Cowon D3 - The (unfortunate) review

[globiboulga]

UPDATE: We are now Firmware version 1.29 and I am glad to report, that overall performance has now past the usability threshold with flying colours. These colours are still a bit washed out though, we're not out of woods - that's a special one for any Australian on the forum - We do still have the occasional stuttering, although therapy seems to have given the player that little of confidence it was lacking a few weeks back. The occasional freeze and reboot is there and punching a paperclip within that reset hole is still a critical skill to master with the D3. Our Android baby still love its media scanning and, for those with short temper, it will test your patience at time. We're getting there, gentlemen, we're close to the top now. On a side note, the latest build of rockbox - compiled by dfkt - works like a charm and gives you that awesomeness that gapless turns out to be for those of us who like to listen to never ending music tracks. The almighty God of Usability & Performance, it seems, is finally looking over the D3 craddle and it is an encouraging sign for those of us who were worried about this whole life support equipment we thought we'd have to take with us everytime you wanted to take your baby out for a walk. Mummy Cowon is still a bit worried, I suspect and she should, there's still some work to do!

UPDATE: Since upgrading to firmware 1.23, the player has never froze on me again. I urge anyone who imports the D3 to immediately upgrade the firmware and hope it'll be shipped outside of Korea with it outright. Also note that there is a reset button, nested closely to the speakers on the back of the player should it decide to throw any sort of tantrum. I am very definitive about the D3 in this review, please read both posts before making your judgment call. For the lambda user, the D3 will be a difficult, frustrating experience. For the Cowon lover, I'll be more of the same if you've lived through the X5, D2, S9 and all their PMP early existence problems.

See video also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqDsTCjeFcU - Sorry about the quality that was done with my phone.

Every single time that a parcel arrives at home, I feel like an over excited 12 year old whose stock of ADHD medicine ran out the day before. I pant, a little, blissfully ignoring all around me, unable to focus, until I can get hold of the holy package, feeling with my mighty fingers the carton, bringing it close to my chest, humming the smell of adventure that invariably stick to the packaging, smell often enhanced by the faint, but unmistakable addition of each of the handlers body odours. I know I’ll be useless until I can unceremoniously tear off what separates me from the object of my affection. This time though, it will be different. I promised myself I would do a review, and that for that purpose, I would remain calm, in control, fully aware that the first step of any respectable rigorous analysis of any consumer electronic device is the unpacking; and that tools, restraint and a series of pictures are required to gain respect and trust from the unforgiving digital audience.

A new Era
The arrival of the D3 has been greeted by the birth of a new, exciting brand for Cowon: Plenue. While we must all agree that the visions associated with the conception of something that is a cross between a small green extra-terrestrial being and a respectable Korean organisation must remain an unaltered mystery for the greater good of both mankind and the future of the Android platform, it is nonetheless clear that Plenue does represent a significant evolution for the company that brought us some of the most Mysterious Human Interfaces ever designed for Portable Multimedia players – although one could argue that the persistent insistence to use flash as a base OS for their machines is the bravest, boldest move ever made, like a middle finger pointed high in air, tilted slightly towards Cupertino (for that reason only Cowon deserves both respect and support). The mere existence of a complete website to explain the Grand Vision is, I hope, a welcomed sign of things to come and perhaps, time will tell, the beginning of a new amazing era in which Cowon’s product nomenclature and product’s features will actually relate to each other.

Unpacking – The box itself
Sadly, the existence of the brand does not reflect on the packaging. We are welcomed by rather bland brown wrapping and artwork – if one dares to elevate the application words on a packet an artistic activity - reminiscent of previous Cowon attempts at being both minimalistic and interesting. Make no mistake: if the company had enough clout and power to grace shelves with its products, it would probably look good amongst the tyranny of bad taste on display in electronic shops where uninspired boxes compete for attention by using bold large fonts and a ridiculous number of primary colours. It’s just that one would have expected the Plenue brand to actually mean something more from a visual point of view: bait for the dumb, reassuring reference for the retailer and a nice way to differentiate the brand from the onslaught of Android things to come. Instead, we get brown carton. Our minds can rest easy on the thought of all this recycling we’re promoting.
A good pair of industrial grade scissors is all it takes to break the outer layer of the packaging. Swift as a Mousquetaire recently introduced to the miracles of Red-Bull, spreading my wings, I direct the blades directly to the weakest point: right in the middle.

