Cowon A2 20 GB Portable Multimedia Player
By: Cowon Average Rating: 4.5 Total Reviews: 11
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 On: 2008-02-27
Bought this product after reviewing several players, including the Apple version. Apple was too $$$ and some of the others couldnt play as many open formats as the Cowon. Bought mine refurbed from this site and it arrived in great shape. The device itself and its capabilities are impossible to surpass, unless you could get one with a solid state (flash) drive with the same options for the same price (which you cant).
Cons: Gave it two stars mainly because of Cowon "support." I work in IT and over the past ten years Ive spent thousands on all kinds of electronic gear from cell phones to laptops to media players. I do my research, so I rarely run into issues with hardware I buy, but Cowon support has been the most frustrating, annoying and difficult I have ever encountered. Ever.
Major con is that my device never functioned properly at full USB 2.0 speeds, so moving pictures and video files from my PC to the device was impossibly slow. I tried this on several machines at home and at work. What made things even more painful was contacting Cowon USA support. Initial contact with them seemed to indicate they didnt believe me about my issue. My first email support contact was horribly unprofessional, disengenous and, basically, insulting. I responded that I expected better information/ troubleshooting for my three-month old device and the response I got back was even more unprofessional and insulting. My impression of their tech support is that its run by a bunch of teenagers.
I had to make three email attempts (their "live" chat/ tech support operates on PST, so its useless to me, and there is no number to call during business hours) to get an RMA because my first two requests were ignored. I sent my device and waited three weeks without a response. I had to email them to find out "its being worked on." Another week passed with no contact from them. I emailed them again to find out its still being worked on and Ill be contacted when its returned to me.
Basically, if you have issues with this device be prepared to be disappointed with support. Inconvenienced hardly begins to explain it all. More than a month to repair a hard drive on a "like new" product? Without further explanation, I can only assume theyre either swamped with defective devices or incredibly disorganized. In either case, beware. I only wish I had purchased a small, sleek device from one of their main competitors - the one and only time I had an issue with that product, I took it into one of their national stores, received excellent help and got a replacement in less than an hour. Thats impressive.
Cowon is not.
 On: 2007-01-23
I just gave this to my husband this Christmas, he just loves it, he downloaded some movies into it, took it to a flight to Cancun,he has put music, photos, the screen is big enough even for him who doesnt have very good eyes, he just loves it, and if he loves it must be good, I dont use so but I have seen the photos and movies and it is really quite nice, he bought some headphones to go with it and it is just peachy keen, I recommend it, I bought after some research and readings from other users.
aida
On: 2007-01-17
I received the cowon A2 (30gb) last year (2005) for Christmas. And it was the best gift ever. Originally I got the Archos but as i looked through the book i realized what a hassle it was going to be to get video content and i sent it back. Im so glad i did.
Simple and stylish with a fantastic screen and a beautiful leather case. You can plug this pmp player into any TV or stereo or dock that uses a standard mini-plug or RCA cables. You dont need to buy a special dvr station to record, just plug it in. The battery has a long life and if you run low just plug it in. Best thing for me is the variety of file formats it plays, and mainly xvid because online xvid seems to be king, its a high quality video format. If it wont play a particular file the included software will convert it. When i Play music through a stereo with it, the sound quality is better than my wifes ipod. I love it.....I take it everywhere with me. Music, books on tape, movies, TV, ive even made mp3s of some of my favorite vinyl albums, slide shows of the kids. The people who have developed this did a great job and instead of trying to restrict access, limit content, or proprietize it they a have and continue to, with firmware updates, expand access and usability. There is no better pmp or mp3 player.
After a year of use there are only two cons i can think of; the radio reception is sketchy, out in the country where i live practically nonexsistant and you always need the ear buds for antenea, also they should really develop a wireless remote attachment.
But those are small compared to the pros. I love this thing !!!
