Cowon D2 4 GB Portable Media Player (Black)

The only complaints I have about this mp3 player is that it is a tad heavy and the FM reception is not that strong. Also you have to buy a line-in converter seperately in order to use the line-in recording. But I love the touch screen and all the different options and ways to personalize it.

I love to listen to audio books and having spent hours checking the internet for the best MP3 audio book player; and straining my eyes on countless reviews, I have now made the right choice. Of course I am only human, so I had to make a few mistakes first. I tried the sansa clip 2GB, but it did not have bookmarks and caused me major frustration. I then tried not one, but two Iriver Clix's, but they both had earphone jack problems. I now proudly own The Cowon D2, and the reasons are below.

1) Downloads Audible, Netlibrary and Overdrive
Use these the most, but there are other sites available for downloads.
2) Bookmarks that are easy to use and you can have more that one at a
time. I had a least 6 going at one time and they all worked great.
3) Did I mention I LOVE IT!
4) External memory slot
5) Pretty good sound with supplied earphones but if you want great sound,
purchase a better quality set (Maybe Shure or Sennheiser). I own the
Sennheiser MX400 IN EAR HEADPHONES (great sound for only $10.99).
6) Team up the Cowon with the Iriver AFT 100 transmitter and you can
listen through the car radio. Works great.

If you want technical information you will have to look at different reviews. I just know the important stuff; it works great for me and
I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to listen to audio books. I also prefer using the Windows Media Player.

I first took it out of the box and turned it on and the screen lit up with the company greeting. Then it went black and never turned on again.
Returned it for an exchange.
Received another unit and it faired better- for about a day. Then it too died on me. Sent it back for refund with a terse comment on the product.
Forget this, you can do a lot better.

PROS:
Great format support
Great battery life
Big, bright screen
Good build quality

CONS:
Meager internal memory
Abysmal user Interface
Average "sound quality"
JetAudio is terrible software
Troubles reading .OGG tags
Poor accuracy/resolution touch screen

REVIEW:
This seems like it should be a great player. However, using it is disappointing at best and frustrating at, um, ALWAYS. The touch screen requires two hands and your eyes to navigate, so driving and walking become life and death trials. Having used an iPod touch, I think the fault lies more with Cowon's interface than touch screens in abstract.

In the interest of brevity, let me just say you should buy an iPod Classic if the best sound quality is your bag. I know the anti-Apple crowd are sharpening their knives, but hear me out:

1 - The best way to have a great sounding DAP is to have great source material. An 80GB hard drive allows you to encode at very high/lossless bit rates and still carry around huge collections. Sure, the D2 has an SD card slot, but at current prices you'll double the purchase price of the Classic to acquire the D2 and 5 16GB SD Cards. Furthermore, the iTunes ALAC encoder is much faster than any FLAC encoder out there; the same goes for the AAC encoder vs. LAME. And as for the vaunted sound quality advantage of Cowon players vs. Apple, it's simply not true. All I will say is that it sounded roughly as good as my Sansa Clip, better than a 16GB Creative Zen (the current one, it has NO OUTPUT STRENGTH), and as good as my iPod Classic I bought after returning this beast. Good files + good headphones = good sound.

.OGG is better than AAC at any given bit rate, but the D2 can't read the tags right and botches track numbers. There goes that advantage. JetAudio is bloated, ugly software (some might say "so is iTunes" but that's another review). Using this player is like eating spaghetti with a spare tire. It's no fun. Avoid at any price.

The Cowon D2 is a great media player for the money, it has a nice little touch screen that is easy to move around in and very user friendly. It has a stylus pen for touch screen use that plugs into the back to use as a stand. It also has great battery life and superb sound and also has an SD slot to increase your storage for those who might need it.

Transferring your music is fast and easy even with having to convert movie format it was still very quick and easy to do. It might not be good for those who are in a hurry and trying to find a specific song while driving down the road or if using it for jogging but over all it is a nice solid media player.