Unpacking – the insides
Beyond that point, there’s a box, an opening, some stuff inside and still this relentless feeling that we’re not being wowed, but that we’re doing our bit for Mother Earth. The player itself is nested precautiously on a plastic cradle under which the usual suspects have been hidden out of sight for the unboxing experience to remain a calm and controlled affair: a USB thingy – same as S9; a power charger (that’s welcomed given the battery life claims) and a pair of headphones which will probably spend the rest of its long life wondering why it’s been paired with an audiophile grade machine. It will be unrespectfully thrown in the back of some drawers becoming “stuff” that could be useful if we did actually happen to experience some sort of apocalyptic that would cause access to life basic items to cease unexpectedly.

We also find an anaemic user manual that does nothing to distract from getting the simple and pleasurable epiphany that suddently makes you realise that Plenue is just the word that replace iAudio on the box. But, hey, at least, we don’t have to cope with a large marking on the player itself, something that in the past has had the incredible effect to bring me to tears (looking at you Color Sound on the X5).

The content of the user manual is irrelevant, albeit you get more here than what you get from Apple and that’s probably a direct consequence of famous internet reviewers having difficulties grasping simple concepts such as manipulating physical buttons on those devices that happen to have more than one (although I never “digged” the design of the play/pause button on the S9, it never really occurred to me it was a stylus and would certainly not have blamed Cowon for my own stupidity; anyway, page X of the manual, the ones amongst us who like to revisit the Grade 3 curriculum will have a pictorial representation of the player with enough little lines and words to clearly identify what’s what).

Unpacking – The looks, The holding, The build quality
And here it is! Resting on its bed of recycled carton. Expectations are confronted with actuality, measured to the scale of reality and, I shiver, it looks as good in real life as in the picture. It feels bigger, a bit more physical, shall we say. Compared to the S9 and an HTC desire (which will become useful for software comparison later on).
In the palm, well it feels good. Comfortable. I shake my hand a little: will this baby support daily holding, the irrespective handling of boring commute, the need I have to constantly switch songs without skipping out of my demanding grasp? Does it fill my palm? Well, anyone used to a 3.7” mobile phone will feel right at home here, and the initial handling do point out to a device which will gracefully maintain its position in your hand. Weight is good and a quick test confirms that, just as the S9, the d2, it will hold by the phone cord should it decides, on its own, to attempt that suicidal escape from those hands of yours (thanks in part to a very tight headphone opening).

Overall, build quality is good and there’s pleasure in touching the rubberized back. I’m still at a loss to rationalise the switch from aluminium casing to plastic while everyone seems to go the other way, but it feels solid enough. Definitely on par with my S9, and monstrously better than some of the competition around (especially mobile phones). The design is pleasant, like that cute girl next door, not the best looking, but available and affable; pleasing to have around and certainly friendly and engaging. I’m not a fan of Manchester United and that little little recess at the bottom of the player tends to make me feel like I’m watching one of their games where Wayne Rooney would be the part that’s supposed to be trendy and efficient but turns out to be a bit out of place and annoying. I’m also not wowed by the large bezel, but that’s somehow ok. It is worth noting for those who are familiar with Android hardware that Cowon has sentenced the search button to death, which is not, in my book, a bad idea: I never use it on my phone, ever. These buttons are capacitive input devices which we’ll put to the test a bit later.

Screen
And it turns on, bursting deadly rays of life everywhere, popping a magnificent logo out of nowhere. I’ve always be marvelling as to what an innocent series of on and off electrical activities could do and I will be until the day I die. The screen upon which this miracle is displayed is VERY crisp – very good OLED panel -, large and smudges friendly. It is very comparable to what I would find on my S9 or Desire and should do the job of watching video fine (more on that later). I personally don’t like for anyone to share my lonesome video sessions, so I’m not bothered by viewing angles, although in that instance they seem more than adequate for the lambda user who’d like to unexpectedly invite a friend over to watch the Lord of Rings trilogy on a 3”7 screen. We’re waiting for THE LOADING while it boots, surely one of the Anglicism that will become the stuff of legend.

