COWON A3-60SL 60GB Portable Media Player (Silver) From Cowon
Product Description
The Cowon A3 is a 60GB Portable Multimedia Player and Recorder with a 4" TFT screen. The screen has 800 x 480 resolution and is powered by TI's new Davinci Chipset. The A3 supports a wide variety of multimedia file formats for all kinds of entertainment such as movies, music, pictures and also novels. The A3 can even record from various sources such as FM, Voice (embedded microphone), Mobile TV (with optional tuner), Audio (Line-in) or Video. The stylish portable media player has integrated stereo speakers and A/V outputs for enjoying all your media with your home theater.
Product Description
The Cowon A3 is a 60GB Portable Multimedia Player and Recorder with a 4" TFT screen. The screen has 800 x 480 resolution and is powered by TI's new Davinci Chipset. The A3 supports a wide variety of multimedia file formats for all kinds of entertainment such as movies, music, pictures and also novels. The A3 can even record from various sources such as FM, Voice (embedded microphone), Mobile TV (with optional tuner), Audio (Line-in) or Video. The stylish portable media player has integrated stereo speakers and A/V outputs for enjoying all your media with your home theater.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #1447 in Consumer Electronics
Brand: Cowon
Model: A3-60SL
Dimensions: 9.00" h x 4.50" w x 6.00" l, 2.25 pounds
Features
4¿ Wide LCD, 16 million color, res. 800x480, ultra portable
Play all your digital entertainment: movies, TV shows, photos and music
Record video from camcorder, TV sources; programmable PVR function for television programming
FM tuner with record capability and voice recorder; line-in recording to MP3
Internal rechargeable battery; compatible with Windows operating systems .
Customer Reviews
Cowon A3 60GB This player would easily rate five stars except for two MAJOR flaws and a few minor ones, which I hope may be corrected through firmware improvements. I bought the A3 for the purpose of playing music, so for nearly four hundred dollars that's what I expect it to do perfectly. First, the good points: The sound quality is exceptional. I own two other mp3 players - an IRiver, which has extremely poor sound quality, and a Cowon F2 which has very good sound quality, but not as good as the A3's. The sound enhancement features of the A3 work very well. Even when you turn the volume up loud there's no distortion. (With the F2, too much bass will cause major distortion at medium to high volume.) 60GB seems to be plenty of storage for music. I use high-quality mp3 files (256 kbps) because I can't hear any difference between that format and the original CD. I put almost 3,000 songs on the A3 and only used up about half the available storage space. (Remember, ALL manufacturers including Cowon lie about hard disk capacity. The A3 actually only has about 54GB of storage.) File transfer is reasonably fast - probably as good as it gets for this type of device. And speaking of transferring files, there are no artificial restrictions. This is no ipod. Cowon doesn't force their customers to jump through any hoops to use their products. You can change the wallpaper as often as you like and play your songs as many times as you wish without the manufacturer trying to squeeze more money out of you. Although I use the A3 almost exclusively to listen to music it is nice to have other capabilities available. The picture viewer is very good. I downloaded a few photos that were already sized for the A3's screen (800 x 480 pixels) and they looked fine. The zoom feature works very well - the photos still looked sharp when magnified. The display quality is fine for LCD, but when I compared a photo on the A3 to the same photo on my computer's CRT display the A3 appeared washed out and flat. The A3 display is perfectly acceptable for its primary function of navigating menu items. Now for the bad points: There are two huge flaws in the A3. First, there's often a loud pop between songs. I verified the pops weren't actually part of the mp3 files. I contacted Cowon about the pops and they didn't have an answer. The second major flaw is that there's always a pause between songs. That might be a nice feature when listening to random songs, but it's very annoying when listening to a CD in which the tracks are supposed to blend together. There's no way to disable the pause. I guess the only way around that is to encode albums in one large file instead of separate tracks. I really don't want to spend a few days re-encoding dozens of CDs. The A3 supports lots of file formats, but I tried watching some music videos with limited success. The first .vob file I tried caused the A3 to crash. One .mpg file displayed incorrectly. I was able to play two .mpg files without any problems. So my success rate with videos was 50%. I'm sure that if watching videos on the A3 was important to me I could spend the time to convert all my videos to a format the A3 could handle. I have a few .ape files, which the A3 would not play at all. The .ape files caused an error message stating "Compression is too high." Some minor problems are also present. It's difficult to locate a file in a large list. For example, I have one folder that contains about 2,000 songs. Locating a specific song is very time consuming because of the way the scroll bar works. The A3 uses a non-standard USB plug. Also, connecting the A3 to the computer can be tricky. The instructions indicate you should use the USB ports on the back of your computer. I found this to be true. Connecting the A3 to the USB port on the front of my computer did not work, and caused problems with an external USB drive connected to the back port. In my opinion the firmware is beta quality. Cowon does seem to have a history of releasing firmware upgrades. I suppose as appliances become more sophisticated we'll have to start tolerating this type of situation. Imagine if your toaster occasionally crashed and had to be re-booted until the firmware could be upgraded...
