Review: Cowon IAudio X5L (30 GB) Music Player

The Cowon iAudio is a great music player on paper. Actually, it's more than just a music player. The Cowon iAudio is also a video player wit 260,000 color LCD, is an FM radio, a voice recorder, a pgot viewer, a text file reader and more. Some of the other features of the Cowon iAudio are - customizable wallpaper; execellent sound quality; capability to read photos directly from digital cameras; compatibility with OGG and FLAC formats, as well as subscription WMA tracks; line-in capabilities; and lastly, it's small size similar to an iPod. Just looking at that list of features, it's pretty easy to see why some called the Cowon iAudio the iPod killer in the beginning. However, there is plenty to consider before you get the Cowon iAudio just based on that list.

Here are some other things about the Cowon iAudio that one should take into consideration before you take the plunge and shell out the $300 for this snazzy player:

First off, there's a special adapter that you will have to use every time you need to use the A/C, the line-in, and even the USB cables. Yes, the Cowon iAudio does house a built-in USB port that allows camera transfers and MTP subscription downloads, but overall it's a pain to hook it up with the computer or other devices using the USB. Even if you manage hooking it up to a PC, you can't autosync with it. Now come the bigger problems with the Cowon iAudio. So much is stuffed into this little player, that even using all the features is incredibly hard because of the navigation and design mess ups. You cannot browse your files by artist, album, or genre. You will have to convert most video files through multiple steps for them to even work on the Cowon iAudio (and even then it's just a 2inch screen). You cannot play music while looking at photos (and there isn't a slide-show mode either). And lastly, there are no presets for the FM radio.

The mediocre music browsing and the messed up design of the Cowon iAudio reduces it from the iPod killer to a dead beat music player. While the Cowon iAudio still has some great features, I for one, would definitely not like to go through unnecessarily long and tedious steps just to get to the features.

As such, the designers of the Cowon iAudio made a big mistake by coming with one of the best music and video players on paper, but something that is hard to navigate and browse through. At the same time, if you're just looking for features and more bang for the buck, then surely the Cowon iAudio is a much better option that anything out there. But that's only on paper. The actual handling of the device, and the multiple steps that you have to go through to be able to watch videos or pictures on the Cowon iAudio make it a losing battle. Measuring 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.6 inches and weighing 5.4 ounces, the Cowon iAudio is about the same size and weight as the 4G iPod, but has much more to offer.

However, if Cowon iAudio is updated with a scrollwheel or something instead of the joystick right now, and the browsing was fixed, this would easily be the iPod killer. Even with all the problems though, this is still a better buy than the iPod.