Cowon A3-60SL 60GB Portable Media Player (Silver)

This is a truly stunning device.

I have spent the last 4 days loading it with media files, including divx dvd rips, F1 & MotoGP races in xvid format, and a dozen .flac albums and have been blown away by the playback in every case. Aside from an audio de-synch issue that seems to be related to animation files, the performance has been flawless. This may be the ultimate traveling companion.

If you have reasonably moderate skill with portable tech (even though loading files is an easy copy & paste the user should have some knowledge of file structure to get the media into the correct folders) and any appreciable collection of video & audio files, this is the player to get. Battery life so far has performed as advertised, which is to say ~6 hours for video playback.

I am not sure I understand some of the comments here about a proprietary USB connector - it is not - but the transfer rate is on the slow side.

Bottom line: if you're on the fence, buy it.

Beware the Cowon brand. The repair service is marginal, and their communication is horrible. I had an older M3 unit of theirs that needed to have the battery replaced. After charging me $40, the unit was repaired and returned to me. It worked for a week, then stopped. I returned it, was charged another $80 (they actually wanted $120), and the unit was returned to me only partically functioning. It has been IMPOSSIBLE to get them to make good on the repair, and all I can get from them is an email runaround.

Since Cowon requires payment for repairs BEFORE they are executed, YOU, the consumer, have no recourse if you are dissatisfied. BEWARE the Cowon repair service. Buy from a company with a better repair process, or you will be severely disappointed when repair time comes around. Which it will.

I have had my eye on the Cowan A2 for quite some time, and when I was ready to purchase it, i saw the A3 was out, wow what an awesome PMP! Great battery life, beautiful picture, excellent sound with lots of enhancements.
I can't say enough about this media player, it is probably the most satisfying purchase I have made in years.

It even makes poor quality mp3 sounds great when I hook it up to my living room speakers where there's no where for poorly encoded mp3s to hide, unlike on small headphones which have no range in frequency (highs & lows) you know? You can tweak the sound with the many EQ, bass settings and Digital Signal Processing (DSP)fields like Rock, Jazz etc. you'll freak. IT has Line-In Recording which is a huge plus for me.

The picture quality is equally amazing near HD quality. It is not for the faint of heart, only for true audiophiles providing freedom for music lovers. It's even a portable Digital Video recorder as it can record from the TV etc. It's a god send. It plays virtually all types of media files. No proprietary software needed (crappy I tunes). It is a little hefty but it isn't meant to be for those on the run as much. For that purpose, I suggest the little 2 or 4 gigs ones. This puppy I believe is for extended travel perhaps to watch a movie on when you are away and for the jukebox feature of hooking it up to my audio-visual system. It even has a built in alarm clock!!
The company provides firmware upgrades too so the battery life is higher than the reviews.

Pros: Beautiful HD Screen, reasonable hours of play, GREAT (!!!) format support - just throw it into the device and it'll play. comfortable, light weight even on 60GB version, wide subtitles support, great menu language support. can use it as TiVo. You can connect it to a TV and watch good quality movies. Reading small documents is cool. Supports BBE so your music will sound FANTASTIC!

Cons: For First, and HD support is a lie. it WONT support most x264 files. Some devices has a problem with its volume (too low), some don't, and can't be fixed with firmware. plus COWON are not even aware of this problem so...don't count on your volume to be very high.
The way you search music is just plain stupid, you can only see the filename. you can't sort the files by Band or by Album, so you have to make your own directories for each band, which can be annoying when you have 30GB of singles on your Cowon.
No gapless playback - you gotta listen of The Dark Side Of The Moon with about 3-4 seconds gap between each track.
No Thumbnails view for the pictures, and it will only zoom x4.
No case for the device (cheapest I found is 30$).
No Wi-Fi, but who needs this $h1t on the go, right?

Conclusion: It's a good device, but don't sell your soul to the devil for this. Little advice: since it supports FLAC format don't forget to buy atleast entry level headphones for it - those earbuds suck.