Buttons
Like many around, I like my buttons. I like them small and tidy. I like then useful and firm. I’ve heard many concerns around how wiggly the S9 buttons could be, and I’m happy to report that the D3’s are firmer and do not include the sort of protruding abnormality that could have been the source of the wobbliness issue with the S9 (although it’s worth noting that I never have had any problem with using the physical button on my S9, whether it’s due to my ability to always use gadgets properly, the natural gentleness of my tactile activities or sheer luck, I’m not sure) . Those buttons welcome fingertips agreeably and do respond to the unsuspected request with a nice, solid, clicking motion which, if not on par with the orgasmic thumping of the door of that German car I want to buy, brings nonetheless confidence and relief in the overall build quality of the device. Based on that impression, one hope they will be capable of sustaining maniac use for years to come. I’m not a great fan of the volume up/down placement though, and I am not certain the player (partly because of its size) is one hand friendly. Field tests are required.

Ports and Connectors
There is a dedicated AC port, a USB port and an SD port. You’ll also find a mic, two speakers (one in the front at the top which will make all your friend wonder what you have a new phone) and that’s about it really. There is a reset button (a useful feature, more on that later unfortunately) and it is worth noting that Cowon decided to bless us with both a new AC adaptor type and a new USB plug type. On both count, that’s a strike for the Korean company and a massive applause for the European Commission and it’s benevolent efforts to force manufacturer to use standards. I nearly cried when I saw the USB port; I NEVER intended to start of collection of USB cables; and it will never, Cowon, be a hobby of mine.

32GB card
I did stick a brand new class 2 SanDisk MicroSD card in there (32GB, type 2) and the NTFS formatted card (windows 7 did that for me) did not play well with the player. It asked to reformat it – which I did, I’m that kind of obedient idiot – and then the whole player froze. Since there is no reset button and the battery is non-removable, you’re left with one option only: wait until the battery dies out and start again. Not cool. The same card reformatted with the regular Fat32 option played nicely.

UI
My love for tinkering all things as long been overshadowed by the convenience of minimalistic designs and it is no surprise to hear I adopted the X7 UI when it became clear the S9 was a suitable candidate for its use. I have not looked back since.
The modification that Cowon decided to inflict on the stock Android are generally going in the right direction – from a design standpoint. They formalise some of the elements of the UI that are still rough with the Google OS and bring welcomed consistency and a colour scheme that is both elegant and well thought through (but then again, what do I know, I am colourblind).
While I am yet to see anyone create vu meters to support my love for analogue measuring devices, the music UI is very much alike the X7, both simple and neat and uses the album art to create an intelligent contextual background. Sadly, unlike the X7, a normal, additional, representation of the album art picture is overlayed on the background, which does nothing else but creates confusion and hatred for a music UI which would have otherwise been close to fantastic (and an absolute rip off of Microsoft’s).
There are some questionable decision around the layout of buttons, but all of these I am sure can be dealt with habit and are still usually an improvement over the standard Cowon UI – for example, once you press the large Zune arrow at the top, you have access to all categorisation types (folder, artist, albums, etc.) which were always a few back button press away on the other UIs.
The movie UI is so classic that I will pass on it. There. Passed.

UI Customisation
I am not aware of any third party customisation option yet (other than putting stock Android and loading other applications and associated themes).

Music
We are treated to the usual arrangement of codecs and sound effects. Navigation is also handled in accordance to previous Cowon efforts and the old and weak amongst us will welcome this high level of familiarity and comfort with open arms. For the others, there is obviously an option in there, that sports the usual 5 bands eQ settings/BBE+/SE/3D surround /Mach3Bass tinkering tools Cowon has been providing on its latest machines. It stills does what it says on the tin and while I am sure that some sound zealots will regret the absence of more eQ bands, there’s nothing stopping these perfectionists to download some additional music applications from the internet and install the apk (more on that later), such as PowerAmp. They will then obviously lose the BBE+ and Mach3Bass and other complex mathematical algorithms provided by the Plenue out of the box but gain full control on the sounds that will thump through their ear canals directly to those parts of the brain that make us say and do things we irremediably regret later.

