S9 Reviews

[gorgi]

Theres a german cnet review for the S9 that gave him excellent grades^^
They gave him 9 out ouf 10 overall.
Also compared it with the iTouch and they were unhappy about the missing multi-touch
I dont think they know that Apple has a patent on it.

[travelbore]

Hi,

saw this review in the Scotsman this weekend: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scot...ths.4663542.jp

For those of you unfortunate enough to live outside of Scotland, The Scotsman is one the top 2 national newspapers.

The review is brief but quite informative.

Best,
TB

[Insta]

Dude, THANK YOU!!!
Great find!
Although the article doesn't go in-depth it does affirm that the sq is still great, so that's one question off the list, I guess.

[bernado]

You got me all excited there for a moment. Bah, still no review

[DaremoS]

Originally Posted by travelbore

Hi,

saw this review in the Scotsman this weekend: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scot...ths.4663542.jp

For those of you unfortunate enough to live outside of Scotland, The Scotsman is one the top 2 national newspapers.

The review is brief but quite informative.

Best,
TB

here is something really surprising in the review:

... The Cowon S9 is one of the best-sounding MP3 players I have listened to.

Where you did that lucky Josh Welensky ??

MP3 players are a bit like cars; there are a lot of them, essentially all doing the same job. The question is whether you'd rather drive a Ford Focus or a Ferrari?. Cowon is more like the latter.

I do the same comparison in other post... but I use Porsche vs Volkswagen.

[Bullseye]

I'd say Rolls Royce Vs Renault

[auxiliary]

Actually, I'd say Honda (with all the brilliance, refinement and gadgetry) as Cowon

Vs. Alfa Romeo (with all the atrocious build quality, but sexiness and emptiness) as Some other manufacturers...cough...Apple, etc.

[Jessipoo]

oo that was a bit exciting, I guess t means he played with it? no fair. I want to fondle that little piece of marvel :p

already the fact that it auto rotates makes it more interactive in terms of user experience and the relation between technology and user, so that already excitesme quite a bit. Still not a fan of touch screen but at this day in age.. tactile is passé, I'll learn to live with it until they release more tactile touchscreens in a few years.

[OnYourMark]

Originally Posted by Jessipoo

already the fact that it auto rotates makes it more interactive in terms of user experience and the relation between technology and user, so that already excitesme quite a bit. Still not a fan of touch screen but at this day in age.. tactile is passé, I'll learn to live with it until they release more tactile touchscreens in a few years.

Oh my . . . reminds me of this retarded player I saw on YouTube. You have to shake it to control it. They'd have to pay me to get that player.

But the S9 should be much better of course.

I'm really baffled by the review. What does it mean concerning the current stage of the S9's development? =O
I personally find it strange that someone reviewed the S9 for a Scottish newspaper. Especially considering the rumors that the player isn't finished yet. Or...what does this article say about those rumors? lol.

[omjeremy]

lol This is not a review. If you read it carefully, the writer doesn't mention once that he's actually tried the device. He's just telling us what how he expects it to be considering the specs of the device.

nonsense...

[OnYourMark]

Well, he specifically states that he's listened to it: "The Cowon S9 is one of the best-sounding MP3 players I have listened to."
It could be a white lie though.

I agree that it's not a review. I could have written that article using everything I've read about the S9.

[Agca]

http://www.t3.com/reviews/ipod-and-m...-player-review

[Juxtah]

This a mini review of the S9, I have also posted it on the Anything but iPod forums and will try to keep both updated:

[img=http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2350/31381964ya4.th.jpg]
[img=http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/7803/99004275gw3.th.jpg]

Accessories/Extras: Nothing special here, you get a small minidisc with Cowon's Jetaudio on it, the disc works with tray drives but will not work with any slot loading drives. You also get a pair of headphones which are nothing special, a couple of guides in various languages and the proprietary USB cable.

All that's missing really for me is the plug wall charger, as one was included with the D2 I was expecting the S9 to come with one.

Design: As all of you will already will be well aware of the looks of the S9 I'll simply talk about build quality. A lot of reviewers have said it is very light and feels rather hollow or plastic, which is true. If you were expecting something along the lines of the D2 you will be dissapointed, however I must stress that it's not badly built, in fact it's probably still several levels above that of other manufacturers it's just not up to Cowon's usual 'tank'esque quality.

