Cowon J3 Reviews

[Kizune]

Korean Reviews (not translated):
Cowon Inside (http://www.cowoninside.com/xe/?document_srl=844351)


English Reviews:
4th Dimension Thinking (http://4dthinker.blogspot.com/2010/05/cowon-j3-review.html)
PC Pro (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/media-players/358210/cowon-j3)
AMP3 TV Video Review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLJDrs3j23c)
Tech2.com (http://tech2.in.com/india/reviews/portable/cowon-j3-touchscreen-pmp/129272/0)


French Reviews:
Le Journal du Geek (http://www.journaldugeek.com/2010/06/08/test-cowon-j3/)


Community Reviews (English):
by axe.monsta (http://www.iaudiophile.net/forums/showpost.php?p=291728&postcount=924)
by flazok (http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36672)


Feel free to contribute reviews. :)

[NFS-974]

*idea from me :p (I mention it since it's rare xD)

http://4dthinker.blogspot.com/2010/05/cowon-j3-review.html

[Kizune]

The review you posted is already in the list. ;)
(I added it while you wrote your post^^)

[NeedMusic]

The photos make it look so good..

[axe.monsta]

I finaly got the J3 and am one of the first in India to get it.. [tongue].. I got a 4gb model paired with a 16gb microsd, which makes it technically 20gb for around 270 USD.. A piece of info though, the 4gb model according to COWON INDIA comes in only the black shade.

First impression:

Weird casing by Cowon which as someone else mentioned looks like a giant icecream cone! The J3 is smart looking player which was loved to the brim by every member of a conservative Indian family! sleek looks and no unobvious curves here.. build quality seems highly reliable although it aint no tank! All the basic cables and papers are present which includes the proprietary usb connector cable, the cowon headphones and the user manual (which is half korean and a pain to go through, I suggest reading the e-manual).. The player strangely came pretested by cowon India and this was confirmed by a friend there so it had some files copied onto it.. but thats okay...

Getting started:

The Cowon j3 for me was a breeze to navigate around and fiddle with the first time I used it, but once into the depths there are a plethora of similar looking icons and signs which are to be rather remembered than used intuitively.. but a little time is all you need here.. The touch screen is very responsive and is a big improvement over previous touchscreens from cowon.. flicking through songs/pictures etc is a very engaging experience and is rather fun.. no lag visible, until you try viewing a little larger pictures ( 1024 x 768 +).. that is when the lag shows up.. blame flash 7 though!

The screen:

The screen is a marvel of a kind..Generally very bright and quite readable in bright sunlight..colours are natural and quite vivid.Images are sharp and no visible ghosting or flushing. pictures look vibrant and videos are a pleasure to watch on this 3.3" piece of sweetness. One of the best screens on a portable that I have come across. Period.

Sound quality:

One of the things most of the members here and otherwise are dying to know..
Well sound quality is typical Cowon brilliance. for the record, I used sennheiser hd555 and sennheiser cx300-II for the test.. Great reproduction of the original sources and instruments. The thing about other users complaining about the cold and restricted feel to the sound, I believe they either used the wrong headphones or dint like the default EQ settings ( which indeed is kinda cold and lackluster).. But cowon gives you the opportunity to create your own soundstage by throwing in jetEffect 3 above its already extensive EQ options, so everyone out there who is thinking more than once about its SQ, its gorgeous! once equalized to a desired tuning, there are hardly any portable devices out there which can even come close to its audio prowess. Period.

P.S> try listening to Joe Satriani- always with me, always with you in Flac.. It sounds like Joe Sat is your best friend playing his heart out for you in your bedroom!!!


Video quality:

the J3 essentially is a PMP and not a dedicated video player, so if you want a portable device that plays videos of any format,contained in any container and has a million pixels to display then look elsewhere (aka a V5 HD ).. But if you want a sleek little player which bears a gorgeous screen to play those humble .avi music videos in your collection, the J3 will do it, and with style! personally I tested a lot of files.. none of my h.264(b/m/h) mp4 files worked.. only the aforementioned .avi and .wmv worked perfectly.. The maximum resolution i could get to play on it was 720X600(.avi) which is more than respectable on the 3.3" screen..
In all a great PMP which plays decent quality videos on its amazing screen. Period.