Sound quality
Sound quality is always, and will always be, a subjective assessment of the source material (both the music itself and its encoding), the player, the headphones and the brain that listens. This said, there are a set of factual points that can be made and, in some cases, should be repeated ad nausea: Cowon players sound good. They sound better than any iPod. One does not put cheese in croissants. No exception here, the sound is full, inviting and lively. Possibly better somehow that what I have on my S9, perhaps thanks to the fact that I did use FLAC files directly on the player.
Unfortunately the player music application does not support gapless (tested with FLAC files), a terrible blow. An unbearable accident. A miserable choice. A deal breaker? If only…

Videos
While many have complained of the extended screen size (but then again, remember, the naming scheme of Cowon products does not mean anything), the 3”7 real estate is more than acceptable to watch the occasional video or movie while you’re commuting laboriously between home sweet home and that other place. I would certainly not willingly use the Cowon to watch a movie at home. This is probably where the main issue of the player’s size come alight and start to get strong competition from devices that do qualify much better to become the home devices used to control and view engaging and complex audio-visual materials. One feels a bit embarrassed for the Cowon, a bit like you’d feel for that friend who’s ok to go and play basketball in the backyard but that you would not recommend for you college team despite his continuous insistence to join. Yeah, for videos, it is very probable that a tablet will better fit the bill – here I wait for Cowon to send me their first Android tablet for review; PM me, I’m keen).

Despite that difficult positioning, the player does a good job at playing what’s been thrown at it. The darks are beautiful (thanks AMOLED) and there’s been no stuttering in any of the files I managed to load and watch – no transcoding so far. I did try a 1080p version of BladeRunner. Hypnotised by that fantastic movie, I actually did spend more than 20mn watching the miserable struggle of man against machine. This was beautifully handle by the player easily capable of playing live 1080 material while scaling it back to the resolution of the screen.
Californication and various ebay videos (sucked from the internet using Cowon Android software) worked beautifully, as did a quick session of The Wall directly ripped from the DVD in avi format.
It seems that conversion efforts will be limited on this new Plenue line and that’s a welcome state of affair which continues to position Cowon at the forefront of the convenience battle that Apple has decided it wanted to lose from the outset (soon followed by Microsoft). Hail Android.

Android and other Apps
Out of the box, while still resting on its bed of recycle carton, the D3 sport a range of basic Android applications which will be all too familiar to those enlighten ones which have crossed the line and accepted to be assaulted permanently with irrelevant ads for convenience and freedom (and free apps). The Korean version of the player – which I have – also sports some local apps, which I obviously did not test. There is no Market app – to be expected since there is no phone functionalities on the player, but a Cowon portal for applications which unfortunately came in Korean on my player and was therefore useless to me.

Once can load applications on the player using available apk files. Put in the right folder on the internal memory, these new files will be instantly recognised by the player which will ask you if you want to install them right away. A market apk file failed to load, while I was able to replace the stock launcher with Zeam; a nice light option.

Performance and stability
There is no 2 ways around it. As much as I’d love to pretend this is not true, as much as I’d like to stick for my past lover, the one with whom I lost my virginity, the one who gave me so much, the confidence, the love, the first sexual climax, there’s no denying that the player is laggy. Ironically, it shows am immense amount of power and smoothness during 1080p material playback but pitiful capabilities when handling tasks one would imagine are pretty basic. I intended to compare the capabilities of the player against the HTC Desire I have, but the Cowon would fare so badly that it’s probably the only reprieve that I would give the player during this review. The fact is: this D3 is a piece of shit. The simple fact that I have to talk about stability is just appalling... I'm usually a nice guy, I mean I never complained about the S9 sluggishness, but then again there was not much to complain about.

Fact is is that In the whole first 5 hours during which I had the player, it managed to freeze 3 times on me. And believe me I took it personally:
- The first time when I insterted the SD card formatted in NTFS format, while it was scanning the internal memory where I just put 3GB of FLAC files
- The second time when I plugged the usb cable while it was playing music
- The third time while I tried to connect to a wi-fi network while playing music
See a pattern around multitasking? See something related to poor ability to handle performance demanding tasks?

On each occasion, because (of the lack of reset button - there is one, my bad - my own stupidity), because of the lack of removable battery I was left with no other option than to wait for the battery to die off so the player could turn off and be started again. It was painful, excruciating, that kind of torture that leave you wandering if the United Nation should be alerted so they could send some troops at the Cowon’s headquarters to protect them because you know some people will get violent, will throw tomatoes at these guys.