Cowon A3 Customer Review Audio and video playing are very good. Will play .avi no problem. Audio sound enhancement is also very good. User interface needs improvement. Battery lasts about 4 hours for video and 6-7 hours for audio. The hard drive will cause skipping with harsh movements, i.e., anything other than walking. Softwares that can be used with player are not all included. Full softwares require additional fee. The player does heat up if put inside a pocket. Too bad there aren't any exposable carrying case with backpack straps for secure carrying and heat dissipation. However, if video and audio quality is your primary purpose, I don't think there is anything better on the market. If this player drops its price to $250, I can't see anyone buying anything else in the same category.
The Best Videophile PMP If you are interested in videos that look stunning, with excellent contrast, vibrant colors and crisp detail, you must consider this player. If you are also interested in audiophile sound, whether to accompany your videos or for your varied music collection, you must consider this player. Moreover, the A3 provides you with more video and audio formats than any other player I've auditioned, therefore saving you from having to re-rip or convert your audio or video collection. (I should mention that the A3 has a very useful feature: pan and scan. This allows you to fit your videos to the size of the A3 screen without changing the aspect ratio. Changing the aspect ratio can sometimes stretch or compress a scene, which results in video deformity, an unacceptable visual experience.) I have compared the A3 against other fine players, but touchscreen players produce inherently grainy pictures and simply cannot compare with the A3, which is a non-touch screen player. The A3 is not without defects or shortcomings. It has no wifi, it cannot copy or play DRM-restricted music or videos, it will not sort music by file tags, it has a quirky toggle switch that does not always actuate the proper function, its battery life is only average, and it runs warm to hot. (For a time, many A3s contained defective batteries which would often leak and warp the device, rendering it inoperative. My understanding is that Cowon has corrected this problem.) I, for one, am willing to accept the A3 with these shortcomings, because it excels as an exceptional music and video player. Do yourself a favor and audition the A3; you will be pleasantly surprised.
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Amazon Sales Rank: #1447 in Consumer Electronics
Brand: Cowon
Model: A3-60SL
Dimensions: 9.00" h x 4.50" w x 6.00" l, 2.25 pounds
Features
4¿ Wide LCD, 16 million color, res. 800x480, ultra portable
Play all your digital entertainment: movies, TV shows, photos and music
Record video from camcorder, TV sources; programmable PVR function for television programming
FM tuner with record capability and voice recorder; line-in recording to MP3
Internal rechargeable battery; compatible with Windows operating systems .