Battery life:

Under normal usage, a charge would last about two days + although i dint get to actualy test it since it is the 9th hour of my usage and battery is still at 50 percent (it shows up in percentage) as it was at the time I transfered content onto it.. the battery usage is inversely proportional to the screen brightness and volume level, so I recomend keeping the screen on level 4 or 5 (mine is on 5) and avoiding earwax cleaning volumes( mine remained on 28) or rather get yourself an amp....

Extras:

Not many extras to talk about here apart from the brilliant radio( jetEffect 3 applies here too) for people who listen to it anyway, a calculator which IMO is not really a necessity on an mp3 player, a notepad and typist application which lets to draw and type basically,an alarm clock which in my case is very useful! the Flash player with a lot of Flash content working well but finally its nothing more than a flash player!


Verdict:

As and end user and not a reviewer I think the J3 is a brilliant deal for all those on a lookout for a general use PMP which has extremely good audio quality and supreme video playback (off course restricted by format support) which is housed in a very good looking casing which is built to last, look no further then this my fellow mortals..

On the lighter and more viable side of the B&K/Denon/Marantz/Yamaha there lies this humble piece of gadgetry that could get you much closer than anything else would to the aforementioned (offcourse with another 150-200$ spent on quality headphones)..

Regards..
Akshay Phal..

[I-Noue]

Thanks, Akshay. Very useful and apreciable review... I can't wait to have mine in hands :)

[axe.monsta]

you are welcome.. hope to see you satisfied with your J3..

[Nujabez]

AMP3 TV video review on youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLJDrs3j23c

[=CF=]

Here's a review from PC Pro, for all its worth:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/media-players/358210/cowon-j3

[mivec]

could someone post the review here? thanks!

[SwedishChef]

Shouldn't it be AMP3 TV Video Review?

[gee frizz]

The AMP3 review on YouTube has wet my appetite even more!! Especially if the reviewer's assertion that the SQ of the J3 is the best yet from a Cowon product is indeed accurate.

[firefox64]

Electricpig Review: http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2010/05/31/cowon-j3-review/

[Kizune]

Added flazok's review (http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36672) to the list.

[robertos]

http://www.journaldugeek.com/2010/06/08/test-cowon-j3/

[NFS-974]

http://tech2.in.com/india/reviews/portable/cowon-j3-touchscreen-pmp/129272/0

EDIT : found in journaldugeek.com :

http://www.journaldugeek.com/files/2010/06/1070613.JPG

[ryan5268]

India's Techtree
http://www.techtree.com/India/Reviews/Cowon_J3/551-112153-571.html

UK's Register Hardware
http://www.reghardware.com/2010/07/07/review_media_player_cowon_j3/

[LMX]

Here are some more reviews:

(Channelpro.co.uk)
http://www.channelpro.co.uk/Reviews/493950/cowon_j3_review.html

(Expertreviews.co.uk)
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mp3-players/1279285/cowon-j3-16gb

[GreenJay]

Here is the latest review i got from India http://www.pcworld.in/product/review/cowon-iaudio-j3-16gb-36562010

[GreenJay]

Looks like Cowon needs to push the volume limit a few notches up..... I too have the same experience....

[Kerberos]

Looks like Cowon needs to push the volume limit a few notches up..... I too have the same experience....

Maybe it is the european volume limit [confused]. My J3 has plenty of volume. Beyond vol. 30-32 with my alessandro's ms1i is very loud to normal listenings.

[TheDarkSide]

My J3 is actually plenty loud as well. I love it.

[FreeFrag]

Maybe it is the european volume limit [confused]. My J3 has plenty of volume. Beyond vol. 30-32 with my alessandro's ms1i is very loud to normal listenings.

Pretty much every mp3 player has a european volume limit, as long as you can choose region and/or language, so it surely must be that.

[orionph05]

Review of J3 in leading finance paper of India - Business Line
http://www.blsmartbuy.com/?p=6298

[LMX]

And another review...

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=3240788

[nokcha]

Heres a few reviews i came across before deciding to purchase my j3 :]

http://www.techenclave.com/reviews-and-previews/cowon-j3-review-175268.html
(This link is from another forum..Sorry if thats not allowed here but i didn't see any rules against it..)

http://www.terminal23.net/2010/09/thoughts_on_my_cowon_j3_pmp.html

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/07/07/review_media_player_cowon_j3/

[LMX]

And here are some more reviews:

http://review.techworld.com/mp3-players/3241212/cowon-j3-review/

http://www.digitalversus.com/cowon-j3-p380_9201_209.html

[Bodhi]

In the Tech2 review, one of the good points of the J3 is the Comfortable earphones [laugh]

Is there any point giving any credit to this review then?

