Cowon A3 unboxed

Although Archos may have stolen some of its thunder with the less-expensive, arguably more full-featured 605 WiFi, Cowon is still hoping to ride the wave of buzz that followed its A3 PMP's launch at CES, as the first players are finally finding their way into consumers' hands almost a year later. Gadgetaholic's already got its hands on the 30GB version of this 4-inch device, and has posted some nice unboxing photos along with a few shots of the interface. Keep reading to check out the icon-based home screen, and then hit up the Read link for the full gallery plus some brief impressions....

[kyle allen @ Dec 13th 2007 2:03AM]

oooh mobile tv!! i remember back when "where in the world is carmin sandiego" was a tv game show and they used to give the winners a pocket tv... i totally wanted one of those. than there was "where in TIME is carmen sandiego" that was awesome...

[Jesse S @ Dec 13th 2007 2:20AM]

So the Archos 605, which has more storage space, less features, and absolutely atrocious sound quality (OH MY GOD, THE HISSING...MAKE IT STOP!) is more full-featured than the A3?

What?

[JohnTitor @ Dec 13th 2007 3:52AM]

ok you named more space, but lets not forget about touch screen, widgets, WiFi features; wireless content downloading, web browsing, syncing, and even some [dumb] games. The A3 does have a radio and TV(which I hope to find out soon what it is) .The 605's audio isn't as good as an A2 (so probably A3 as well) but I haven't heard any hissing.

[Craig @ Dec 13th 2007 4:31PM]

I've owned a 605 for months now and have no complaints whatsoever about the audio-quality, and I'm usually pretty picky about my audio.

If you're getting hissing from your 605, I'd suggest you do something about it because that's not normal.

[Jesse S @ Dec 13th 2007 5:00PM]

I don't have one, a friend does. My IEM's are very sensitive. It hisses like crazy. And it sounds terrible compared to my X5. (I tested it using a couple of albums I ripped myself using EAC then encoded them to an MP3 at V0 quality.)

[Dustin Frazier @ Dec 13th 2007 2:33AM]

Cowon needs to get a fuggin move on. They were doing awesome back in the day. Now it's only big pmps or tiny flash daps or 4gig hdd players. What happened to the iAudio X5 followup? I loved that dap. They need to get the X6 or a similar product out the door . A pocketable product with at least 80gigs is what many of us are looking for. Cowon is known for their sound quality and features. For me, their software has always been great and ahead of its time. Why did they cut their high capacity lineup out? On the upside, they still support ogg and flac.

Jesse S: Use different cans.

[mac @ Dec 13th 2007 2:48AM]

Pretty much everyone and their mother over stateside has been waiting for an X5 followup, and yet Cowon still has no clue when (or even if) they're going to make one. They mostly care about the Korean/East Asian market, and almost no one over there apparently wants something like the X5 anymore, which is just too bad.

The D2 is pretty cool though (I own it), and the A3 is basically a moderately upgraded A2, which had great reviews. And if you want to knock Archos some, you can always mention how you have to pay for "extra" codecs.

[LordFarkward @ Dec 13th 2007 3:14AM]

same here... waiting for the (supposed) x7... :(

my good ol'x5l has been with me for more than 2 years now, the sound quality is still amazing compared to other mp3 players nowadays, but the screen... grrrr cowon! hurry up please! i don't wonna get the 605 wifi (too big) nor the ipod touch (too little memory, doesn't support OGG/FLAC) and i'm getting impatient!

[Jesse S @ Dec 13th 2007 1:47PM]

I use LiveWires (custom IEM's) and AKG K240 Sextets, something wrong with those?

[Dustin Frazier @ Dec 14th 2007 10:53AM]

No, but with the Shure IEMs and Grado cans I use I don't get that hiss.

[Mike W @ Dec 13th 2007 2:49AM]

I've had the 60gb version of this since Monday. While the format compatibility line up is impressive, the device simply doesn't have the processing power to play 720p H.264 files in MKV containers. In fact the device won't even try to play files using the H.264 AVC HP, but it will try to play H.264 AVC MP, just very poorly.

That said, the screen is awesome and the sound quality is fantastic, it's just a shame it didn't live up to it's promise of being able to play 720p MKV files (so you can output it over the component cables to an HDTV).

[Dustin Frazier @ Dec 13th 2007 3:00AM]

How do you like the software that comes with it? Is it a sample Jet audio or what?

[David @ Dec 13th 2007 3:17AM]

Bummer.. I was looking to get my HD on.

[LordFarkward @ Dec 13th 2007 4:06AM]

Bummer.. I was looking to get my HarD on.

[Ganesh Kumar @ Dec 13th 2007 9:51PM]

Where did you buy this A3 and for how much? Also is there any place in store where you can see the A3 in person?

[Vossa @ Feb 4th 2008 11:38AM]

Hi there,

I just ordered a 60gig A3 unit, should be here in a few days. What is the highest quality video one can expect to play out of the component video? I will be editing my own video and can output a series of HD formats. Is the windows media 9 about the best it can play? is the H.264 capability completely broken? I plan on using it for portable video presentations using a 720p capable projector with component video in.. tnx for any help you can offer ;-)

[Gary @ Dec 13th 2007 2:55AM]

ok.... now how about putting a power user sized HD in there? 60gb is a bit low if you want to keep a bunch of movies on there as well as your music collection.

This thing is pretty big, couldnt they shove 80 or 160 in there? (archos did it!)

[Wootz @ Dec 13th 2007 8:30AM]

One other annoyance that even if you do have HD files to play, the drive is FAT32 so you can't have files larger than 2gb on it anyway.

[Wootz @ Dec 13th 2007 8:26AM]

"How do you like the software that comes with it? Is it a sample Jet audio or what?"

On the CD, you just get the manual and JetAudio. I don't think much of it to be honest as I generally just copy files to the drive directly.

[Richard @ Dec 13th 2007 9:04AM]

The A3 is more about file format support than anything, The Cowon A3 plays just about anything, ogg,mp/2/3/4,xvid,DivX,mkv (yes mkv the format anime fans love) and more. Add a 800x480 display with a host USB port and you have something that is a pretty nifty package.

[colin @ Dec 13th 2007 8:58PM]

Does anyone other than Cowon make a mp3 player with the 30 second skip option for fast forwarding?