Wrap up
My heart is broken. My mind is numb. The field of possibilities would have been so immense, the potential was undeniably there, but somehow it’s all rendered useless by the combination of poor hardware and appalling software. There is no denying that the D3 is an all rounder failure, without any redeeming quality other that the faint hope that Cowon will learn from past mistakes. I could not recommend it to anyone. Even to the hardcore Android tinkerer. It’s a hopeless case, a mixture of immaturity and plain stupidity, bordering on professional misconduct – I’m looking at you, the guy who authorised this piece of crap to be released in the wild in such a hopeless state. You have now done the unthinkable; you have tarnished the Cowon brand forever, although admittedly, you’d probably be better off cutting your loses and starting by burying the Plenue brand under a ton of fresh manure so that perhaps, in a world where consumers are ignorant and forgiving, you can have another, more convincing, shot at the green robot.

And you, unwilling testers, useless bunch of corporate idiots, what were you thinking? What ran into your mind to think you give the thumbs up at a piece of hardware which did not even qualify as a sexy paper weight? Did you actually test the thing?

I am a bit mad. I can’t be **** to wait for any firmware upgrades. Off you go, back where you come from.

PS: Cowon, forget about sending me anything to review. This experience was too painful. I was looking forward to a Cowon Android tablet, not anymore.
PS2: up to exportprive now to see how I can exchange that hopeless thing for a X7.
PS3: this review would have been longer, it would have explored applications, attempted to load the market on the Cowon, possibly explored additional options to make the player more responsive, attempted to load a few web pages and so on… But what’s the point?
PS4: As we speak the player is "recovering" from it's third freeze.
PS5: I took pictures of the unboxing and all, and I even thought about a video. It's all been erased. I had to vent my frustration on something and I nearly destroyed my Del key as a result.
PS6: Freeze number 4 is with us, folks. It's pleasing to see there is consistency here.
PS7: Freeze number 5 has arrived, like a knight in shining armour! And thanks to Qwerty for once, I don't have to sit through it!!!!!

[globiboulga]

A new dawn?
[During this second review, I will listen to music on the D3. FLAC files. Any (lag) will outline moments where the player “stutters” during music playback. Screen is off. Wi-Fi is off. Random is on. BBE Headphones is on. Let us be factual about what the player can and can’t do, shall we? And believe me I WANT TO BE WRONG ABOUT IT. Note for the seriously brave amongst us: using the player during playback – i.e. navigating aimlessly, just to try, will lead to music stuttering on occasion.]

The process to update firmware for the Cowon is relatively straight forward; it’s a nice touch for an operation that is likely to become a recurrent activity with the player (lag); at least until that glorious day where Froyo will be used as a base Android version to grace us with the performance improvements – and stability; one hope – that is required to allow the D3 to enter the Cowon hall of fame of those players that, not only sound good, but are also a breeze to use (lag).

All you have to do is to copy an update zip in the root folder of the player, go to settings, under D3 section and (lag – lag – freeze? – no lag only) ask for the player to perform the update. It will ask you if the update is on the player or the SD card and off you go. Merry, merry, hallelujah, a few minutes later, you’re graced with a new player with a new firmware. And your hopes reset to a new morning glory that you hope will last a whole lot more than a few minutes (lag - lag).

Overall, firmware 1.23 does a good job at remediating some of lag present on the base firmware. I am happy to say that the player is MORE responsive that what you can see on the various videos on the Youtube. Browsing through a long list of albums is speedy, smooth and surprisingly cool. Going from one track to the next is relatively speedy (you feel the wait, but it’s good nonetheless). Pressing the large arrow at the top to switch to library / folder view is still a mississipi affair though and the library is fairly unresponsive at time – except when you browse through lists, which is speedy and usable. The overall interaction with the player is not that awesome, though. Each press on a button is coupled with a waiting time, which will vary somehow, between a few milliseconds and a few Mississipis depending on where you are, what you do, your nationality and whether or not the D3 likes the type of music you’ve loaded onto it. It seems to disagree with my political tendencies as well, but who could blame it (for the ones who lack the type of irony that has been bestowed on me by a drunken fairy, lag is random. Sometime it’s there, sometime it’s not. It’s like a woman on that time of the month. Don’t expect clear answers or any form of civilised cooperation).