[dfkt]

Better late than never, here's my review: http://anythingbutipod.com/2010/11/cowon-j3-review/

It's a damn novel, no wonder it took me so long. :)

[Enzyme]

my simple review (in comparison to the s9):

i once owned a cowon s9, spent forever bitching about it on these forums, until my house got burgled n they took it (uhh huh). dontcha just hate karma sometimes.
luckily i know the grotty lil smackhead that took it so induced karma will play a part there too :p

anyways i decided on getting the j3 and hoped n prayed it didnt have the same issues, right now im very impressed.

they've cleaned up the interface a lot, there is much (MUCH) less lag than the s9, i dunno how ppl can say they act the same in terms of responsiveness, that's rubbish.

there is quite a drop in the earphone static/noise level (using super-fi5's)
as a result of that and the increased/adjusted sound quality im upgrading to the triplefi 10's in the search for audio happiness.

ive yet to load it with a flash apps and the like, ill wait until i have it set up nicely before that happens, but i can imagine already they will be a lot more responsive.
i dont know why they reversed the g-sensor but maybe that's why my s9 always seemed to activate the g input on the reverse stroke.

atm i have about 10gigs of very varied flac music (the prodigy to del shannon), all of it sounds great (better). ive had no battery issues so far, no bricking incidents related to using this macbook *spits*
only a few song freezes due to a badly converted batch of files i acquired.
this still annoys me, id like an option for the player to error beep and then skip to the next usable song, along with some form of freeze detection, rather than letting u think the device needs a reset or even worse, it needing a reset ^^)

the video player works great, plenty of options and not cluttered.
and you can now have widgets and icons on the third screen as default, i think they owe a few words of thanks to the theme dev's around here.

my pet hate unfortunately is still present in this device........NO DECENT PLAYLIST SUPPORT
by that i mean not just the ability to transfer playlists, but the ability to create them on the fly, we know its possible, it is in use on a couple of the s9 uci's, why they hell they didnt include it i dont know. they get a big thumbs down for that.

so in simple conclusion its more than an s9 with an sd slot and speaker, its what the s9 should have been from the beginning (almost).
tbh i think cowon should offer huge discounts to all s9 owners as the s9 had major issues. this appears to be a thing of beauty.
(although maybe not as pretty on the surface as the s9, the s9 had a certain english bull terrier kinda prettiness to it.)

anyways if i had my s9 still i wouldn't have bothered to upgrade, now ive had the chance im really glad i did, great piece of hardware.

[da1writer]

Cowon J3 Review and Impressions
Reviewer da1writer

One day... one day is all it took to fall in love with Cowon all over again. The Cowon J3 may be a refresh of Cowon's flagship model the Cowon S9; it has some welcome improvements that justify it as being a successor of the Cowon S9. So without further ado, here is the Cowon J3 - the very mp3 player that rolls out the red carpet to its faithful customers and fans to let them know that Cowon does listen and learn from their mistakes.

Introduction
As some may remember I have been with Cowon since the Initial D2 era and followed deeply when the Cowon S9 was announced as the Cowon D2's probable successor and months waited intently for specs and a release date (even a delay or two from it projected release date.) The Cowon S9 came out as entirely different device than expected with a drastic curved design and an introduction of Gorrilla glass on top of a beautiful AMOLED capacitive screen. BBE++ and eventual introduction of BBE 3.0 made enjoying your music even better with some great customizability and fantastic sounding presets. Greeted by positive reviews by almost everyone (*shakes fist at CNET*), the Cowon S9 became a smash success - moreso to the point that Cowon decided to pop out their first foray into the 32GB flash memory field. I’m sure in Cowons building everything seemed great, another device they can put under their belt as being another great.

