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Hit 7 - Cowon 16 GB Portable Multimedia Player (Black)
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List Price: $229.99
Our Price: $218.86
Your Save: $ 11.13 ( 5% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Cowon
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Electronics
Brand: Cowon
Color: black
Display Size: 2.5
EAN: 0826487529137
Feature: Video and audio player with FM tuner, voice recorder, and text and photo viewer
Label: Cowon
Manufacturer: Cowon
Model: D2-16BL
Publisher: Cowon
Studio: Cowon
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Features
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Video and audio player with FM tuner, voice recorder, and text and photo viewer
2.5-inch, 24-bit QVGA (320 x 240) touchscreen LCD with 16 million colors
Up to 52 hours of music playback (10 hours of video) on one charge
16 GB built-in memory; SD/SDHC card memory expansion
DRM-protected content support (PlaysForSure, etc.)
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Editorial Reviews:
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The iAudio D2 16GB Video, Photo and MP3 Portable Player can play music up to 104 hours and movie up to 20 hours. It is an ultra-stylish and feature filled miniature PMP. Its 2.5" LCD touchscreen produces an ultra-sharp picture that's perfect for viewing movies and pictures and its small size makes it more convenient for the road than larger portable media devices. The D2 has a built-in FM tuner as well as support for MP3, WMA, OGG WAV, APE and FLAC Codecs.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing sound quality, support for losless audio, average interface
Comment: The three main reasons to get a Cowon D2:
1. Pristine Sound Quality
2. Will play lossless audio files including FLAC and APE
3. Doesn't rely on propitiatory software or file types
Sound Quality:
Cowon makes some of the best sounding MP3 players on the market today. They surpass every other brand, including Apple in that department. The D2 is no exception. It produces accurate, high quality sound that when paired with a good pair of ear phones (like Shure SE110s), will impress even the most picky audiophile.
File Support and software:
Unlike the Ipod or Zune, the Cowon D2 does not use proprietary software upload files. It is recognized by Windows (XP and Vista) as a UPnP or Universal Plug and Play Device. It is listed in My Computer as a hard drive, and you can copy files back and forth using windows explorer. You CAN sync it with WMP if you like, but if you prefer to sort music by files instead of tags as I do, this player is the one to choose. Without this becoming an anti DRM, Apple, and Microsoft rant, I enjoy having the ability to upload any file I like to the player at any time I like, in almost any format I like without having to commit to Itunes or WMP or DRM infested files. Buy your digital music from Amazon (no DRM) and play them on the D2!
A few complaints:
I can't give the D2 a 5/5 overall. The GUI or graphic user interface leaves something to be desired. While the more recent firmware allows you to upload custom made GUIs, the touch screen can be finicky for someone with larger fingers, and no amount of tinkering with different GUIs will solve that problem. This is the one area where the Ipod beats out the D2.
Another issue is the long string of less than perfect firmware releases from Cowon. While ironing out some kinks, some new ones were created, and although each new firmware release has improved the performance overall, it wasn't until firmware 2.57 that I was satisfied with my D2s performance. If you buy a D2 (any variety, not just the 16gb model) make sure you download and install firmware 2.57 or newer to avoid any problems.
In sum, the D2's pristine sound quality, and its ability to play lossless audio files including FLAC and APE, as well as the more common WMA and MP3 file types elevate it above all competition. There is no other player that gets a 5/5 for audio quality and a 5/5 for variety of file types playable, unless it's another Cowon product. The D2 only gets a 3/5 for GUI and another 3/5 for firmware. I've rounded my score to a 4/5 to reflect those few blemishes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: FM is terrible
Comment: I give this product 3 stars using the following math.
As an player for audio files - 5 stars.
As an FM receiver - 1 star. Reception is horrid. Of the channels that do come in, most are grainy with noise. Of the one clear station I could get, it sounded hollow, distant, and was very "mono" sounding in stereo mode. FM reception is very important to me so I returned this product. There are other players out there with much better FM reception.
5 stars + 1 star = 6 stars. Divide by 2 = 3 stars for a final rating. If the Cowon D3 is the same player with a good FM receiver I plan to buy it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Comment: Where to start... Well first off my experience with MP3 players in general...
I have had 3 Ipods (1 4th Gen 2 5th gen (one of which was a 5.5 comp upgrade from the apple store because they didn't have any regular 5th Gen there), and borrowed another Ipod Nano. I have also set up my brother's M:Robe Not to mention, I have been given, Sansas, and Zens, and not to mention Irivers... All of which I messed around with shortly after. In comparison to those I can make a few comparisons.
