Cowon C2 4 GB MP4 Player

I ordered a Cowon C2 (4Gb) on Flipkart.com last Saturday and got it delivered by Bluedart yesterday on schedule as promised. The player is small, extremely pocketable and looks amazing (mine is white). Although the UI is not very intuitive, I honestly don't find it to be as bad as some suggest. The sound output, though, is awesome and possibly the best I have ever heard on a portable media player! Cowon rocks!

Credentials: Owned a Cowon D2 and S9 for 1.5 years each, and C2 for 6 months. Own(ed) a variety of earphones - Sennheiser, Klipsch and Grado as well. Wrote a decently received piece on recommended audio products on a blog once.

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I lost my beloved Cowon S9 (and my right femur, but that's another story) in a car crash. Desperately needed a player to get me by in hospital and recuperation and didn't have too much money so opted for the C2 in the hope that the sound quality would remain the same, if not the construction.

Well, the C2 met that requirement pretty well.

The Cowon C2 has stellar sound quality. It's got excellent customization options for the equalizer, and plenty of presets that don't ruin the music. The bass effect, for one, doesn't sound artificial. It plays FLAC - the reason why I was sold onto Cowon in 2008 and remain loyal (even though most players these days do) and video wise can handle any format thrown at it.

So, yeah, if you're looking for a PMP at low cost but need stellar audio quality, the C2 is a great option. I bought a 4GB version and the case from Cowon's official India site, and got a couple of 16GB cards as well, and it worked out nicely, under INR 10000.

Now, the bad part - the UI. I've never been a fan of Cowon's UI but considered myself one of the as-long-as-it-produces-great-sound-I-care-bollocks-about-not-as-easy-as-iPhone-experience, proudly. My previous players, the D2 and S9, were amazing players with mediocre UIs. But I loved them, and still consider the S9 one of the best players in the market.

But oh, Cowon C2. The UI that could be given as a test at Google. "Figure out how to change equaliser settings on this in less than 3 minutes and we'll give you the job". The C2 has the most annoying feature I've seen in any UI - a stylized vinyl version of the cower art (with grooves!) spinning! Not only does it look pixelated, but very gimmicky and distracting.

Then there are the unnecessary screens when you switch the player on, like 'Siesta Time' or 'Happy memories' or 'Thinking of you'. I mean, THINKING OF YOU. Not what you need when you're going to listen to Symphony X. The UI is terribly hard to navigate. It took me three days to figure out how to get to the file browsing system. THREE DAYS. And there was no help in the supplied manual, either.

Then there are frequent freezes. A pet peeve being - after charging, when you remove the player, it sometimes still shows 'battery charging' and refuses to move to play mode. The lack of a reset button makes things all the more annoying.

So, summing up:

PROS:

1. Cowon's stellar audio quality
2. Audio customization options and presets
3. Can handle any format thrown at it - audio and video
4. Good construction - all said and done, it's a good LOOKING player.
5. microSD card slot - the only thing the Cowon S9 lacked.

CONS:

1. PATHETIC user interface. Difficult to learn and use.
2. Frequent freezes, exacerbated by next point.
3. Lack of a reset button
4. Nothing great about bundled earphones (no surprise there)
5. Gimmicky (cheesy wallpapers, spinning LP during playing)
6. No track info available: So if you spent hours tagging your collection, the C2 will render that useless since all you'll see is song name, artist name and album name. Not even the bitrate.
7. Button placement : I might be nitpicking, but the buttons are slightly difficult to use in the dark. The S9 was very easy, buttons were distinct and well laid out. Here, the power, menu, v , v- buttons are all in one depressed line, which makes finding the right button a wee bit tedious.

NEITHER PRO NOR CON:

1. A speaker. It's loud enough, but I find it rather useless.

All in all, its great sound quality at a cheap price vs a terrible UI. Looking back, I should have just bought a J3 on EMI, in retrospect. Anyhow, it works and provides great sound, with my Klipsch S4 or Grado SR325.