But with every good must come a bad; the S9 feels that due to pressure building to its release, some things feel rushed interface wise and certain design choices didn't entirely make sense. Due to the drastic design of the Cowon S9, button placement like the play button and such are placed near the very top of the device which are a bit hard to reach and the play button looks to be possible to break in the future as its protruding a bit outside of the device (Donald bell from CNET almost broke it off as he thought it was a stylus for a capacitive screen) The on/off/lock switch is also most likely to eventually break off as most have already did as its design alone reminds me of the breakable d2 switch. Also, a few potential customers like prior D2 owners were bummed out that there was no expandable memory slot. Now the UI was a straight debacle with an awful widget mainmenu that even an update wasn't enough to make it any better. A music UI that seemed to be stuck in the D2 days of small album art with an added blegh of an unknown coverflow system with forced album sorting and an unnecessary quick list (again an update did improve the UI but not by alot). The mainmenu UIs were easy enough to follow but were too generic to even bother writing home about. The Cowon fan Community was the only thing that saved the UI of the Cowon S9.

Cowon must have read of these flaws from somewhere or knew they rushed the device out as we now have here this pretty great device that addresses all the issues mentioned above.

Design
Same with the Cowon S9, a design was chosen to bring the Cowon J3 to the forefront as being a sleeker device over the Cowon S9. The Cowon J3 is a much slimmer device than the Cowon S9 with the Cowon J3 being less than 10mm versus the Cowon S9s 13mm. The Cowon J3 is less curved as well – it’s able to lay completely flat on a table unlike its older boat like design of a brother Cowon S9. Don't be surprised for passerbyers to confuse the Cowon J3 as a phone as it somewhat really looks like one. The bigger models that have been released worldwide are black (recently released 8gb model is white) all around with the exception of its front chrome border (imagine the Creative Zen 2008 model). It still feels about the same weight as the Cowon S9, probably because the device is still made out of plastic as well, though there is this very small metal piece near the bottom of the front of the device.

With these design improvements, Cowon decided to fix the button placement and put all the play control buttons on the sides of the device similar to what most phones now a days have. The play button on the J3 looks like the rest of the buttons on the device and not a confused Donald bell S9 stylus. After all the devices made by Cowon, the on/off/hold switch has finally been ditched - Instead you now have a multifunction button that does all the work now. Pressing it once locks the screen, pressing it twice turns off the screen, and pressing it once in lock or screen off mode brings the device back to a useable state while holding the button turns on or off the J3. This may become a problem in the future as it's really easy to get out of lock/ screen off mode, which could cause some wasted battery amounts unknown to the user if it was in their pocket and they happened to bump into the button by accident.

That’s pretty much all there is about the buttons on the device, the bottom side of the device is where people get excited about. Beside the headphone jack is a long compartment with a latch that holds the similar usb port on the Cowon S9 and drum roll please... an expansion slot, something alot of D2 and S9 users were wanting on the original S9! It’s of course the now standard micro sd cards expandable to 32GB - which means 8GB users get 40GB, 16GB users get 48GB, and 32GB users get 64GB maximum. Take note that the micro SD causes longer power on times and that it only merges with your music in album/artist sorting mode, its considered as a separate drive on other occasions.

Another subtle hardware improvement is on the back of the device where the mic and reset holes are still at - a builtin speaker! For those who own a Cowon S9, the only way to listen to your music is by plugging something into the headphone jack. The Cowon J3 gives you two ways for you to listen to your music and even though listening to your music through the speaker doesn't sound as good as a pair of headphones, it’s still pretty loud and allows you to easily "share" your song with someone without a headphone splitter or letting them use your headphones.

The last improvement was requested by alot of Cowon S9 users. Even though the Cowon J3 still sports a Gorrilla glasssed 3.3" AMOLED screen (which is still gorgeous to watch videos and pictures on), the capacitive screen was given a function this time around to put it to good use. You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’... multitouch! Yep, chucking that zoom slider, you can now pinch to zoom in or out of your pictures and text files. This is something I’ve recently started to grow to love due to my tablet and I’m lovin’ the addition to the Cowon J3. Its hit or miss sometimes but most of the time it works. So overall all the hardware improvements on the J3 are enough to make you wonder why the S9 didn't have these set features.

User Interface and Interaction
On the UI side of the J3, it seems Cowon learned their lesson and decided to spend more time on the J3 this time around or spent some money to bring in a UI designer. All three of the mainmenu UIs are really thought out well. First one is a bit similar to the Cowon S9 but has a better icon set and is g-sensored enabled meaning the icons turn according to where the devices position is turned to (forgotten to mention earlier that this device also has a g-sensor). It also has a small "Whats Playing" bar near the bottom of the mainenu. The second mainenu is a very informative UI as it counts practically all your files per file type on the menus bars. Imagine a simplified Zune interface (not the HD model) with access to move the menus bars around by holding it with you finger and then sliding it down to wherever you like. Each menu bars description like Music for instance have below its title the number of music types it found on the device. Pretty cool but also as mentioned very informative. The third mainmenu is also a big question mark just like the S9 was, it’s technically non-existent but at the same time is due to custom UIs being able to access it. The fourth mainmenu, the widget mainmenu, is still not that great but it is alot better than the S9's current rendition.