First off GUI. Needless to say some of the best GUIs came from apple, they are gurus at the interface. Intuitive and so easy a baby could use them with little trouble. I am also quite fond of the m:Robe too, its different but simple (and that red screen is nice too, who needs color if its just an MP3 player?) I'm not going through all of them, all in all in comparison, the D2 is slightly more difficult. But there are only a few quirks to get used to... Like the number of touches to actually get it to play music (I counted 3 from the selection screen)
Next sound quality: What can I say, the best I have heard other than the sansa Clip. And hands down it is THE best EQ. 5 band plus a plethora of enhancements. A notable is MP enhance. Now that doesn't mean its only for MP3s... its for EVERY lossless format. What it does it corrects any losses from conversion in the player. Its pretty noticeable difference too. So for this player it gets top scores for SQ. BTW, its better than all others unmodified (modified ipod 5th gen has one of the best, (look up IMOD)).
Battery life is one line... BEST. I have had it for a month. I have charged it once. After one week I had to charge it (note I did NOT charge it out of the box). Since then its been 3 weeks since its last charge (minus the updates, and the putting music on). Its FANTASTIC!
Features. Hands down the BEST. Lets list: Dictionary (with korean firmware which is entirely worth it), drawing application, calculator, scientific calculator, voice recorder, fm radio.... Not to mention flash capability. Text viewer, and of course pictures and video. Video is good but not why I got it, but it looks really nice and I have no problems with it.
Anything else? No need for any software except for video conversion. Oh and I love the OS they used. Which is a heavily modified version of Linux, open source and awesome. No apple or windows proprietary software. It's beautiful. I think thats it. I will never go back to Ipod, and I'll never touch a Zune either. I hope this helps any of you hopefuls searching for a new PMP. This is the best i have seen/used.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic player...but not for everyone....
Comment: (Initial Disclaimer: I am a big fan of most Cowon products.)
The D2 is a great A/V player, but I honestly have to say that I can't recommend it to everyone. If you want a flawless GUI, up-to-the-minute firmware, extensive playlist capabilities, compatibility with AAC files, bluetooth connectivity, superior FM radio performance, high-quality stock earphones, and name-recognition, then it is probably not for you. These are all D2 weaknesses.
Fortunately, most of these don't mean much to me. I don't really even care that much for the video capabilities (though they are pretty good for the size of the unit.) I want true drag-and-drop capability for media files, multiple playback formats (including FLAC and OGG,) superior battery life (EVERYONE admits that Cowon owns this one,) high power output at the phones jack, and superior (not necessarily audiophile) sound quality. The D2 has all of this.
I traded up to the 16GB D2 from a 8GB i7 and I must admit that I miss a couple things about the i7. For one thing, the touchscreen is annoying. (Don't misunderstand me...the touchscreen on the D2 works fine. It's just that ALL touchscreens are annoying to me. Would you prefer to use a mouse on your desktop, or to reach up and use a touchscreen monitor? A touchscreen is wasteful of motion, often difficult to use when your finger blocks your view of the screen, and ends up providing you with a nice fingerprint-filled display. Fortunately, the D2 display shows prints only at certain angles and is very easy to clean.) I also like the size and shape of the i7, which, being built like a little brick, has no wide surfaces to stress and no large display to protect. The D2, on the other hand, has a lovely (fairly-large) display and several firmware features missing from the i7. Both models are available in 16GB versions, with the i7 being slightly less expensive than the D2.
The sound quality of the D2 is very comparable to that of the i7, though I would probably give the D2 a slight edge in transparency. The output is more than enough to drive most earbuds, earphones, and low-impedance headphones, but you will definitely need a high-quality headphone amp if you use less-efficient headphones with this unit. My Sony MDRSA3000s and Ultrasone HFI-700DVDs definitely need the help, but my Grados and Ultimate Ears IEMs sound fantastic without the amp.
Frankly, I was looking at both the the D2 and the 16 GB Sony NWZ-A729BLK. The Sony is probably at least as good as the D2 in terms of sound quality and slightly better in its GUI, but the Sony is $60 more than the D2, doesn't have the EQ features of the D2, and won't play FLAC or OGG audio files. (Most of my audio files are encoded with OGG as I find that OGG files usually sound just as good as MP3 files, but with a 20% reduction in size.)
I haven't yet had a chance to check the battery life of the D2, but if it is anything like the battery life of the i7, it will be nothing less than astounding. My i7 will run for more than 35 hours, playing audio continuously.
One last comment...see the cute little pick-shaped stylus that comes with the unit? Do yourself a favor and just leave it in the package. Unlike most PDAs, the stylus does not fit into any sort of slot or recess in the D2. You're supposed to hang it by its little cord around the carrying strap (or somewhere.) Very irritating. It also functions as a little rest that allows you to lean the D2 at two different viewing angles on a desktop or table. The D2 is very unstable when you do this. If I were you, I'd just forget about the using the stylus altogether and use the back of my nail to select items on the screen.
So, there you go. I won't tell you that the D2 is the best thing since canned beer, but it does the things that I want extremely well. If I hadn't wanted to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB, I probably would have stuck with my i7, but the D2 made a lot of sense when I started looking at the avilable flash players.
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