| Cowon iAudio 7 |
| Written by Luck Kanthatham | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 17 July 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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With battery life of up to 60 hours, you can enjoy your music for days and even weeks without recharging. Bring this player along on your next business trip and leave the charger at home. The article has been updated with the battery test.Introduction
The iAudio 7 continues a long line of Cowon's iAudio series of media players. And this is the best one yet. If you are familiar with the iAudio line, you might know that the previous version of the player was the first player equipped with a .85” 4gb hard drive. However, with the iAudio 7, the hard drive is now replaced with flash memory. This eliminates one of the main complaints users had with the iAudio 6, which was the slow load time. The media now plays instantly thanks to the flash memory. Initial impressionThe first thing I noticed when opened the box was that the player looked almost exactly the same as the iAudio 6. Since I didn't have its predecessor in-house to do a side-by-side comparison, I would have to say the two look very much like each other. It was only that the the previous version had the big “COWON” name labeled across the top of the player.
User InterfaceThe main menu of the player consists of icons lined up diagonally with each representing a unique function. With the swing-touch system, you use your finger to glide through the diagonal bar to cycle through each function. You then use the play/pause button to select or use the record/back button to go back up a menu level.
The swing-touch system is rather intuitive. It worked nicely on the iAudio 6 and still performs well on the iAudio 7. My only complaint is that it can be too sensitive. On many occasions, I mistakenly made a selection without even touching the surface. You can adjust the touch sensitivity via the settings menu. I prefer the senstivity set to "low." FeaturesIf you are looking for features in a small package, the iAudio 7 would not disappoint. It comes in 2 variation: 4gb (silver) and 8gb (red). Like many of the players in its class, “tiny” supports the usual popular audio formats like MP3, WMA, ASF. However, it goes one better than other players with the support for FLAC, WAV and OGG audio formats. Many sites reported that the player supports AAC. However, I have confirmed with Cowon that none of their products supports the format.
On the video front, there is support for MPEG4 and XviD. Of course, to the iAudio fans, this is nothing new. The iAudio 6 supports all the mentioned codecs a year ago. But it's just good to know that now all the files in these various formats can now play instantly now that the player uses flash memory. Performance
Let's start with the “meat” then I'll cover the “gravy” later. The “meat” for this media player is audiophile-quality audio. Period. The video playback, FM radio, line-in recording are considered “gravy”; they're just nice to have. Audio playback
The sound quality of the player remains top notch. I would even go out on a limb and say that it sounds way better than my iPod; and I'm a BIG iPod fan. The 5 band equalizer gives the user the freedom to fine tune the music experience. There are 6 audio presets: Normal, Rock, Pop, Jazz, classic, Vocal and User. Adding to that is the BBE sound enhancement, which enhances the audio quality without making it sound unnatural. This means that the player can make your run-of-the-mill 128k mp3 sound CD-quality. Other sound enhancements include Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, and 3D surround support. Again, nothing new here, the iAudio 6 has all these too.
For those of you who prefer the Ogg format, the player supports up to q10 on the Ogg chart, which is 500kb/s. However, if you want to save space it doesn't make sense to use q10 compression anyway. I'd only go up to q6. Using my Shure e2c earphones, I detected very little difference between q6-compressed files and FLAC. Video playbackThough the player can play video files, I am not impressed with the quality of the output on the 1.3” screen. And this is hardly the player's fault. It just that watching videos playing at 15fps on a screen this tiny is impossible to give the user a full theater experience. OK, maybe when the player supports Dolby Digital AC-3 or Dolby TrueHD, I might have to eat my words. But for now, I'm not impressed.
Audio recording
The iAudio 7 can record audio from multiple sources: line-in, built-in mic and FM radio. But whatever the source, the only format available is WMA. You can adjust the quality of the recording from 64kbps to 128kbps. Also, the quality can be adjusted independently per audio source. Other features
Besides the mentioned features, the iAudio 7 also packs the following features: FM radio, photo viewer, and text viewer. These features are what I refer to as “gravy”. They're nice to have but they're not the player's strong points. Basically, you shouldn't be buying it because of these features. Text viewer can display text files in ASCII format. If you text files are in English, there should be no problem displaying them here. However, if you have a text file in a different language, you have to switch the player's display language first, in order to view the file properly. Otherwise, gibberish is all you are going to get.