All three of the usable mainmenus have a bottom slide bar that gives options of switching UIs, turning off the device, or making it go into sleep mode. The music UI has been improved with a nice simple layout and big album art. They ditched the quicklist and revamped their coverflow which is a bit similar to the upgrade the S9 users received, although a bit snappier but still using the forced album sorting. Cowon's browser isn't so ugly this time around and is very smooth, especiallly nice is that they added a search function. All mainmenus though, with the exception of the widget mainmenu, is replaceable through custom UIs. Playlist support isn't too good though just like the S9 but custom UI's like Kizunes recent music UI help alleviate a bit of the pain.

The big buzz right now is Kizune's Chakra and Aero Music UI, which are so customizable, super rich with features, and fun to use - S9 and J3 owners both agree that they have no clue why Cowon hasn't bothered to offer him a job yet (all custom UI’s by the way are found on iaudiophilesvJ3 or S9 forums). El Maco has also brought a big contribution to the J3 and S9 community by making a fully functional coverflow that can be used with any music UI, even moreso to the point that it's a major plugin for Kizunes Aero Music. As you can tell, Custom UIs have been a great cornerstone that Cowon allows and supports (guides are online) for most of their devices like the J3.

Additional Info
Since we delved into the devices internals, software wise, the Cowon J3 still impresses with its technical specs just like the S9. With so many formats supported by the J3 for music, it’s surprising that AAC is now supported on the J3 - albeit unofficially but it’s also something alot of prior fruit users were wanting on the S9 (in other words, J3 has mostly all possible format for music now). Cowon is still the cream of the crop when it comes to sound quality and the J3 is another testament to the continued praise. BBE 3.0 sound enhancement and Wolfson sound chip combo alone is what kept me staying with my Cowon S9 and the J3 is following in the same footsteps. Love, love, love popping on my favorite songs on the J3 and fall head over heels everytime (especially paired with my Sunrise Charms and Fiio E5). Video formats supported by the J3 may not be as large as the O2 but the J3 does have unofficial support (again) for H.264, at least on re-encoding through the baseline format like the S9.

You'll get 11 hours of video playback just like the Cowon S9, most devices on the market do 8+ hours so anything above that is great! When it comes to the hours for the J3 for music, it is much higher than the Cowon S9 and trumps the D2 as well - 64 hours is a great accomplishment compared to other mp3 makers (excluding Cowons X7). This number is dependent on its material as Cowon tests these hours in backlight set at 1 or off and with a 128kps mp3 format song (lovers and friends on most of Cowon's devices) song lasting about 4 minutes (and Bluetooth off). My testing was about the same (Bluetooth off and screen off) but different range of songs - which resulted in 50+ hours. Again, that's still pretty high compared to others. So expect less recharging and more enjoying of your music if you strictly use it for that (which I do).

Final Thoughts
So the question remains... If you are a Cowon S9 user, should you jump ship and board the J3 wagon as an upgrade. Well it depends on your wants and situation, as the J3 is a minor refresh like the D2+, fixing problems and improving the device for the better by design and feature wise. If you love your Cowon S9 but wish the button placement was better or that it wasn't so curved, the J3 may be for you. If you wished the Cowon S9 had multitouch due to its already capacitive screen or you want to let others to hear your music but wished the S9 had some sort of speaker so you didn't have to share the device or headphones, the J3 may be the answer. Finally, if your Cowon S9 is about to burst at the seams due to your storage capacity is almost full or hate swapping in your music to and from your computer due to the full capacity of your S9 and wished they had included some sort of expansion slot for hotswappping cards out for an almost limitless amounts of your music, than the Cowon J3 may be the upgrade you've been wanting. The Cowon J3 is highly recommend by me as it literally addresses alot of the issues I and alot of others (as owners, previous owners, and potentials) have had to put up with when it came to the Cowon S9. Worthy upgrade from my Cowon S9 in my opinion, take a chance and give the Cowon J3 one as well, you won't regret it! No matter how you look at it, Refresh or not, the Cowon J3 is THE successor of the Cowon S9 and current, previous, and potential D2 and S9 owners should gaze a little over here at the Cowon J3 - best mp3 player I bought from Cowon!