Customer Reviews
Cowon A3 60GB This player would easily rate five stars except for two MAJOR flaws and a few minor ones, which I hope may be corrected through firmware improvements. I bought the A3 for the purpose of playing music, so for nearly four hundred dollars that's what I expect it to do perfectly. First, the good points: The sound quality is exceptional. I own two other mp3 players - an IRiver, which has extremely poor sound quality, and a Cowon F2 which has very good sound quality, but not as good as the A3's. The sound enhancement features of the A3 work very well. Even when you turn the volume up loud there's no distortion. (With the F2, too much bass will cause major distortion at medium to high volume.) 60GB seems to be plenty of storage for music. I use high-quality mp3 files (256 kbps) because I can't hear any difference between that format and the original CD. I put almost 3,000 songs on the A3 and only used up about half the available storage space. (Remember, ALL manufacturers including Cowon lie about hard disk capacity. The A3 actually only has about 54GB of storage.) File transfer is reasonably fast - probably as good as it gets for this type of device. And speaking of transferring files, there are no artificial restrictions. This is no ipod. Cowon doesn't force their customers to jump through any hoops to use their products. You can change the wallpaper as often as you like and play your songs as many times as you wish without the manufacturer trying to squeeze more money out of you. Although I use the A3 almost exclusively to listen to music it is nice to have other capabilities available. The picture viewer is very good. I downloaded a few photos that were already sized for the A3's screen (800 x 480 pixels) and they looked fine. The zoom feature works very well - the photos still looked sharp when magnified. The display quality is fine for LCD, but when I compared a photo on the A3 to the same photo on my computer's CRT display the A3 appeared washed out and flat. The A3 display is perfectly acceptable for its primary function of navigating menu items. Now for the bad points: There are two huge flaws in the A3. First, there's often a loud pop between songs. I verified the pops weren't actually part of the mp3 files. I contacted Cowon about the pops and they didn't have an answer. The second major flaw is that there's always a pause between songs. That might be a nice feature when listening to random songs, but it's very annoying when listening to a CD in which the tracks are supposed to blend together. There's no way to disable the pause. I guess the only way around that is to encode albums in one large file instead of separate tracks. I really don't want to spend a few days re-encoding dozens of CDs. The A3 supports lots of file formats, but I tried watching some music videos with limited success. The first .vob file I tried caused the A3 to crash. One .mpg file displayed incorrectly. I was able to play two .mpg files without any problems. So my success rate with videos was 50%. I'm sure that if watching videos on the A3 was important to me I could spend the time to convert all my videos to a format the A3 could handle. I have a few .ape files, which the A3 would not play at all. The .ape files caused an error message stating "Compression is too high." Some minor problems are also present. It's difficult to locate a file in a large list. For example, I have one folder that contains about 2,000 songs. Locating a specific song is very time consuming because of the way the scroll bar works. The A3 uses a non-standard USB plug. Also, connecting the A3 to the computer can be tricky. The instructions indicate you should use the USB ports on the back of your computer. I found this to be true. Connecting the A3 to the USB port on the front of my computer did not work, and caused problems with an external USB drive connected to the back port. In my opinion the firmware is beta quality. Cowon does seem to have a history of releasing firmware upgrades. I suppose as appliances become more sophisticated we'll have to start tolerating this type of situation. Imagine if your toaster occasionally crashed and had to be re-booted until the firmware could be upgraded...
Cowon A3 Customer Review Audio and video playing are very good. Will play .avi no problem. Audio sound enhancement is also very good. User interface needs improvement. Battery lasts about 4 hours for video and 6-7 hours for audio. The hard drive will cause skipping with harsh movements, i.e., anything other than walking. Softwares that can be used with player are not all included. Full softwares require additional fee. The player does heat up if put inside a pocket. Too bad there aren't any exposable carrying case with backpack straps for secure carrying and heat dissipation. However, if video and audio quality is your primary purpose, I don't think there is anything better on the market. If this player drops its price to $250, I can't see anyone buying anything else in the same category.
The Best Videophile PMP If you are interested in videos that look stunning, with excellent contrast, vibrant colors and crisp detail, you must consider this player. If you are also interested in audiophile sound, whether to accompany your videos or for your varied music collection, you must consider this player. Moreover, the A3 provides you with more video and audio formats than any other player I've auditioned, therefore saving you from having to re-rip or convert your audio or video collection. (I should mention that the A3 has a very useful feature: pan and scan. This allows you to fit your videos to the size of the A3 screen without changing the aspect ratio. Changing the aspect ratio can sometimes stretch or compress a scene, which results in video deformity, an unacceptable visual experience.) I have compared the A3 against other fine players, but touchscreen players produce inherently grainy pictures and simply cannot compare with the A3, which is a non-touch screen player. The A3 is not without defects or shortcomings. It has no wifi, it cannot copy or play DRM-restricted music or videos, it will not sort music by file tags, it has a quirky toggle switch that does not always actuate the proper function, its battery life is only average, and it runs warm to hot. (For a time, many A3s contained defective batteries which would often leak and warp the device, rendering it inoperative. My understanding is that Cowon has corrected this problem.) I, for one, am willing to accept the A3 with these shortcomings, because it excels as an exceptional music and video player. Do yourself a favor and audition the A3; you will be pleasantly surprised.
Ref Link: http://www.amazon.com/
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1 comment:
card reader
The A3 is also a USB HOST!! You can also use the A3 as a portable hard drive. You can plug in other mp3 players (not i-pods) and flash drives as well. GREAT FEATURE!!!
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