Cowon J3 16GB MP3 Player - Black

Well,up till now I've had the Cowon S9 32GB and it was excellent but it was getting full, therefore I decided to upgrade to the Cowon J3 32GB version mainly because of the prospect of having a MicroSD card slot, so when the 32GB is finally full I can add a 32GB MicroSD card and that will give me a total of 64GB, which is superb. The Cowon J3 does support full integration with the external MicroSD card as I tested it with a 4GB MicroSD card.

DESIGN
In contrast to the S9's beautiful curves the J3 looks like its been working out to achieve that slim and beautiful body, making it very sleek indeed. I also like the fact that Cowon have kept the physical buttons for play / pause, volume, next / previous track and power / lock, while the USB connector holds down the final slot on the bottom next to MicroSD card slot. However, I was a bit disappointed that Cowon have still kept the proprietary USB connector; in other words, you can forget syncing / charging the J3 without the special cable that comes bundled in.

SCREEN & SOUND QUALITY
The J3 still has the AMOLED 3.3in 480x272 screeen as found on the S9, which is gorgeous to look at and consumes a lot less battery than a normal LCD screen. Videos look superb, images are unbelievably sharp and bright. I won't go into much detail about the sound quality as everyone knows that Cowon is the undisputed champion at that. And the support for a huge variety of audio files, from MP3 to APE and FLAC; TV out (with optional cable); Bluetooth; an FM radio tuner; plus, finally, the bonus of support for Flash games with its nifty embedded Flash player, just makes it that extra worthwhile. The J3 also has proper full playback support, unlike the S9 which had a moment where you could hear the split between the ending of a song and the beginning of the next one.

INTERFACE
Now here is where the S9 suffered a bit and was not as intuitive and easy to use as say the Ipod Touch or the Zune HD etc. However, the same cannot be said for the J3. Cowon have listened to their consumers and straightened out some of the S9's usability issues. With the J3 you get a much more improved capacitive touchscreen and nippier performance, which will have have you skipping from one view to another with iPod-like rapidity. I am very impressed, the difference is like day and night, honestly.

The J3 has more scope for customisation than before. You get the traditional icon grid joined by a customisable widget desktop view and a lovely vertically scrolling text view. The latter comes complete with slick accelerometer-enabled animation - tip the player on its side and the words fall gracefully from one side to the other. Picture browsing, meanwhile, benefits from pinch to zoom multitouch support and can be a bit slow at times if you have very high resolution pics.

All said, the J3 is an impressive piece of kit, and its definitely a huge improvement over the S9. Its nippier, slicker and expandable - and a better all-round player than an iPod touch or nano.

Having been seen with the 32GB version which I bought recently, a member of family decided to buy the 16GB version. The review for the 32GB and the 16GB is basically the same, except for storage capacity of course. Already have a Cowon S9, so learning how to use this was quite easy, though newcomers to Cowon may have to play around a bit to see all the possibilities. That is fun in itself anyway. Firstly, unlike some versions of the S9 which because of a design fault which partially obstructed bluetooth broadcast, on this the bluetooth actually works and works really well with external Bluetooth speakers. I have managed to pair it with 5 different devices and the J3 has managed to keep information on them all.
For those with a large collection, there is the joy of being able to add micro SD cards to increase capacity. Another great advance is that once the micro SD card is in, the player sees them together, so the whole collection can be seen seamlessly...not having to move from the internal storage to the external. 8GB micro SD cards are now quite cheap, 16GB is affordable; 32GB is way too pricey but I expect the prices will head down rapidly. When that happens, you can have a 48GB player if you wish. You can store your videos and other stuff which you may not use that often on separate cards and insert them when you wish.
The amoled 3.3 inch screen on the J3 is quite fantastic. I guarantee you won't see any better. Touch on the screen is hugely responsive and needs the merest of touches. Pictures and icons run smoothly and video quality is quite amazing. Videos default to widescreen but all other views...such as album list and art respond to how the J3 is held. Very quick changeover too.
The legendary sound quality of the Cowon continues. It puts everyone else to shame, especially the most famous of all. It seems to playback just about all audio formats from the obvious Mp3 to Flac. The equalizer gives untold options, including 4 which are customizable. There are physical buttons on the side of the player to advance or change tracks and change volume. There isn't an independent way to create playlists, which is a shame, but you can add tracks to a favourites list which goes to a total of 256 tracks. Playlists can be created on a PC and the MU3 file transferred to the root folder of the J3. I use winamp to create playlists.
Battery is claimed to last on audio for 64 hours and video for 11. As we all know battery usage is measured playing music at 128 Kbps, so I expect playing 256 or 320 encoded files will reduce this time. But it is still an extraordinary improvement on all other players. However, when Bluetooth is used, the battery lasts a fraction of this time. This is not a fault with the player. Unfortunately Bluetooth itself takes quite a bit of power.
Picture browsing is excellent. The usual zoom option is on the screen but you can also pinch and enlarge a picture by using thumb and forefinger to stretch it out.
The J3 has its own speaker, mono though, not very loud, but perfectly adequate with decent sound quality for what must be tiny speakers.
This player does not do apps or have wifi. No concern to me as I simply want the best audio and video player. These additions cost money and to add them and keep prices low can only mean a reduction in quality in other departments.
It weighs a lot less than more famous brands, sits beautifully in the hand, having ditched the curve of the S9 and reverting back to a fully rectangular shape. But I must admit I did like the curve of the S9. It made it unique.
Sadly, the world is never perfect and the only gripe I have with this is that the opening for the speaker is a slit on the back of the player. When you lay the player down, unless you place it face down, it obstructs the slit and reduces the volume. It should have been on the side or at the front. Extraordinary how advanced design can be and yet so often the simplest of things are missed. Still, it is small gripe.
The 16Gb J3 is cheaper than the 16GB S9 when it first came out, so I think it is great value. Available in all black or partly white, I love it and challenge anyone not to once they hold it in their hand..