PROS:
+ Sleek, Thin, flat style almost identical to modern phones (Improvement over S9)
+ Beautitul Amoled Screen (Ref. S9)
+ Gorilla Glass (Ref. S9)
+ Capacitive touchscreen w/ Multitouch (Improvement over S9)
+ Great button placement on the sides (Improvement over S9)
+ Play/ Pause button now a common button (improvement over S9)
+ On/Off/Display off & On/ Lock combo switch ditched, now a button (Improvement over S9)
+ Cowon Mainmenu UI's and Music UI very friendly and stylish (Improvement over S9)
+ Very nice browser for files with a search function
+ Custom UI support still great
+ Cowons Trademark fantastic Sound Quality
+ BBE 3.0 best sound enhancement available w/ customizable EQ settings
+ Many audio formats supported, AAC unofficially supported (Improvement over S9)
+ Good amount of video formats, H.264 unofficially supported (Improvement over S9)
+ 11hrs of video, 64hrs of Audio (Improvement over S9)
+ Micro SD slot, accepts up to 32GB Micro SDHC cards (Improvement over S9)
+ Loud Small speaker in the back (Improvement over S9)

Cons
- Long Initial load screen if using a Micro SDHC card
- On/Off/Display off & On/ Lock combo button too easy to get out of lock mode
- Above button issue may also cause wasted battery usage unknown to user
- Playlist support just like the S9, not a good thing. Aero Music fixes the problema bit

[Woozle Wuzzle]

Very detailed review da1writer and I love how you touched on the anticipation of the Cowon S9. That wait was so painful lol.

[paraffin]

And finally, Trusted Reviews:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/review/2011/04/11/Cowon-J3/p1

[dfkt]

Wow, this is the worst review I've ever read on Trustedreviews. I generally value their opinion, but this superficial glance at the J3 is just pathetic, not to mention the ridiculous and unwarranted iPod Touch and Sony E-series comparisons. Seems like an intern got to hack that shallow opinion piece together, not a reputable author.

[Icesoul285]

Wow, this is the worst review I've ever read on Trustedreviews. I generally value their opinion, but this superficial glance at the J3 is just pathetic, not to mention the ridiculous and unwarranted iPod Touch and Sony E-series comparisons. Seems like an intern got to hack that shallow opinion piece together, not a reputable author.

I completely agree. It's superficial to say the least, they didn't even mention the microsd slot. [thumbdwn]

[nintendude7cubed]

Well guys, i don't think anyone knows of me in this board, but i frequented the O2 board a couple years ago till the screen broke and i've been running a sansa clipp+ ever since...

Now I'm the proud owner of a J3 and there isn't much I can say about sound quality that won't sound redundant. It was easy to make the sound great on my pioneer phones. and the interface is quite exceptional (from the standard of the O2's interface which was god awful compared to this). The "menu 1" i guess the technical term would be, is the smoothest byfar because it's a set grid that can't be altered. Menus 2 and 3 are definitely good but not near as smooth. I replaced those two menus with Kitzune's amazing Lynx menu, and the Cube menu which are both listed in the UCI subforum.

Anyway I figured, since there isnt much that can be raved about that hasn't already been talked about, I think I'll touch on a topic that hasn't been talked about near enough, and that is flash. I found it very difficult to find actual reviews on it. I've seen plenty of info on it, but not any actual comments on how it works.
For me, the flash works much better than expected. With that said, keep in mind that menus 2 and 3 tend to lag as it is on the player so don't expect it to play any fancy armor games or anything like that. I find the flash to be a fun feature to play around with though. I was surprised that the sound works, i was under the impression for some reason that they didn't bother with sound for flashes, but that might have been on an older firmware or on the s9 forum or something. If there's an SWF file that you think will work, there is no shame in trying it out, however i must warn, you should have a paper clip handy because i've froze this thing many times trying to launch flashes for kicks. One breakthrough i've had with flash is that curveball actually works better when it's not resized. Splashhunt's collection of games contains a resized version of curveball that actually lags quite a bit compared to the original version. of course you're sacraficing the size of the game, but its a good sacrafice to make for performance. Curveball, and S9 tennis are the two games i've tried so far that work the best, s9 tennis can be found in Splashhunt's collection. bottom line is, flash is a great thing to toy around with when you're bored. I highly suggest, if you loved those old school flash animations back in the day, to try them out on the J3. You might be surprised.