- Hooray, we’ve had the whole of two songs without lag –

The base interface is also relatively responsive. You feel stutter and hesitation when you move to the application drawer and you swipe your thumb up and down. Nothing unusable, but compared to my butter smooth HTC it’s bring buckets of sadness in my heart. Again, there will not comparison (lag), it would be unfair to the D3. Maybe when Froyo arrives…
The new firmware is therefore a good step in the right direction. A small step, but a good one. A Chinese one. One that starts a long journey with the clear view that somehow, behind all the hills lay an Eden where the audiophile can happily rest on the lawn and enjoy the pure bliss of the Cowon sound.

The Cowon sound
The Cowon “lag” D3 as we should rechristen it, has some redeeming quality that were probably slightly overlooked during the initial review where my attention and frustration was focused on the inability to get it to simply work with a minimal amount of consistency. Amongst these quality, sound remains the one that comes to mind immediately. And let me be clear on this – as it’s been mentioned in the initial review, but then again it strikes me everytime I use it:

THE SOUND IS BETTER THAN ON THE S9. THE SOUND IS AWESOME –
AHHHHH. We are on, gentlemen!!!

Now, I’m not going to do any of the fancy stuff that dfkt does with the machines and the graphs and the intelligent comments on bass roll off and all that jazz that provides factual information to support subjective claims, I’ll just state it as I hear it: the D3 sound is nothing short of AWESOME. I find the mid-range richer than on the S9 and the overall “attack” to be more present, more involving. Bass is also better, clearer and generous. I LOVE the sound. I just love it. I just… I mean, the sound is…

A few minutes on the S9 – for comparison- confirm that beyond belief. Listening to specific song now, I can clearly hear some instruments that are mudded on the S9 (percussions). Soundstage on the D3 is fantastic. PS: did I mention that the S9 is a speed demon compared to the D3?
It is perfectly possible that Cowon updated the sound chipset, and it definitively is a welcomed improvement to a set a strong Cowon point.
- Still no lag – finger crossed!!! –

Other additional comments
I am not crazy about the power button being used as a lock for the player. Waking up the player when the screen is off is a bit of a miss and hit affair since it can only be done using the power button (tapping on the screen does not wake the player)…

On freezes and lag
A pattern seems to emerge (caution here, this is not a testing session, rather an overall zealous comment about some of the product’s behavioural issues) around freezes and lag. It seems these are more frequent:
1 – during the player set-up phase and the initial loading (SD card included)
2 – during the first few minutes (15?) where the player is just turned on.
Could it be that it “settles” down with use a little? Possibly… possibly.
Lag is still present though, even if rarer.

Conclusion
I do sincerely hope that Cowon releases firmware updates at a regular pace and that they use Froyo as the base for the next one. That would (lag) in my view fix a whole lot of issues with the player. I will not retract my comments from the initial review. The firmware update that have been provided so far do not make the player any more usable and it is still amazing that they released such a software stack - we all could have waited a few more months, frankly -, which is a shame since the sound is better than the S9’s. You will have noticed that throughout writing this review (listening to the player for around an hour), there have been consistent instances of lag during music playback. That is simply not acceptable for something that should be the base function of the player.

The Cowon die-hard will jump on the player, I am sure (I have), and wait for the firmware upgrades and enjoy the bliss that comes with stellar sound and impeccable video playback. As for me, I have 24hrs to decide whether or not I want to wait through a series of improbable upgrades, waiting for stability improvements, performance improvements, gapless playback and the arrival of a Frozen Yoghurt as the icing on the cake!

The D3 is the most frustrating piece of hardware/software ever produced by Cowon (or it is perhaps in the same bucket as the O2 or the V5? I would not know) and it will test with unashamedly the faith of all Cowon devotees: it does the “Cowon” part better than any other Cowon player I’ve ever been lucky enough to listen to and own, but fails miserably at being agreeable and usable.

PS: Yeah, Cowon, send me any 7” tablet you try to produce. I’m keen. I won’t do a review though, I’ll stick to the testing part!!!!
PS2: Still no freezes so far (lag) with the latest firmware!!! Looks like we're ready to never use that reset button again!

