Product Description

The Best Sounding MP3 Player Ever? Thank Golden Ears The Cowon S9 is here... If you've been sleeping under a stone you may have missed our excitement about the latest player to arrive from the masters of quality - Cowon. The S9 has teased us over the last year or so with the promise of the Cowon player we always wanted but never dared hope would turn out as well as we could imagine. Well we're astounded to say it's better than we could have ever hoped for! The main points to focus on are the new BBE+ sound architecture the amazing AMOLED widescreen display full Bluetooth support and the superb new user interface. As it's the first thing that'll strike you when using the S9 let's take a look at the interface first: Zoom UI: This is a real step forward for Cowon's players which have had a reputation for being slightly complex to use. With this new totally touch screen user interface Cowon have kept the depth of control possible with previous players but made day-to-day operation simplicity itself! Your main functions are represented by a set of simple icons on the main screen and on entering any of these options you're presented with a simple list of track or videos or photos. Text too small? Use the zoom bar and make it bigger. Not sure what a certain video file is? A looping thumbnail shows some footage from it right there on the menu. And again you can zoom in. It doesn't stop there - the S9 features G sensor technology so it knows which way up it's being held. So you can turn it on it's side and scroll through a list of album covers instead of a textual track list. Watching a movie it doesn't matter what way up you hold it the S9 will re-format the file to display the right way up and as big as possible on the 3.3 inch - 480 x 272 pixel AMOLED screen. So it's easy and cool to use what about the nuts & bolts - is it technically any good? Audio Normally on a player with such a ground-breaking screen we'd start with Video but on the S9 we really want to make sp

Product Details

• Brand: Cowon
• Model: S9-8GB
• Dimensions: 5.12" h x 5.91" w x 3.15" l, .66 pounds
• Display size: 3.3

Features

• Display - 16 million colours 3.3 16:9 Wide AMOLED 480x272 Features Capacitive touchscreen interface
• Audio Channel - Stereo Frequency range 20Hz ~ 20KHz Max output Stereo Left 29mW + Right 29mW (16 Ohm earphones) S/N ratio 95dB
• Battery - Built-in rechargeable lithium polymer battery Battery charging USB : About 5 Hours ( under condition of 5V/500mA or higher) USB Power Adapter* : About 3 Hours ( under condition of 5V/1.0 A or higher)
• Capacity - Flash memory 4GB/8GB/16GB FAT32 file system**
• USB interface USB device USB 2.0 High Speed

Customer Reviews

Cowon S9. My Review
Cowon is famous for it's media players. Latest in the line is this beautiful S9 Curve. The first thing I look for when I get a new player is the latest firmware. Cowon is on the ball. Version 2.05 came out before mine arrived, and I ordered mine from Jetmall.net the first day they were available in the U.S.. Version 2.06 came out 12/24. We're already up to 2.30 and the S9 just keeps getting better. I've always thought Cowon's players were bulky and not very practical or portable. The S9 changes the rules. Clearly Cowon has noticed that beautiful, innovative looks can help sell players.

What they didn't do was forget it's a media player. Music is best is class. Video is amazing shown on it's 3.3" AMOLED widescreen. Photos follow suite. If you're old enough to need reading glasses the Zoom feature makes apps with text easier to read/see with a simple slide of your finger. File format support is broad. You can drag and drop media directly onto the S9, use Windows Media Player, or use the Jetaudio app that comes included to put media on it.

Now with 32gb capacity you'll have room for movies and photos worth watching on that beautiful screen. Get the inexpensive video output cable and serve up movies to your TV. You'll get up to 50 hours music and 10 hours video playback with one battery charge. Don't forget FLASH game/app support, FM radio with recording, voice recording, and Bluetooth for wireless headphones. There is no Wifi or what it brings, but it's also $100 less than the iPod Touch of the same memory capacity.

Be sure and keep the firmware updated. Cowon is sending updates out each month, and each one has brought significant improvement. Best touchscreen player of 2009 I'll predict.

Great mp3 player for advanced users
Pros:
Excellent Sound Quality
Amazing OLED screen
Infinity tweakable interface
Great codec support
Frequent firmware updates and new features provided by Cowon

Cons:
Screen difficult to read in bright direct sunlight
Default user interface can be a bit un-intuitive

Conclusion:
This is a great player. The screen is absolutely great, except in direct sunlight, which makes it pretty much unreadable. The price is great for the capacity, and the fact that you can run different user interfaces (UI) means that if you don't like the way it is by default (which isn't bad), you can just download one that you like. If you know how to program flash, you can make your own, because Cowon makes it really easy.

The greatest thing is that Cowon is constantly updating the firmware, about once a month. Each one brings new features, such as the latest (as of late July 2009) was gapless playback for many music formats. Just make sure that you rip your music properly.

The S9 has great video format support, including Xvid, DivX, and WMV. The videos look great on the screen, and playback is smooth.

It supports both MSC (Mass storage, like a flash drive) and MTP (media transfer protocol, use Windows Media Player or equivalent to sync), so you can get the best of both worlds.

It's really a good player if you want a nice looking, touchscreen player,and you are moderately good with computers, but you don't want Wi-Fi and tons of other features you may not use. My thinking was that I would rather have something that does a few things really well, like the S9, rather than something that stretches itself too thin, like an unnamed Apple product.

Classic Cowon - Impeccable Music Quality, Minor Annoyances
I owned the Cowon A2 PMP for a couple years. For me, the S9 32GB is classic Cowon.

The device is solid - AMOLED screen pops out at you, music quality is so good you will truly hear things you never heard before in your music, all types of formats are supported, recording voice/radio/line-in, Bluetooth support, etc. For a dedicated audio/multimedia device, you would be hard-pressed to find another device in this price-range with this many features. For you iPod fans, I don't consider this as a competitor to the iPhone/iTouch; those devices are intended for a broader audience with a broader purpose.

These features come at a price, however, mostly in terms of user-friendliness. While Cowon has greatly (read: immensely) improved their user interfaces, this one is still a little sharp around the edges when compared to other touch devices on the market. The screen is responsive, but the layout does not always make common features obvious. There is somewhat of a learning curve to using this device comfortably.

My goal is not to scare you away if you are in the market for a friendly, full-featured PMP. Just realize what you are getting here--a device dedicated to providing you as a music-lover the best music and video experience for a reasonable price without too much regard for creature-comforts like a beautifully-intuitive UI.

The S9 gets five stars from me because it achieves its purpose as a splendid media player.