EDIT: Another thing i noticed that is actually extremely helpful for games of coordination, my case and point, curveball again.. there was still a slight lag before hitting the ball. I should also note that playing music overrides the sound of the games. With that said, playing music while playing curveball eliminates the lag! AWESOME!! And if it isn't completely obvious, the lag went away because the sounds don't have to be processed in game while the music is playing thus eliminating the lag causing effort the J3 makes to load the sounds repeatedly.

One final note, (you don't have to read this if you only wanted to know about flash) the J3 in my opinion is worth every penny (of the 209USD i spent on it at amazon for the 16GB version). There were plenty of reviews i read saying that it's more expensive than the feature filled ipod touch therefore degrading the value of this player. But my question is, how do you compare a player in price that contains a soundchip with quality that approaches home consoles? You just don't... not to a piece of crap like the iPod. Of course when i say piece of crap, I'm talking about the music. Apple clearly doesn't even care about that anymore. Everything else about the touch is fine, but i needn't talk about that. I don't even own one, that opinion is just from me listening to someone else's.

[Jacques_7]

I found a review of the Cowon J3 on ConsumerReports.org. As I see no one has posted this review so far, I figured I would. It's just a quick overview of the MP3 player, but I still found it to be fairly informing. I had to just upload a picture of it, as a subscription is required to view the actual URL page. Here it is....hope you guys can read the small print (Ctrl. + scroll will help and press Ctrl. + 0 to return font to normal size):

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/picture.php?albumid=112&pictureid=653

[Wiggy]

As an Apple hater I have always been looking for alternatives and general finding products better than Apples offerings. I did have an IPOD classic which was purchased for sheer memory size and a nano which I got as a present. Neither though lasted very long and the Nano almost burned me as it seriously over heated in my pocket but the classic did ok until its death. Creative have served me well in the past and I was always happy with the durability quality and audio quality. I started searching a few months ago for the MP3 player to blow me away. I have tested many players and got a lot of advice so I decided on getting the Cowon J3.

I have not been disappointed. Here is my review.

1. Sound Quality. 10/10

Oral bliss. The sound quality is breath taking. Even with my sennhieser's getting full volume on the BBE Mach 3 base the headphones shook violently but there was no distortion. Buts it not only base, everything just sounds better on this. I have some DJ mixes that were not great quality recordings but there are settings on this that improves the sound of the play back. Also if your a perfectionist you can tweak the eq's to your liking. This is best sounding player I have ever listened to.

Video playback and display. 9/10

The display screen is crystal clear. Also a big plus point is that 8 out of 10 videos I have put on this did not need to be converted. Drop click and play just the way I like it.

Interface 6/10.

Not the J3's strongest point. You do get used to it after using the player a few times but until you get used to it it has the chance of frustrating the hell out of you. There is ways of changing the interface though. I was informed you can download changes by Kizune. I have downloaded Lynx, sense and leaf from his website. When I get them to work I may change my rating on this as the ability to change the interface is great.

The J3 also has an SD card slot and you can also play flash based games. I have not found any good games yet (if anyone could recommend one or two that would be great).

Total score 9/10.

[Sort]

Just wanted to add a few additional comments to the review section. The biggest and most overlooked positive is that the base, no enhancements equalizer is a significant step up. As I power amp my j3 when at home for use with my AKG 702, the BBE at any kind of high level distorts heavily, but when done at low levels combined with that stellar, basic flat EQ, the sound quality is top notch.

The downside is that the actual working battery life is very little; I have to charge it twice a week. Not tremendously negative, and I did buy a very cheap refurbished so my device might be skewed, but I was charging once a week on my old D2+ for same hours.

[briant1234]

the consumer reports says that you cant delete music files, but u can, and also the speaker isnt that bad compared to other built in speakers

[Jacques_7]

the consumer reports says that you cant delete music files, but u can, and also the speaker isnt that bad compared to other built in speakers

Yeah, I noticed that. I found it funny that a reputable organization such as Consumer Reports made such an obvious mistake. They must've not been using a intuitive UCI such as Sense. :)