Cowon V5 16 GB MP3 Player
Product Description
HD Video and audio player with FM tuner, voice recorder, and text and photo viewer; 4.8-inch TFT LCD 800 x 480, WVGA with 16.7M colors; Up to 45 hours of music playback (10 hours of video) on one charge; AV Out: HDMI, Co… More >>
3 Comments
If you are looking for a great quality PMP, the one you can take everywhere. Cowon V5 it the best choice. Quality is amazing. I would also recomend to get Carying case (it’s a little pricy $24.99, but worth it!)
I agree that UI is not really good, but other than that it’s an amazing product!
The windows-mp3-scene bloggers have slammed the Cowon V5-HD, so let’s just get this out of the way first:
It’s not a phone.
It has no “apps”.
It has no wireless.
Nope, no blutooth.
No accelerometer.
Resistive touch screen, not capacitive.
It’s not an iPhone, iPod Touch, PocketPC, or PSP competitor; but rather a pure media player, unlike most others on the market. The V5-HD is for watching movies, and listening to music, period – and it excels at both I’m happy to say. There really isn’t anything out there in the same league.
Battery: I get almost 10 hours of video time. As a comparison, my netbook gets 2.5.
Video: I rip my film dvds using Xilisoft DVD Ripper, set to: XviD, 2500 kbps, 800 x 480, 23.976 fps, letterboxed, 256kbps mp3 audio. I also tried a similar profile with H.264. Either way, the results are STUNNING on the V5-HD. The picture is sharp, vibrant, saturated, with smooth motion and minimal artifacts. Viewing angles are good enough to allow some leeway. Just a gorgeous screen, and at 4.3″ horizontally it’s the right size for truly portable movie watching. I can’t watch movies on a 320×240 screen, and even 480×272 just drops too much detail for me. 800×480 doesn’t leave me feeling deprived.
Sound: W.O.W. It sounds good on Normal, it sounds good on BBE Viva, it sounds good on Jazz, it just sounds good no matter what you pick. I liked the sound of my Cowon D2+ set flat, but the BBE effects really mucked up the sound too much to be useful. Not so on the V5. Almost all the presets sound great, and go from subtle to not-so-subtle. Even flat, it’s lively, dynamic, and rich. This is now my favorite mp3 player, bar none, and I only wish it was practical to carry it around – but it’s a bit big for a daily carry, unless you’re wearing a coat. For reference, I only use 320kbps mp3 files, and my headphones are Sony MDR-V6.
The much-insulted interface design doesn’t bother me. Yes it’s cutesy, but it’s functional, and I was navigating it in the store in a few seconds with ease. Browsing media has some of the usual Cowon quirks and difficulties, and a few very minor bugs (id3 tag for genre=”Jazz” produces “Jazz” + some korean characters in the display). But overall the display and interface don’t detract that much.
Summary:
Hassle-free drag and drop organization in windows, wide format support, sdhc memory slot, truly useful battery life, brilliant audio and hi-res widescreen format video. If I want to play games I use my PSP, and I surf the net on my HP Mini 110. I still haven’t run across a portable all-in-one that does those things as well.
I have a v5 white 16g. The only thing i dislike is the silly UI. Sound is Great as usual. Video is awesome as usual. I hope they can create another UI like on the s9 which i own. The V5 is everything the a3 and o2 should have been. Again I hate the UI. Since I Think its flash based. We should be able to change the UI.
If you want the internet and so so sound and video buy the Archos 5 Andriod. By no means I’m i Trashing The Archos. IMO the archos is a better all around media player. But If you want a PMP only device the Cowon V5 is the way to go. It is superior in sound and video quality. I had an early Archos 5 andriod Thats why i can make the comparison. I returned it beacause it was a bit buggy. But it was a fine media player.