Review: Cowon D2+
Reading a post in the archlinux forums, and complaining about the not-so-stellar battery life on my 2 year old ipod, I decided to give Cowon D2+ a try.
Pros:
- Small (Weighs much less than my 5th generation 80GB ipod, and is about 1/3 the size)
- Touchscreen (Although fairly small (2in x 1.8in I believe), it’s a touchscreen.
- Sound. Recommended for it’s excellent sound quality, it does sound pretty nice, even with the stock ear buds.
- Native support of many different formats. Ogg, flac, mp3, mp4 and flash all supported out of the box.
- Expandable. 16GB internal flash memory, with an SD slot, for limit-less expansion.
- Cheap. 160 dollars for the 16GB version.
- Customizable. Haven’t played around with it, but you can change the skin of the interface.
- Mass Storage Device. Shows in Windows and Linux as a Mass Storage Device. Big plus. I hated using itunes/gtkpod if I just wanted to add some songs to my ipod.
Cons:
- Small. I know this was listed as a pro above, but the screen is almost too small to be a touchscreen. I have to look at the player to position my finger correctly to hit the skip button.
- Cheap. Again, listed above as a pro, but this is more of a construction aspect. It’s plastic…. All plastic. I know ipod’s aren’t exactly rugged, but I’ve dropped my ipod a number of times, and it still works fine. My D2+ dropped about 2 feet, and the power button broke off, making it pretty hard to turn on/off the player.
- Interface. Not really a con, but it’s just different from any interface I’ve ever used. You have to double tap anything to get to the next menu, and the prev/pause/next buttons cover up the name of the song…. Not very good placement.
Even with all the flaws, it’s still a nice little player. If I were able to return it, I probably would, but I’m going to have to stick with it for now.