On: 2006-12-06
Okay, there are some misconceptions about what this will do and wont do. It will not take any video file and play it. Its never heard of an MP4. AVI seems to be the easiest to get going on it.
Before I tinkered with it, I updated the firmware. Big mistake. Support was really easy. Went online to live chat, re-did the firmware to the previous one, and the AVIs kicked in nicely. Heres the beauty. I own a Mac. All I did was replace the files with Finder (file manager for your MSers), rebooted and that was it. They dont have any Mac progamming, but there really is no need. for 23 dollars you can buy Visual Hub online, which will convert anything to anything. You can re define the aspect ration. I like the full widescreen, but not the black bars, so I stretch/shrink the movie to 480/272, which is the rez for the A2. Plays great.
I have an iPod Video as well, so heres one comparison. iPod scroll wheel is a pain. Every time I have the thing I want highlighted, I go to press enter, but that little movement off the wheel places the highlight somewhere else, and I have to back up and start over. The Cowon A2 is a browser beauty. It recognizes subfolders as well, so you arent endlessly scrolling through thousands of images, or having to create a slideshow. Just drag and drop the folder from Mac to A2 and you have it. Had I really understood how well this worked, the iPod would still be in the store for the next unsuspecting victim.
The audio browsing is the same. Rather than scroll through long lists, if you have an audio book (meaning hundreds of tracks), just go to the folder and click the first file.
The text reader will do long files, unlike iPod notes. However, it will end the line in the middle of the word and continue it on the next one. If you are good at editing files on your computer, you can probably make this look better. However, I have an eBook reader, which works for all my reading needs.
Summing up the video situation, either use the Windows program to transfer your MP4s and other types into AVI, preferably while youre asleep, and you can go to town. Mac users can get around it all by using Visual Hub. Please note that you can also upgrade quicktime (more expensive than visual hub) to do those conversions, but it is slower than the old gray mare - that aint what it used to be. QT also faults out on you about half way, and you have just wasted hours.
I have already used it to record video - Flipping marvelous!!
Have not tried the USB server, but it is one other neat thing that the others dont have.
Bottom line. This is the best I have seen. Forget Archos, iRiver, and iPod. Tell the zune to zone out. Give the Gigabeat the BigABoot. You cant do any better than this, unless you want the 30 gig size.
On: 2006-12-05
Okay, there are some misconceptions about what this will do and wont do. It will not take any video file and play it. Its never heard of an MP4. AVI seems to be the easiest to get going on it.
Before I tinkered with it, I updated the firmware. Big mistake. Support was really easy. Went online to live chat, re-did the firmware to the previous one, and the AVIs kicked in nicely. Heres the beauty. I own a Mac. All I did was replace the files with Finder (file manager for your MSers), rebooted and that was it. They dont have any Mac progamming, but there really is no need. for 23 dollars you can buy Visual Hub online, which will convert anything to anything. You can re define the aspect ration. I like the full widescreen, but not the black bars, so I stretch/shrink the movie to 480/272, which is the rez for the A2. Plays great.
I have an iPod Video as well, so heres one comparison. iPod scroll wheel is a pain. Every time I have the thing I want highlighted, I go to press enter, but that little movement off the wheel places the highlight somewhere else, and I have to back up and start over. The Cowon A2 is a browser beauty. It recognizes subfolders as well, so you arent endlessly scrolling through thousands of images, or having to create a slideshow. Just drag and drop the folder from Mac to A2 and you have it. Had I really understood how well this worked, the iPod would still be in the store for the next unsuspecting victim.
The audio browsing is the same. Rather than scroll through long lists, if you have an audio book (meaning hundreds of tracks), just go to the folder and click the first file.
The text reader will do long files, unlike iPod notes. However, it will end the line in the middle of the word and continue it on the next one. If you are good at editing files on your computer, you can probably make this look better. However, I have an eBook reader, which works for all my reading needs.