Along with the photo viewer, the player can also act as a USB host. This means that you can transfer photos directly from your camera to the player without the need for a computer. With up to 8gb of storage, you no longer need to bring your computer along to offload pictures from your camera on your next vacation. Podcast Ready
Battery lifeI was not able to get a accurate measurement on the battery life. I know this is the main feature of the iAudio 7. According to the manufacturer, the battery life should be close to 60 hours. The battery was on full charge when I received it about a week ago, and it is still going strong. I used it casually to play all kinds of media usually about an hour at a time. My iPods would usually give up a few days back. I will update this review with a more accurate measurement of the battery life performance. Update: After two days of testing, I was able to get only about 40 hours of play time out of the player. In my test, I loaded the player up with 650 mp3 files with various bit rates. I used the default EQ settings and the LCD was turned off. Update 2: James from Cowon has informed me that the battery tests performed on the iAudio 7 were done with the following conditions:
Audio Test Conditions:
Video Test Conditions:
ConclusionFeature-wise, the iAudio 7 is almost identical to the previous version. The only two differences are the flash memory replacement and the 60 hours of battery life. So does this mean you shouldn't consider buying the iAudio 7? Not at all. You should! The player is what the iAudio 6 should have been in the first place.
If you are looking for an audiophile-quality audio player in a small package, stop looking and just get the iAudio 7. There is no reason to look anywhere else. You cannot find a better sounding player in a package smaller than this. Pros
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Comments (35)
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Caspar
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Hiya, I had the D2 but sold it because of its controls. Dynamic playlist doesnt work for me. Only 256 songs (?) and deleting is song by song? I had 12GB = 3500 songs and managing a playlist is undoable. Why not complete folders in the playlist and why not the old G3 play this folder (and all underlying? How about the 7? Also the ... DPL? Cheers. |
Orren
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Just got the Iaudio 7 for my wife who has a macbook. We didn't seem to be able to get the music files transferred. Do we go through finder or the imusic library? |
drabu
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Thanks for the review. I loaded mine with MP3s by dragging from ITunes into the iAudio Music folder. The names of the files show up on the player as they are in the Finder's Music folder. But I have no way of seeing artist/album/etc. info. Does "import data only" mean I'm stuck with this limitation? Or is there any way around it? Do you have a screen shot of the iAudio that shows its navigability through genres/titles/etc? This inability to navigate pretty much turns this nifty player into an IPod Shuffle. Am I going to have to get an IPod?  |
Luck Kanthatham
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drabu, when I was using it, I didn't have any problems displaying the song information at all. You might want to look at the settings on the player. If you have any problems, you can always contact their technical support department. They are top-notch. |
kai
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Can anybody confirm that the iAudio 7 can organize and sort music files by ID3 tag? I know almost all mp3 players nowadays will, but I also know that some of the past iAudio mp3 players can't, they only sort by filename and folders that you make yourself...sorting by artist and album and all that is pretty important to me, and I want to make sure that the iaudio can before I buy |
Gregory House
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Does the iAudio7 have a memory (expansion) slot? Memory will only become less costly with time.. and they can be used 'like' CDs for carrying collections in my car. Does it support SHN or APE yet? My *must* have criteria (1) MUST play FLAC (2) MUST focus on audio fidelity (3) must have decent battery life Would be nice to read id info from FLAC I have a large collection of CDs and have zero interest raping them into mp3. FLAC or no sale. it looks like iAudio7 for me |
Gregory House
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With default cookie settings in firefox2 (allow all) I cannot register vexing error: http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/613/clipboard17uo5.jpg |
Gregory House
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Is the D2 on par audiophile-wise with the iAudio7? I see it has an SD slot. Though 4gig limit is implied by the marketing image: http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9393/d207xl9.jpg |
luckk
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Gregory, it does not have any expansion slot and no, it doesn't support APE or SHN. 1) yes, flac is supported 2) oh yes. 3) 60 hours is pretty long I don't remember if it reads the ID from FLAC or not. But it should. I never reviewed the D2. You might want to consider browsing through http://iaudiophile.net. Regarding registration error, I'm working on that. |
Johanna
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Ive been looking out for a new mp3 player for a while, and the iAudio 7 is on the top of my list. I have one simple question: does the i7 have shuffle mode and such? Been looking all over the net without being able to find the answer. -_-;; |
Chris
said:
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Will the iAudio 7 put out enough power for my over-the-ear Grado / Sennheiser / AKG headphones? I'm worried it won't put out enough power to produce decent midbass from the headphones. This is the main reason why I haven't yet purchased the iAudio7, and no one from Cowon has replied with an answer to that question. Can you help?? |
Alex
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Great review really, it gives a great ide of the player, i only have 1 question that you don´t mention in your review, does it has a "shuffle mode"? because i really want to buy an mp3 player but it has to have that "feature" that i suppose to be a "standard" feauture but i red that it doesn´t has it, so only to be sure........ thanks |
Alex
said:
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Great review really, it gives a great ide of the player, i only have 1 question that you don´t mention in your review, does it has a "shuffle mode"? because i really want to buy an mp3 player but it has to have that "feature" that i suppose to be a "standard" feauture but i red that it doesn´t has it, so only to be sure........ thanks |
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