C’mon Cowon, what are you doing?

Those familiar with the Cowon brand will know what to expect when they get hold of one of their media players.  For those that aren’t that familiar it’s pretty easy to sum up; great sound quality, usable interface, long battery life, respectable design.

We’ve had a look at a couple of Cowon devices before, so to be honest we were a little surprised when we took delivery of their latest offering; the i10.

In the box

The packaging is pretty much what you’d expect from Cowon; plain brown box containing molded plastic inserts – these guys don’t waste money on expensive packaging in order to make their devices look pretty, they leave the player to speak for itself.

Inside the i10′s box you’ll find a set of headphones, the charge/sync USB lead, a few bits of paperwork and then the device itself.

The i10 is a relatively nice looking piece of kit, the 3″ 240×400 widescreen takes up the top two thirds of the device, leaving the bottom third for the touch sensitive, back-lit buttons.

The rear and sides of the device are curved and covered with a smooth rubberised surface, making the i10 very comfortable in the hand.  It’s also quite light, but that’s likely due to the lack of technology built into the case.

Like most Cowon devices, the i10 isn’t designed to help you organise your life, play games, access the Internet or stay in touch with your friends.  It’s a media player, plain and simple.

Aside from the touch sensitive controls, there are three physical buttons around the edge of the i10.  A small power button on the bottom left, and a pair of volume buttons on the opposite corner.

Using it.

Unfortunately, though it may look pretty, the touch controls are an absolute nightmare to live with.  In this day and age people are too used to media players with touch screen controls.  By introducing a separate control area below the screen Cowon have almost isolated the user from the user interface.

That being said, after a few days with the i10 you should have it more or less figured out, but when most comparable devices are usable from day one you have to ask what Cowon were thinking when they decided to use this type of control for the i10.

Aside from the screen, the i10 features the “Colour Therapy” user interface, which is essentially just a group of colour schemes for the navigation menus.  They’re pretty intuitive and non-offensive, but far from the interface found on some other media players.

While we’re on the subject, we should also mention that Mac owners need not invest in the i10.  We made the mistake of connecting our first review sample to a Macbook, which promptly bricked it, requiring it to be sent back to Cowon.  The short answer from our supplier is that there are currently compatibility issues with Mac’s and that Cowon are working on the problem.

It’s rather strange that a Mac would cause the i10 this kind of problem, after all it just appears as a mass storage device, allowing you to drag and drop your music, video and photo files onto the built in storage.

The i10 comes in 8, 16 and 32GB models, but there’s no way to expand the storage space with an SD card, so you’re stuck with whatever capacity you buy.

Sound quality.

Media playback quality is what you’d expect from a Cowon device:  Pair the i10 with a decent pair of headphones and you’ll get probably the best audio quality that you can get from a compressed media file like an MP3.

That being said, the i10 also supports WMA, OGG, WAV and FLAC audio formats, so you could be enjoying high quality lossless audio on the go.

Music is reproduced very well with mids and highs being clear and bright.  At the same time bass is distinctive without being overpowering.  Most music lovers should find the Cowon i10 to their liking in terms of audio quality, even if they’re not keen on other aspects of the device, such as the control mechanism.

The built in speaker isn’t up to much, but then most people won’t expect it to be and it’s really an afterthought rather than a careful consideration on how you should enjoy your music collection.

Video playback is also fair, though with only a 3″ screen you’ll not be wanting to watch an entire movie on the thing.  Perhaps if you’re traveling light (or commuting) then it might be adequate for short stints, but we wouldn’t want to spend too long staring at a 240 line display.

Conclusions

All in all, the i10 isn’t our favorite media player from Cowon.  The sound quality and general design elements are great, but the touch control interface is a complete waste of time; either use a touch screen or give us some proper buttons, it’s that simple.

That being said, the i10 does have some redeeming features; the built in battery gives you nearly 40 hours of audio playback, while the fact that it isn’t an iPod means that you don’t have to install any poorly written software on your PC in order to use it (we’re talking about you, iTunes).

Mac compatibility is an issue, as are the controls and the small screen.  But that doesn’t detract from the excellent (as always) sound quality and pocket-able design of the i10.