Summing up the video situation, either use the Windows program to transfer your MP4s and other types into AVI, preferably while youre asleep, and you can go to town. Mac users can get around it all by using Visual Hub. Please note that you can also upgrade quicktime (more expensive than visual hub) to do those conversions, but it is slower than the old gray mare - that aint what it used to be. QT also faults out on you about half way, and you have just wasted hours.
I have already used it to record video - Flipping marvelous!!
Have not tried the USB server, but it is one other neat thing that the others dont have.
Bottom line. This is the best I have seen. Forget Archos, iRiver, and iPod. Tell the zune to zone out. Give the Gigabeat the BigABoot. You cant do any better than this, unless you want the 30 gig size.
On: 2006-07-21
My cousin brought this baby from Korea 2 days ago, and I love it so much that I would almost steal it from him if only I could use the AC charger in the US. (their electricity is mostly 220v while electricity in US is 110v, I think) Im so happy that I didnt waste any money on a new mp3 player(the one I have is about 6 yrs old), because this PMP is such a good deal!
pros:
- so easy to use! no need to memorize anything to do what you want. like someone else mentioned, you can even multitask - listen to music or watch a movie while you peek at the playlists, tweak the setup, w/e.
- huge screen. the size and image quality makes you feel like youre actually watching a movie.
- sleek design. you can also make it stand up so its much easier to watch movies and stuff... like how youd hold up a book on a desk to read w/o killing your neck.
- sound quality is also good.
- battery life!! i listened to music for about 2 hours and watched 2 movies(each a little over 1 hour). we still got 2 bars left.
cons:
- so far, i could find none. i never saw the softwares and stuff, but all other reviews say that firmware updates are frequent and useful.
 On: 2006-04-21
Just got this yesterday, overall impressions are good, the best part in my opinion is the fact that my computer sees it as a drive and I can transfer whatever I want to and FROM it, unlike the iPod, which wont let me put my stuff back on the computer from it. I pretty much backed up all my must have program setup files, a few text files, 1200 songs, 500 pictures, and 2 movies, and havent even used 1/2 the space on it.
Sound is great, even with the included headphones, or on a cassette adapter in the car, although the speakers themselves arent that great, but what do you expect from speakers that small?
It plays OGG files, and is Linux-friendly.
I actually didnt buy it to watch movies on, but the price wasnt that much higher than the X5, so I couldnt resist. So far I have tried 2: one which I converted to avi on the computer, works great, and one that I just taped from the VCR straight to the A2, and both are good pictures and sound, Im not that much of a movie fanatic, so I think Ill probably just go the straight from VCR or DVD player to A2 route from now on, its easier and quicker, and the only time Ill probably use it to watch the movies are for the kids in the car, anyway.
It comes with everything you need! If you have an iPod, you will appreciate this. I can voice record and play FM radio straight out of the box (you need the headphones for FM, they act as the antenna). I can charge it either with the USB cable or the INCLUDED AC Charger. It comes with a headphone-jack to headphone-jack wire so I can record from my iPod or portable CD player. It comes with a AV cable to hook it up to the stereo or TV, so you can record from them onto it, or play it on them. and it comes with a USB host cable, so you can transfer from your camera or camcorder or whatever directly to your A2. I wish I had this before I bought all those XD cards, I wouldnt have needed tham!
I would personally have given this about 4 1/2 stars, but there is no option for that. The reason for that instead of five is:
Music browsing is file and folder based. I would like to be able to browse by ID3 tags, but they come out with firmware constantly with new features all the time, so hopefully there will be that feature soon.
I personally like the drag-and-drop file transfer, but I know that some people actually like the iTunes way, so if they would integrate a file transfer into the jukebox program, that would probably be good for those people.
I would definately recommend this!!
On: 2006-04-16
OVERAL IMPRESSION:
STURDY, designed to last, beautiful. It has two speakers (stereo audio) and a MIC.
