Product Description

Introducing the most versatile portable multimedia experience for digital media enthusiasts, the COWON A3 delivers a full range of high-end video/audio capabilities. The successor to the top-rated A2, the A3 PMP features HD video output (1280x720) for movie playback on HDTV and direct recording from external A/V devices (TV, VCR or camcorder) for viewing on a 4-inch widescreen color TFT LCD. The COWON A3’s digital video performance is optimized by the latest Texas Instruments DaVinci DM6441 digital media processor – and an expanded hard-drive capacity of 30GB or 60GB provides maximum digital media storage. Designed for the best digital video experience, the A3 features HD video output via component, s-video or composite connections. The COWON A3 also boasts the industry’s most expansive digital media format and codec support, including popular lossy and lossless audio codecs True Audio, Monkey’s Audio, Musepack, WavPack, Matroska, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis; and video codecs DivX, XviD, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, WMV, H.264 MP and M-JPEG. Additionally, the A3 comes equipped with an FM radio and recorder, voice recorder with internal microphone, built-in stereo speakers, and it functions as a full-screen photo and document viewer. With its high-speed USB 2.0 interface and USB host functionality, the COWON A3 also doubles as a data storage and high-capacity photo backup device for digital cameras with support for JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIF, BMP and RAW image formats.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27044 in Consumer Electronics
• Color: blue
• Brand: Cowon
• Model: A3-60SL
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 4.50" w x 6.00" l, 2.25 pounds
• Display size: 4

Features

• 4” Wide LCD, 16 million color, res. 800x480, ultra portable
• Play all your digital entertainment: movies, TV shows, photos and music
• Record video from camcorder, TV sources; programmable PVR function for television programming
• FM tuner with record capability and voice recorder; line-in recording to MP3
• Internal rechargeable battery; compatible with Windows operating systems

Customer Reviews

All But Perfection... At Last!
I'll have to admit, there were a few things said in reviews about this player that made me reluctant to purchase it in the first place:

* The size. Well, it's certainly no larger than a CD player ever was, so I see no issue. If you can manage a CD player, then you can manage this with no problem at all.
* The Toggle Switch. I really wanted this not to be a problem... and it doesn't have to be... it just makes it difficult for player operation to become mindless; you have to be sure you're pushing straight down to select things. Though I'll admit that the context menu eliminates 75% of the need to ever 'press' OK. Other than that, navigation is easy and really user-friendly without being stupid.

Other things reviewers would say about this player were just silly. For example, the lack of tag-based browsing. Listen, I keep my music organized in folders and am quite used to going through 2 or 3 folders just to get to the file I want. So I can't browse by genre on the A3. Why would I want to? Heck, half the music I listen to is always put in the 'Rock' genre anyway. The on-the-fly playlist function more than makes up for this in my opinion.

The other complaint I saw was its lack of DRM-protected file support. If you really need to buy DRM-protected media, then you obviously don't know that there are many MANY ways of acquiring DRM-free files. In other words, this player is a torrent pirate's dream. Not only will it play pretty much every file you can find on the internet, but plays it beautifully without transcoding a single thing!

The Cons:
* VOB (DVD video) files seem to have trouble with multi-chanel audio and subtitles. An anime series I loaded on to the player would only play in japanese and not recognize the subtitle tracks at all... so I was forced to encode it in to a different format. Frustrating, but not a deal breaker (hey, I don't expect it to be able to play EVERYTHING).
* Glitchy photo viewer. When playing a high-bitrate music or video file, don't try to look at pictures. The memory doesn't seem to be able to handle it and just sticks on the hourglass screen. Also, large photos don't seem to like to load consistently; They either take forever and cause skips in the music or simply don't show up at all.... but only sometimes. An issue that a future firmware upgrade will probably address.

Now to my favorite aspects of the A3:

* FLAC! My entire music library is in FLAC, where I can manage, so I'm used to the beauty and intricacy of lossless audio on my computer and now I can FINALLY have it in my portable media player.
* The generous 60 gig HD can hold almost 100 FLAC encoded albums or many hours of high-quality video.
* The display on this thing is mind-blowing; the vividness and clarity are comparable to a high-end laptop screen. Its seriously like holding a photo in your hands.
*The sound! Besides the fact that the many high-quality codecs supported will always trump mp3 for sound quality, the A3 has very few EQ settings (I think 5 or so) and what the EQ presets lack in quantity, they more than make up for in quality. The user-editable EQ is the best I've seen in any audio player

I've owned my A3 for about 12 hours now and I already can't live without it. Now I'm glad my iRiver H10 20 GB MP3 Player/Recorder (Grey) died. I never thought I would even want video function in a PMP, but the A3 made me a believer.

