The Cowon A2 is primarily billed as a movie player, hence the large 4" screen, but will also store your photos, music, let you listen to the radio and read text. It comes in 20GB for about £280, and 30GB for £330. If you're doing long haul in Economy class, you might want this in your bag (along with a water spray, some chocolate and a lot of Valium).
In the one corner of the ring is the sharp screen, which shows colours well, even when you've got the sun to contend with. It's also got heaps of features, such as the ability to record from the FM radio and view documents. The battery life is also pretty good, with 10 hours of video playback, and 18 hours of music (if your long haul is to Australia, you're screwed).
In the opposite corner is the size. Whilst not exactly lardy in looks, it weighs about 300g. Try holding that in your lap for 10 hours and you'll quickly appreciate how heavy it is. It also doesn't come with a stand, so you've got no choice but to hold it, or find some Gideon's Bible type book to prop it up with if you're in a hotel. The other issue is that during the test, the radio would not tune into ANYTHING. So, great feature, rubbish to actually use. [Update: it turns out the headphones also act as the aerial, so you can only listen to the radio through these. Thanks, A Fan].
Overall, the Cowon A2 is an attractive and easy to use media player. Unfortunately, it will take up half your luggage allowance, so you might want to think twice before boarding the plane. What's wrong with a couple of trashy novels, anyway?
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I know it's just personal preference, but I think this thing is great. The leather case (included, in mine) can be wrapped around backward to be used as a stand. It's not a great stand, but it works pretty well on those airplane trays. And it IS pretty big to carry, but that 4" screen is pretty small if you're watching a movie, so I'm not sure I would want it much smaller than it already is. The color is great, and I find it to have a very satisfying user experience.
The Cowon A2 ROCKS!!!
The radio works fine - if you have the headphones plugged in, as it uses them for an aerial, like all mp3 players.
The leather case works well for a stand and the unit (with supplied case) is still small enough to stick in most pockets. I carry mine with me almost everywhere I go (it's within arms reach right now).
It has no proprietary data storage format so you dont have to have software to load tunes onto it (like *$#% itunes), also as it is recognised as a portable hard drive, you can get files on and off very easily - on any PC.
Other great features:
• Text display (read books), only one or two portable media players can actually do this.
• Record video line in (record tv for the bus ride to work)
• Video out (store your movies on it, take them to a friends house for movie night)
• Timer function (wake up to you tunes, or record tv in the middle of the night)
• USB host (download files off your thumb drive or camera to the A2 with no PC)
• Internal speakers
• Bookmark where you are up to in any file (resume movie playback)
The A2 weighs about the same as a hardcover book, and is smaller than most paperbacks. 300g is not much, as your mobile phone weighs about 100g, and you hold up to your head for ages. Lots of people are happy to haul around a laptop that weighs up to 10 times the weight of the A2.
If you only want an mp3 player to go jogging around the block with, it's not a good choice. For a portable media player, I would absolutely recomend it, over anything else on the market.
Sounds good... where did you get it? im looking for the 30gb version i think... does it have a sd port? shoud i buy it off ebay?