Review: Cowon C2 personal media player
User Experience.
The C2 features an older style resistive touchsreen, though you probably wouldn’t notice it unless someone told you. Yes, you need a small amount of pressure to get a response, but the menu’s are well designed to make the most of the smaller screen. You shouldn’t have any problems navigating around the player or any of the menus.
Speaking of which, the menus are clean, clear and straight to the point. It’s hard to imagine anyone having any problems using this device. The layout is fairly intuitive, and even the more complex settings menus won’t trouble you. In general use the device is responsive, even with the graphic flare that’s on offer during music and video playback.
The screen appears clear and bright, it’s even usable in direct sunlight (for navigation at least). Though, as with all touchscreens, you’re going to want to keep a cloth handy to clear off your fingerprints.
Video quality was better than I expected for a device with such a small screen. You’re not going to want to watch a movie on it, but for TV shows; clips of 20-30 minutes, it’s perfectly usable. The viewing angle isn’t the best, but then it’s not exactly hard to find the sweet-spot, you’re probably holding it in your hand anyway.
Speaking of video, the C2 has support for AVI, WMV and ASF file formats. I can attest to all three of these formats, all played back with no problems whatsoever, other than the screen being too small to make extended viewing pleasurable.
The built-in speaker isn’t the best that I’ve ever heard, but it’s far from the worst either. Again, for short spells of video it’s going to be fine, but for feature films or music you’re better off plugging a set of earphones in.
Cowon say that the C2′s battery is good for 55 hours of music playback, or 10 hours of video playback. In my tests I found that I could get around 8 hours of video playback from a full charge (using headphones, at full volume). Using the speaker this dropped to around 6 hours, which still isn’t bad for a device this size. When it came to music playback I certainly got over 24 hours playback, with headphones, from the built-in lithium-polymer battery.
Sound Quality.
If you’re going to make a media player that isn’t a phone or an internet tablet then it really needs to excel at what it does. Thankfully, C2 owners won’t be disappointed. The sound quality of MP3′s recorded at 320Kbps is noticeably clearer than on most other devices I’ve tried, and streaks ahead of my aging iPod Classic. Pair the C2 with a decent set of earphones and you’re sure to be satisfied with the results.
Too many players make the mistake of using high bass levels to give the impression of a more powerful amplifier. The C2 stays clear of this, the bass levels are kept at a reasonable level which allows the mid and treble sounds to shine through more, giving a broader sound. Broader doesn’t mean less distinct though, the sound is crisp, well defined and definitely in the top 10 portable devices I’ve ever listened to.
Even the built-in FM radio sounds reasonable, providing you can find a good signal; reception isn’t the best.
What’s more, the sound remains consistent across the wide volume range on offer. You’ve got a choice of 40 levels, and each offers the same level of clarity and quality. Full volume is more than enough to do your hearing some damage, so my advice would be to keep it below 30 for extended periods.
Conclusions.
I’m a little torn on this one. In terms of build quality, usability and sound quality it’s really hard to fault the C2. But at £109 for the 8GB model it’s a little rich for me.
In my view, the video player isn’t worth paying for; a decent smartphone using Android or iOS will give you better results. Most will have bigger and clearer screens, and you’ll have better support for different file formats as well.
What saves the C2 is it’s audio playback. As said above, it really is a whole lot better than most other devices that I’ve tried. In fact, having used the C2, my iPhone doesn’t seem as useful for music playback anymore.
It really comes down to priorities; if you’re heavily in to your music and find yourself away from your HiFi a lot, then the Cowen C2 would be a worthwhile investment. If you’re more into your video playback, though, it might be better to stick with your smartphone. That being said, there’s no law that says you can’t have the best of both worlds; if you’ve got the money, have both!
Design: 8/10
Ease of use: 9/10
Audio quality: 10/10
Cost: 6/10
Overall: 8.5/10
A customer’s REVIEW:
I will try and be as informative and descriptive as possible; I purchased this product this summer for my Birthday as a treat and because I wanted a really cool mp3 player. I have never been that into Apple products and don t often buy new technological products so had no particular preferences.
I wanted something that had:
-great sound quality
-expandable memory so as to never worry about it running out of space
- the possibility to ready all formats, including FLAC files and other file types which are a bit richer than mp3 format
I have incredible Sennheiser headphones and I wanted to pair them up with a great mp3 player. I read the reviews and did my homework for days carefully studying the different products out there and all the product specifications and videos on the net. I decided to buy this one and I have been quite disappointed.
The positives:
- the sound is impressive (and this is probably the most important thing)
- has many features (many of which like calculator are present in the oldest imaginable mobile phones so are a bit of a waste of space) some of which like voice recorder are very nice
The negatives
- the whole way you interact with it is absolutely unintuitive. I read about this before I purchased it and I heard a lot of stories about people complaining that they had to press 2 buttons to do something instead of just one. Well, when I read that I thought that things of that type would not bother me and that I am not very fussy at all. Instead after 2-3 months I still make mistakes doing even the simplest things on it, despite the fact I work in my University department and I am usually very fast at picking up things of this type. Searching for a tune or browsing through all your music often becomes a bit of a nightmare and when you give it to a someone else to try it out I need to put a song on for them as they are completely unable to use it.
- It is not advertised very well that it does not work with Mac/Apple products. I made the mistake of trying to recharge the battery with my girlfriend’s Mac Pro something something and this resulted in a colourful messy screen appearing which will remain like that forever until you send it away for repair. Ok, put that down as my fault and won’t do that again.
- Customer service appears to be non-existent. I had read about this before buying it and despite other people’s nightmare stories I was optimistic enough to hope to receive a good non-faulty product and that by treating it well I would not have to experience any of this. I was wrong. 1 week ago the product just stopped working. It is dead and does not charge and the pc and laptop do not recognize it. “This is all very random” I began to think. Like any normal person I went on to google to look for solutions. Apparently this is a pretty normal thing and Cowon give a few suggestions as to how to resolve it. None of these worked and I contacted the customer support. Well, if you expect there to be a phone number you can call and speak to some technical support person you are very much in the wrong. So an email was sent through their website support service. If you would expect a prompt response then once again you are very much mistaken. A bit of a nightmare to be honest
- lastly the touch screen often has to be pressed twice on whatever you want to press. This is because often it does not pick up/detect when you press. Once again, this point is trivial compare to the rest and I had read about this before I bought it and as I am not particularly fussy this does not annoy me, but I realize that having to regularly press on something several times because the mp3 played didn t pick up on it might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
To sum up I don’t think I would have bought it had I known the ins and outs and many things you learn only once you have something. I would have definitely gone for something else. The music quality is great but it comes at the expense of the frustration caused by spending so much time finding the specific thing you are looking for and often pressing the wrong button and having to start at the beginning. Other than that the product seems to be quite fault prone and the support service that will come to help if anything does happen might not even exist. I have only had it a few months and it has already let me down twice and I hope it will all be resolved soon. Hope this helps