I'm not saying this player is for everyone (I would NEVER buy one for my mother) but if you're a technologically inclined geek with a few hundred bucks and a thirst for high-end entertainment, then you need the A3.

Excellent PMP Player
Angered with my old iPod, I was on the lookout for a PMP that would actually play the types of media I wanted to play. My brother had a video iPod, and there was just too much work involved with encoding and all of that. Plus, I hated iTunes.

It eventually came down to being between the Archos 605 and the Cowon A3 for me. I went the the A3, and my brother went with the 605, so I've had the experience with both of these.

The A3 is a great PMP. It will play almost anything you can throw at it, and it will play it well. The screen is very crisp (although it is glossy, so there are some reflections sometimes). It shows up as an external hard drive, so you don't need any software to put anything on it, which is great, because it works with Linux, OS X, windows, and anything else out of the box. I have found the video quality to be superb. The picture is top notch for cartoons like futurama and anime. For real video, it is still good, but not perfect.

Video can be stretched depending on the ratio. The A3 will either show it as it's original size, or stretch it to take up the whole screen. It's a nice option since the screen is not exactly 16:9, and no matter what the source is, there would be black bars on some edges.

It does video out right out of the box. I don't personally own an HDTV, but my relatives do. When I went over, we all watched star wars on the HDTV. The quality was good, just like watching a DVD. Sound was alright, but it was good after I turned off the 3d sound. The 3d sound can muffle the vocals, I'm assuming because the vocals are usually center track and the 3d sound probably does something with sounds unique to each channel.

The video player is awesome. I live in a boarding house, with a shared basement that has a kitchen in it. I find myself downstairs watching Futurama while I'm cooking lunch or dinner. It's very nice, and in situations where I would sit around bored, I can actually enjoy some media.

Since it does so many formats, I never have to encode anything, so it's all copy and paste. This makes it very convenient to put media on your A3. If you have a half hour before you have to go somewhere, and you feel like watching something you have saved on your computer, all you have to do is copy paste it. No transcoding or anything like that.

The audio player doesn't support tag browsing, but, to be honest, I don't really miss it. The A3 handles music simply by reading folders. But, it's not as bad as it sounds, because you can add directories and songs to playlists on the go. I've found it gives me a lot more power for picking the songs I want to hear.

Sound quality is top notch. I bought some high end in ear cannal headphones, and when compared to my old PMP, this thing sounds awesome. The 10 band EQ, BBE, and 3d sound really make the music sound nice. It makes it stand out. I've found myself ditching low quality MP3 rips and opting for FLAC and OGG instead. You can tell the difference with the A3 if you have a good pair of headphones, where everything else on my iPod just sounds terrible.

Battery life is not that hot, but I never use a PMP for more than 8 hours anyways, so it's no loss for me. The GUI is weak too, but this PMP is for people who want functionality. If you want a pretty interface and to spend all your time dealing with proprietary garbage and encoding, you know where to look. If you want your media on the road to be of excellent quality, this is for you.

It can also record video, has an FM receiver which it can record from (although it's not that good of sound quality), record from the microphone, and it can record from the line in in either FLAC or WMA.

Overall, I love my A3, and it really is the best portable media player for media. It doesn't have a lot of gimmicks, but it does what it should do, and it does it well.

Impressive
After couple of hours testing A3 I am quite impressed with its sound and video quality.

Pros:
1. Sound quality: I owned about 6 other mp3 players - A3's audio is the best I've heard.
2. Image quality: Screen resolution is quite impressive - it is so good that 4" stills and videos feel much larger. I would strongly prefer to watch videos on this player than on most portable DVD players with 7" or 10" screen sizes.
3. File transfer: It is reasonably fast - in 10minutes I've transfered around 4 gigs of files.
4. Built-in Mike and voice recording quality: Again, I am impressed.
5. Compatibility with existing file formats: so far it played 95% of the video files that I've downloaded and 100% of audio files.

Cons
1. Proprietary USB file transfer cable. Why Cowon? A2 model worked just fine with generic one.
2. Somewhat delayed response (slower than in A2) when switching between mp3 files and pausing videos. I hope they'll fix it with the future firmware upgrades.
3. Poor zoom function in Photos - it interpolates rather than zooms.
4. You have to convert PDF files into different format to view them.
5. Mediocre interface and nearly identical to A2, many buttons remain unassigned on multiple screens - with the upgraded processor Cowon could've added some additional functionality to the device.

In all - very good PMP gadget.