Cowon A3

Portable music players with huge storage space are always on one’s hit list. But finding the right one has never been an easy task as the market has seen a big revolution and iPod Touch. It has now set new benchmarks for future generation PMPs through it excellent interface and by integrating various other features although it still needs improvement on the sound quality. Cowon players are though known for their sound quality and Cowon A3 is no exception.

Cowon A3 specifications :

• Dimensions : 5.2″ x 0.9″ x 3.1″
• Display : 4″ TFT screen
• Hard Disk capacity : 60GB
• PDF Viewer, Text Viewer
• Image formats supported : BMP,GIF,PNG,RAW,JPEG,TIFF
• Audio formats supported : AAC,MP3,WAV,WMA,FLAC etc.
• Video formats supported : AVI,VOB,MPEG,XviD,DivX etc.
• Rechargeable Lithium battery
• Approx. Price : $360

The Cowon A3 is the successor of Cowon A2 which had gained a lot of reputation for itself. The Cowon A3 comes in two hard disk capacities, a 30GB model and a 60GB one. The Cowon A3 scores high due to its big screen but loses out on its thickness which stands at 0.9″ which is not slim by any means.

The design of the Cowon A3 is pretty simple and it is a rectangle with screen occupying most of the space and the buttons occupying the rest of it on the right side of it. There isn’t any fancy or eye-catching about it and also the screen is not touchscreen which is a bit of disappointment.

The display is a big 4″ display which evens beats the iPod Touch screen size. The display is clarity is amazing and it is a pleasure to watch videos on it. But on the downside the screen is very prone to fingerprints and scratches.The buttons on the right side of the screen are mainly for navigation and controlling various media player controls. The joystick isn’t very friendly to use though.

The player supports a huge range of formats which is really good. Having wide range of format support is never bad but you should stick to a couple of them which offer you better battery backup and offer good quality without taking up too much space. The audio file sorting mechanism in Cowon A3 is certainly not quite what we see in today’s latest generation devices as it has limited sorting options.

The performance is the forte of the player. It offers exceptionally good video playback and equally good audio sound quality through in the earphones. The external stereo speakers ain’t bad either and do the job quite well.

Some of the drawbacks of the player include no WiFi support, no touchscreen and the display is highly reflective. Also the player looses out on looks. But apart from that the player simply rocks!

Pros :

• Excellent video playback
• Amazing audio sound quality
• Big and great display clarity
• Wide range of formats supported

Cons :

• Screen prone to fingerprints and scratches
• No WiFi support
• Joystick is not friendly
• No touchscreen

Final Thoughts

The Cowon A3 has superb audio and video quality that will leave you spellbound. It manages to get almost everything right except for a few features which off-late have made their entry to PMPs like WiFi. If you do not care about the cool interface of iPhone or don’t need anything more than a great PMP then go ahead with Cowon A3!

My Rating : 4/5