It has a very nice interface, responsive, and it multitasks (you can read a doc, while listening to an mp3 or the radio, or you can even be watching a movie, if you set the DOCs Viewer background color to transparent (heh I doubt it would be practical to read while watching ... but it can be done).
Battery life is astonishing... IN EXCESS than 10 hours of video watching !!
COWON people are baking new firmwares each week ! This alone is quite nice!. They are adding functionalities on every release. THIS DOES NOT MEANS that the A2 is mangled and is being fixed along each firmware update. NOPE ... it is working like a charm... but they are EXTENDING the features list.
For example: Last firmware, among other things, added slow / fast motion in movies and music ! So you can slow down action in a movie, or slow down an mp3.
VIDEO:
1) I throw inside this beauty all kinds of video files. They play FLAWLESSLY.
2) Picture size can be set up on the fly, for 4:3, 16:9 or AUTO, and then you can finetune it with PAN AND SCAN (which it actually means you can zoom inside the video, thus eliminating any black borders).
3) Screen quality and framerate is top notch.
4) Subtitles ! It support SMI format only, but there is a freeware software that allows you to convert SRT into SMI. After placing the subtitles file, you can turn it on, double its size, change color, SYNC IT (you can move your subtitles in time, in the event that they originally do not correspond to the spoken words)
AUDIO:
1) You can set up your own equalizer or choose among preset ones. You have several custom COWON music shapers, like BBE, mp3 Enhancing, 3D, Bass, etc. That actually shape the music in a good way (it is not a cheap echoing effects collection).
PICTURES: You can see your photos and pics, placing music on the background (radio, mp3) ... you can zoom over them.
RADIO: It has FM radio, quite usable.
DOCS: You can only read TXT docs ... this actually is not that good. BUt it may change in a future firmware upgrade.
RECORDING: It can record from the built in MIC, RADIO. It has AUDIO AND VIDEO LINE IN AND LINE OUT. You can SCHEDULE recordings from ANY source for ANY window time. If it is off, when a scheduled recording starts, it TURNS ON and records.
CONS: The only con I can find, is that it does not detect PAL N TV NORM, thus it records in black and white, in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
On: 2006-03-24
I love my new PMP, ilove it, love it, so much. it works exactly as it says y the desctription, but one thing I didnt like was that they say in their web page that the cowon A2 is MacOsX compatible, and ithis is only for transferig files betwen your computer an the Cowaon A2, but the software included is not compatible, and that software is very usefull to convert video files that I download from the internet and are not compatible ith the Cowon A2 codecs, also this software can integrate subtitles to video and that is very usefull to me because as you can notice my first langage in not English
Also I can say that some times y get my video freeze but I think that the file that is not good.
I aplogize for my english, and Hope this review is useful to someone.
On: 2006-03-03
For the hackers in the house, Cowon has made the source code for the firmware for this puppy available. Thats pretty awesome! Even if youre not a hacker, this means that youll probably be able to get cool 3rd-party hacks and tweaks in the near future.
Details here:
http://www.dapreview.net/comment.php?comment.news.3012
On: 2006-02-27
i dont actually own the a2, but i am quite interested in buying it. i was looking around for reviews of the product, and the following site is by far the most in-depth, comprehensive review on the internet today. i take no credit for having written the report, but if youre interested in this item, you definitely need to check out this link:
[...]
On: 2006-02-03
I dare say the build quality of this device rivals Apples products build quality. This is saying a lot coming from a lifetime Apple fan.
It is mass-storage compliant, so it mounts like a disk and is super easy to load up.
The interface is a pleasure to use, and firmware updates are frequent and easy to install.
The screen is delicious.
It even comes with a nice leather case. wow.
On: 2006-02-02
I dare say the build quality of this device rivals Apples products build quality. This is saying a lot coming from a lifetime Apple fan.
It is mass-storage compliant, so it mounts like a disk and is super easy to load up.
The interface is a pleasure to use, and firmware updates are frequent and easy to install.
The screen is delicious.
It even comes with a nice leather case. wow.
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