically yet another cowon item where all I care about is the terrific audio player and nothing else. Yes when the video player works, its beautiful. But getting video files to work like all cowon products is hit and miss. I've seen worse players for video codec compatibility but I've also seen better. Their JetAudio audio/video media center is excellent within a PC format. But yet, not everything you create with it will be guarenteed to work on the S9 even when your making it with an S9 profile. Thats odd. Thats hard to explain and somewhat unforgivable for a high priced portable player.

Comment: Cowon media players are the BEST when it comes to the sound quality. This is a must-have for those of you who really enjoy listening to the music. My i-pod touch is sitting in my drawer since I can't go back to those poor sound quality mp3-type of music after using my Cowon S9! The only drawback is that it's almost impossible to read the screen in bright direct sunlight. Even so, Cowon S9 is still the best thing I have ever owned. Highly recommended!

Comment: This is an amazing device that totally destroys my opinion of what a PMP can be. You have access to so many features (typist, radio, photo viewer, truly audiophile sound quality, etc...) that makes this a truly unique and fantastic device.

This is a seemingly audio-centric device but, that is shattered by its numerous features and with a great user community that is always tweaking and enhancing your user experience FREE OF CHARGE!, this Cowon player is my favorite purchase of 2010 and perhaps the last 5 years, by far!

Buy one and make sure you purchase some SERIOUS headphones or bluetooth speakers because this thing can push out some great sound quality.

Comment: I bought the Cowon S9 because I wanted a high quality MP3 player and did not like the experience of being tethered to iTunes when I had my previous iPod. Overall, the S9 was what I was hoping to get.

PROS

- The battery life on this thing is fantastic. I have it running 10 hours a day when I am sitting at my desk at work, and it will go for several days before needing to be charged. Usually just plugging it in for a hour once a week to load on more music is enough charge time.
- The OLED display is vibrant and clear; no dead pixels.
- Playback quality on both music and video is nothing short of great.
- File compatibility is top notch; this thing has played every file type I have thrown at it with no problems. Playing native xvid video files is extremely convenient, no need to convert videos to a lower quality just so you can add it to your PMP.
- The plastic screen is made out of Gorilla Glass which is pretty much impossible to scratch, so it is very durable and you don't need to worry about stuff grinding against it when you have it in your pocket.
- It allows you to bookmark a spot of a MP3 file - this is a great feature for me because I listen to MP3's of radio shows that can be several hours long. This has been a feature that all of my previous players have lacked so I was pleasantly surprised to find this.
- File management with this player is simple, you just treat it like any other external storage you would plug into your computer and copy your files onto the device.

CONS

- The interface is awkward and takes getting used to. Now that I have been using it for about a month it is fine, but it took awhile for it to make sense. You can download user made interfaces and install them on the device if you are interested.
- While rare, I have experienced some odd bugs. Occasionally it will register several mp3 files more than once and I have to restart the player to get back to normal. Nothing huge but they are an annoyance when they come up.
- Hardware was a little smaller than I was expecting. The screen is maybe 30% smaller than a iPod touch.
- The ear bud headphones that come with the player seem pretty cheap, I replaced them immediately.
- FM radio player is extremely bare bones
- No music visualization effects (some of the promotional videos I found on the internet made it looks like it could do this, but I found out it was just displaying movie files that looked similar)

Overall I am happy with the purchase. I use this MP3 player with Ubuntu Linux and it works fine (occasionally it is read only when I mount it, but reconnecting usually fixes it). While I think this player will last me a long time, it has made me a fan of Cowon and I would consider purchasing more of their products.

Comment: Love the EQ on the S9. Wish it had a card slot, but great player.