Cowon iAudio 7 Reviewer's Comments
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A combination of great features, exceptional battery life and superior sound quality are what made us choose the Cowon iAudio 7 as the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winner in the flash mp3 category. It may not have come in first, but it is definitely a close second.
The iAudio 7 is a comprehensive package, with everything you need to play music and videos and display photographs. But it also includes a lot of other features that make it handy for listening to FM radio, reading text documents and recording. It comes in 4 or 8 GB versions that can hold thousands of songs and hours of movies.
The thing that really makes the iAudio 7 a great music player is the battery life: the manufacturer says that the little wonder can play audio continuously for 60 hours. While we know that the real battery life in mp3 players rarely lives up to the specs, even if the iAudio 7 only got 40 hours of playback it would still be far longer than any other player we reviewed. If the iAudio 7 had a bigger screen, better video playback and wasn’t so thick, it would have been number one.Cowon iAudio 7 Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Features:
The Cowon iAudio 7 isn’t skimpy on features. It includes an FM tuner and a voice recorder, but it’s also capable of recording from the radio or from another digital source, making it possible to get tunes from more than just an online store.
The iAudio 7 also includes a user-customizable EQ and has a respectable signal to noise ratio: 95 dB. In fact, it has some of the best audio quality of any of its competitors. Users can upload photos for viewing or use them to customize the screen background. The iAudio 7 is even capable of displaying text documents (.txt), making it possible to view documents on the run.
One of the best features of this player is that it is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, which isn’t common in the world of flash MP3 players. And to top it all off, the iAudio 7 comes with all the little extras like clock, alarm, calendar and sleep timer functions.Music Formats:
The Cowon iAudio 7 sports an impressive range of compatibility when it comes to playing music. Aside from the common formats, like MP3 and WMA (protected and unprotected), this player also supports OGG, FLAC, WAV and ASF. We believe the iAudio 7 actually has the best music compatibility of any player in this category.
Photo and Video Formats:
The supported video and picture formats on the Cowon iAudio 7 are much more standard. It only displays JPEG photos and MP4, AVI and XviD videos.
Physical Features:
This is the only category where the Cowon iAudio 7 seems to struggle. The iAudio 7 is extremely thick, at .7 inches it is the thickest flash MP3 player we reviewed . But the main drawback of the iAudio 7 is that the screen is so small, again the smallest in this category of players at a measly 1.3 inches. Not ideal for watching videos by any means. However, this player is so chunky partly because of its incredible battery life, rated at 60 hours for audio playback and 23 for video, though tests have shown that more realistic use results in about 45 to 50 hours of audio playback. And it’s unlikely that anybody will be watching that much video on such a small screen.
The iAudio 7 also has a unique interface called the Swing Touch. It is pretty useful and functional, but it has a bit of a learning curve so it might be frustrating at first.Help/Support:
The Cowon iAudio 7 gets excellent marks in the tech support category because it offers a live chat option online. Customers can ask questions and troubleshoot problems with a real person through an instant message interface. The industry standards of email and phone support are still available, and the Cowon website also has manuals, FAQs, product details and troubleshooting guides.
Summary:
Despite the small screen size and the chunky profile, the Cowon iAudio 7 has an incredible battery life, impressive support and a wide range of features.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