I own this baby for the past 5 months , and i have to say i ve been impressed .

I ordered this through flipkart and it was delivered in 3 straight days , hats off to them .

Well i have owned a couple of mp3 players in the past ( ipod , a samsung q1) , but i have to say this is one of the finest choices i ve made :)

The UI is not that worst , you just have to get used to it . And firmware updates will make it easier to use

Cowon are known for the sound quality , and i d say this device is a killer device . It looks so cute and tiny but i ve got to say that the sound it delivers would put a lot of mp3 players to shame .

It has got so many equalizers that you can use . Yes , the headphones are a bit of a turnoff so if you could invest in a good pair of headphones , then it would just enhance the experience .

Its got a lot of features such a video , flash , text files , pictures etc etc etc , but if you are looking at sound quality , then this is your device .

I know that Cowon is not a household name , but after having used one of their products , i am sure that if i ll be buying any other mp3 player in the near future , i am sure that this is the company that i d turn to .

In Short , sweet and spectacular and a pleasure to the ears .

I am reviewing after 3 months form purchase....

First of all, flipkart.com is a best site for online sale in India. i purchased it with very low cost over the market. flipkart delivery and customer care support is awesome.

NO, about this player...

Look and Feel :
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first i afraid about the size. but it too handy. nice look, nice plastic and steel mount. the product looks good. but its steel surface may scratches soon. so, i bought the leather case, which protects better.
i can give 4/5 rating for Look & Feel

UI Related :
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this what little disappointing me. its UI looks good. but the background color not good. UI design is not in smart way. its not fallowing proper order for navigation. some times upward, downward.... really its so much of confusing. i using since last three months but still i am some times confusing.
there is need lot of improvements in UI (for example, there is no file delete option, the search functionality is not working)

Resistive touch is another drawback, but in resistive touch way, its touch functionality is some better than other resistive touches.
i can give 2/5 rating for UI

Music :
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This is the big advantage of COWON. i am a big music lover, i need the good quality and more customizable tuning. its sound quality is mind blowing. awesome quality of music than others. even its better than iPod touch(for quality of music). its BBE & BBE+ are giving clear sound. its supporting most of audio codecs formats.
the bundled ear phones also good. not that much of bad. its giving clear voice with some kind bass effect.

i can give 5/5 rating for MUSIC

Video :
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i agree that it is a full featured music player with basic video ability. but the screen quality of video is good. its supporting to .avi format which gives comfortable. but the drawback is we need the JetAudio software for video compressing to support the player.

i can give 3/5 rating for VIDEO

Other Features :
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the features of this player is also good, mostly it support the external micro SD cards up-to 32gb
the drawback is its doesn't have the Bluetooth.

i can give 4/5 rating for Features

Finally i am concern its price, and its quality.... i am recommending that, if you are a music lover, and you need the great player for great quality of music, then go for it. but if you need more than music, then go for else.

so finally i am giving 4/5 to concern it music quality and its price range.

i hate compressed mp3's and listen to them only when i don't have a choice, so most upmarket mp3 players don't suit me and cowon players are the reigning kings of handling open source uncompressed music formats. and since a typical 5 minute long flac or ape format music takes about 40-50 mb of space. flac fanboys always run out of space with puny 4-8gb space provided on usual mp3 players. cowon c2 comes to the rescue with an expansion slot that supports 32gb micro sd card. and when it comes to soud quality, boy! it reigns! and i don't understand the fuss about supposedly complicated user interface that people keep talking about. i found it pretty intuitive and easy to use. took me less than 10 minutes to figure out how most things work on the player.but that might have been because i am not used to ipods and suchlikes and therefore didn't have a notion of what an 'easy' ui might look like! with extraordinary sound quality, killer pre-configured equalizer settings, flac-ape-ogg support,long battery life and nice ui, this music player rocks! only complaint would be the cheesy themes, but then again i don't use them any ways!