[img=http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/4240/57716821ev6.th.jpg]
[img=http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/5773/16252815nf4.th.jpg]
(The Cowon has 2 'theme' choices, I find myself prefering the former but it's nice to have the choice)

UI: Cowon has made leaps and bounds in this department, the UI is much simpler to navigate and doing so is very quick with menus popping up quickly and scrolling through files in a breeze. However if you were expecting something that you could pick up and learn in and out within 10 minutes you will be dissapointed, this is much better then what we usually see from Cowon but some menu's can still be quite difficult to fathom without the 'press and see what it does' approach.

[img=http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9020/25980843tr5.th.jpg]

I've found the accelerometer to be very good at picking up when the player is turned on it's side (although Enzoten has had the opposite experience, whether this is firmware/hardware based is unknown). The UI is very smooth in almost all areas, however coverflow is one notable exception, using it is so laggy with long pauses and it does make you think about asking why Cowon bothered with it in the first place. Hopefully this is just a firmware issue though that can be remedied, however even if it was smooth the portrait music screen is much more useful in every way.

Other UI features such as the zooming work quite well, although unless you are short sighted there should be no problems reading the text even at the lowest magnification as the screen is really that sharp.

Audio quality: I'm not great at discerning between small differences in sound, however you can be certain that the S9 matches (perhaps even exceeds in some areas) the D2. Through the same headphones both players sound just as good and there are largely the same customisation options in the S9 as in the D2

Video quality: Wow... this is where this player really excels. With a decent input source the player looks fantastic, using a good conversion tool (such as handbrake) it looks absolutely stunning. I've found the S9 can play a lot of different resolutions including those above the 480x272 quoted, however it does a bad job at fixing the aspect ratio and an even wrose one at scaling it down, so to get the most you really do need to convert your video, although again if you can't stand to convert (like I know many people do) you can still watch most sources.

Other Features:
FM Radio - nice to have, but it doesn't scan particularly well and it sets up stations just several Mhz from their source which leads to a lot of manual changing if you want to get the most out of this feature.
Bluetooth - Can't really comment as I don't have a bluetooth headset to pair it too, although the option for switching it on is easy to find and quick to do.
Flash games - I've tried a few flash games for the Cowon D2 and found they do work, however some of the buttons aren't finger friendly and some cause intermittent crashing. List of games I've tried:

Blackjack - Works without crashing, not finger friendly.
Fishtales - Works and finger friendly but causes crashes at random intervals
Flashpad v3 - Works, relatively finger friendly and the saving option still works
qubik - Works, relatively finger friendly but still has some of the stuttering issues that the D2 version had
Gridlock - Works, kind of finger friendly (though quite difficult to move blocks first time), no crashing issues I'm aware of
Laser - Doesn't work, gets stuck at loading (left for 5 minutes, so may work but probably not useful to have a game taking 5 minutes+ to load)
Samarosti - Seems to work at first but gets stuck after intro sequence and screen goes black. However it isn't a crash as it's still possible to quit so not sure what's going on with this.
Worm beta - Works very well, no noticable lag, and the black borders of the screen (as the game is not widescreen) also count as clicks so your finger doesn't get in the way of seeing where you need to go.

I may try some others later.

I haven't really had the player long enough to judge things like battery life in real life situations but just judging by the battery meter Cowon's predictions of 55/11 seem just a bit over the top, but might be attainable depending on usage/BBE settings/Screen brightness/etc.

BBC iPlayer - BBC recently released the option to download programs for portable devices, dragging and dropping the files in MSC mode doesn't work outright. But in MTP it seems to get half way there before giving you errors - so may work if it's synced properly with WMP or something.

[TheDarkSide]

Here's the preview question/answer thread on ABI: http://anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37659

[Chester Copperpot]

I figured the flash support would be no better than the D2, especially after seeing how laggy the coverflow appears from videos posted online. Oh well, no big deal.

Would be cool if you could run flash apps that loaded pictures from a folder path or played sound files.