[doniago]

What an epic review!

[WAI]

great review but try updating to Firmware v1.23 and see if it helps

[globiboulga]

Originally Posted by Who Am I?

great review but try updating to Firmware v1.23 and see if it helps

I will, as soon as I can get it out of freeze mode!!!

[snakebite2]

It is unfortunate that these problems exist. Seems like Cowon is working fast with the updates. It launched like what 2weeks ago? Hopefully Cowon will fix all these problems before they release it to the U.S.

[qwerty622003]

Not sure if Cowon have changed anything between printing their user manual and releasing the D3 but it should have a reset just below the speaker on the back RH bottom corner. Not that i have a D3, i just have a copy of the user manual

[globiboulga]

Originally Posted by qwerty622003

Not sure if Cowon have changed anything between printing their user manual and releasing the D3 but it should have a reset just below the speaker on the back RH bottom corner. Not that i have a D3, i just have a copy of the user manual

Indeed. That helps. We are now installing Firmware update number 2 - all of that, may I remind everyone, in less than 8 hours of having the player. I barely plugged earphones in that thing.
Done. We're not smooth but we're better.

[Digital Pride]

"A piece of s***" Really? Don't you think you're exaggerating just a little bit? Don't get me wrong, the system is laggy and has some bugs to iron out, but to say that it is the WORST is in my opinion not very objective and as someone who knows Cowon's history a little short sighted.
Cowon's players are nutorious for being buggy at first release, from the X5 to the J3. While it is an annoyance to have to deal with bugs, we put up with it for two reasons-one because Cowon ALWAYS improves their players through numerous firmware updates, two its players media playback is SUPERB almost bar none. While I admit that it is a bit suprising that the player has this many bugs(or so you say) many if not all of these issues will corrected with firmware updates.
I apologize if I seem combative but I find the new D3 to be a device with a great deal of potential with the possibilty of being Cowon's best player yet. So I ask that we not condemn it just yet until we see what the finished product will be.

[Kizune]

I agree with the OP that the D3 sucks in its current state. Why on earth did Cowon a release a product which obviously is unusable and fails on very simple tasks?
I'd rather buy a fully developed product instead of a device which always freezes and lags.

However, I think the D3 will become better after some FW releases. That's Cowon's strategy after all.


Digital Pride:

You took the J3 as example of Cowon's strategy, but this isn't true IMO. The J3 was very well-developed on its release because Cowon learned from its predecessor, the S9. They already had a solid base here.

[snakebite2]

The player certainly has potential. I will reserve my judgment until the player is officially released in the U.S.
WHy is your name Digital Pride? Do you work for Cowon or are you just a fan of their products?

[TechyGuyDR]

So sad that they released a product that clearly wasn't ready for primetime. Hopefully they do fix it with firmware updates.

[Digital Pride]

Originally Posted by snakebite2

The player certainly has potential. I will reserve my judgment until the player is officially released in the U.S.
WHy is your name Digital Pride? Do you work for Cowon or are you just a fan of their products?

Lol. No I don't work for Cowon(unfortunately). I'm just a big fan of their products. Hence my username Digital Pride. I guess you can say I'm the Cowon equivalent to an Apple fan boy... let's make that a Cowon fan boy.

[simmo]

Having one on pre-order I am most disappointed to hear the rumours are true. The freezing is of great concern to me, so much so that I will probably cancel my order until more reviews with the new firmware. It should have been better tested. We have just came out of a recession and expecting people to pay £280 for this will do little for Cowon which is a great shame. Why is the firmware not fixing these issues?

[Blade]

Nice informative and... honest review.

Personally, I would not jump into conclusions for the D3 just yet. This player was just released fresh from the factory... and so, it has to mature a bit (via >9000 firmware updates). In the review, it was mentioned that the D3 handled 1080P video content butter-smooth, but it struggled with the basic menus? This (at least for me), does not seem to be a hardware limit, but rather under developed software code. OR... it might be something else. How much of a possibility would it be that the processor becomes underclocked while in the menu sections, and then switched back up to full speed while 720P/1080P playback?

All in all, let this player grow out just like the S9 did a while back.