The Positives:
Sound quality is def above the average mp3 player esp above most ipods, esp with a decent set of headphones(included are not so good)
Incredible Battery Life (aprox 64hrs+ for music)-Major Selling point!
Sharp colourful display(new OLED touchscreen display)
Touchscreen is quite responsive (capacitive) but not quite as easy to use as ipod
Drag and drop onto cowon as an external drive on pc so no need to mess about with unresponsive provided software(better than encrypting like ipod/sony)
Memory Expandable/Upgradable(Put in a micro sd for instant extra capacity.-ie add 16gb card to get a 32gb player and more in future)-Brillant
Wide range of video formats acceptable,eg divx(but not all and Not ipod mp4 video files!)
Supports flash but don't have clue how to do anything with that??-def nothing like an app store
Light and ok quality build for an mp3 player, display does smudge but its glass so cleans up easy
Actual physical buttons on side of player, which means you can use in your pocket, unlike other touchscreens
Digital radio and photo viewer as standard, plus recorder, from radio or inbuilt microphone, so good for long lectures/meetings

The Negatives(which lose a star)
Display, while exceptional + sharp indoors, is almost unwatchable in bright sunlight, and def. dimmer in comparasion to ipod on brightest settings
However over 10 hours video so better than most.
As said, does not support ipod/psp movie format (yet?)-Big let down for anyone with a sizable movie library.
No wifi, or internet browser if that matters to you, but is bluetooth.
interface is not great as sometimes hard to find way to what your looking for, but not too bad and you do get used to it.
Included software not very clever, but will convert other format movies to divx, but really widows media player is better.
screen is little small(3.2" when most videos are heading for 4" now)
No home button which is tricky for a touchscreen, but holding play button does the same
in built speaker is a litle quite on max volume, but still pretty good.
Build of device does seem a little plasticy and cheapish on the back, despite the metallic edge round the glass screen on the front,all metal be better
Instructions non existant and some options almost a mystery to figure out, with button images no help-(or fun if you enjoy experimenting?)
For same money could buy ipod touch with bigger brighter screen and still decent audio and battery life and wifi and web browser(Big Negative)

Conclusion.
Using this just as an mp3 player and occasional video player,this device is perfect really, as battery life is very decent compared to others and pretty perfect audio playback, for those with normal human hearing, and better than compared to ipods and sonys had before. As a video player its not quite as good as others,perhaps sharper than ipod touch but def not brighter-esp in daylight, however longer lasting so maybe up to you to chose which you prefer.Nice if bit bigger. The other features are little sparse as photo viewer is standard for most now, and even nano has inbuilt video recorder, but as yet cant figure how to get games on it and as with touch dont generally like prodding a screen or balancing it to play games on, so not really bothered. Anyway, audio is the focus on this so it excels there and too much other stuff might distract.The ultimate and interesting point is the upgradable memory part, as in 2 years the micro sd cards could have doubled or tripled which ultimatly future proofs this high quality player, at least in capacity terms. Can't see major audio developers like apple/sony following this(maybe sony if their smart)Could be improved in a few ways.Perhaps a swappable battery might help but ok. And if drag and drop is too easy, maybe a better software from cowon and def an all metal body as feels rather cheap and light.

So Summary, light, bright, long lasting upgradable memory capacity with great sound quality. Other little niggles can be mostly ignored, in my opinion.

-Update after 2 months use, only to add that audio still impresses and a 32gb sdhc card is now available, and contary to my earlier comment, found supplied software ok once you get used to weird interface and has benefit that will actually let you add apple format mp4 videos,(so ipod movies you have not wasted!)-and also converts video files if not suitable- so big plus. Only negative now is that the white back of mine looks very grubby after a few weeks in pocket, so would probably recommend the black one.Still highly recommended-hope that helps.