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Zune HD

Jason Cross — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:30:40 -0500

If at first you don't succeed...

Try as it might, Microsoft has never been able to put a dent in Apple's marketshare for portable media players. The previous Zune players were pretty good, and the Zune desktop software finally got there after a few revisions, but neither one had the "wow factor" necessary to pull the masses away from the iPod juggernaut. With the Zune HD (and accompanying Zune 4.0 software), Microsoft has finally delivered the kind of truly exciting device that should make even the most ardent iPod fan take notice. It's sleek, small, thin, and surprisingly light with the rare quality of looking as good as Apple's products without looking just like Apple's products. There are only three buttons: power/sleep on top, a home button beneath the screen on the front, and a "media button" on the upper left edge.

It's also the first product to hit the market with Nvidia's Tegra APX 2600 system-on-chip, which packs a pair of ARM11 cores with lots of individual processors for audio and video encoding and decoding, 2D graphics, 3D graphics (with OpenGL ES 2.0 support), etc. This is paired with an 3.3" OLED screen that conforms to the 16:9 ratio of HD movies with a resolution of 480x272 (the same as the PSP, only smaller). The multi-touch display is as accurate and responsive as any we've used, and downright gorgeous. Blacks are perfectly black, colors are bright and vibrant, and there's no smearing or ghosting effect. It's the first mainstream portable with support for HD radio, at a time when many other portable media players aren't even including an FM tuner. You can, as with previous Zunes, tag a radio song and put it in your cart, so you can download it later. With the HD AV dock (sold separately) it can output 720p video to your TV over HDMI, which looks pretty darn great. You can, of course, also play all your music, podcasts, and HD radio through the dock as well. If anything, we could complain that this slick little gizmo is actually too small. With a screen so pretty, you want to something a tad larger to watch movies and play games on.

This is an impressive and surprisingly energy-efficient hardware package. The specs say 33 hours of music or 8.5 hours of video, but like all battery specs, this is a pipe dream that don't reflect real usage scenarios. Our battery lasted for just over 10 hours of heavy and varied use with Wi-Fi enabled, which is better than most devices of this type.

If the modern gadget market has taught us anything, it's that the most amazing hardware in the world is useless without a great interface. Fortunately, the Zune developers have hit a home run with the Zune HD's touch UI. The home screen shows a simple list of categories (music, videos, pictures, radio, marketplace, social, podcasts, internet, apps, and settings). Drilling down into each of these is clear and intuitive, with left and right finger-swipes to swap to different categories, and vertical swipes to fly up and down the list of content. Long lists (artists and albums) have an alphabet jump-menu that can take you right to a specific letter. The real magic happens when you tap the left edge of the home screen, swipe to the right, or press the home button to "flip" it over to the Quickplay menu that shows your recent history, new stuff, and "pinned" content. You can pin anything there - apps, podcasts, albums, artists, songs, playlists, even web bookmarks - by holding down your finger on the item and choosing "pin to quickplay." It's a simple and elegant solution a big problem with mutli-funtion portable devices: getting to your most frequently used stuff quickly. There are a few niggling issues, like a slight inconsistency in the way one backs out of different screens. The "back" arrow present in some places should simply always be there, and always take you back one level.

The web browser is surprisingly good, too. It's not quite as fast as Safari on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and it doesn't support Flash, but it works great with even complex websites and all the expected zoom and pinch and drag gestures work. It's based on Internet Explorer, but you'd never know it, especially if you're used to the abomination that is IE for Windows Mobile. It's another reason why we find the device perhaps a touch too small; the on-screen keyboard works well, but is a bit cramped when you hold the 16:9 screen vertically. Text scaling could be a little bit smoother, and it would be easier to read some sites on a slightly larger screen.

If you're within range of Wi-Fi, the Zune HD gets a bit more useful. Browse any artist in your music collection and a little down arrow at the bottom of the screen will extend the page with a discography of that artist's work on the marketplace. You can stream or purchase tracks and albums right there on the device. Of course, you can browse the music and apps marketplace in the traditional manner, by choosing "marketplace" from the main menu. Interestingly, the "squirting" function of previous Zune models is now gone. You used to be able to send tracks to any other Zune in physical proximity over Wi-Fi, with the stipulation that they can only listen to it three times without buying it. It its place is perhaps a better feature. You can send what is effectively a link to any artist or album to any Zune Tag or email address you want, wherever they are. If they don't have Zune software or an account, they can listen to a 30-second clip on Zune.net. Still a feather in Zune's cap is Wi-Fi syncing - once you link your Zune to a PC on your home wireless network, you can sync it without cables.

The Zune desktop software gets a host of refinements and a few extra features in the 4.0 release, too. There's a new Quickplay intro screen that mirrors the functionality on the portable device with pinned content, new stuff, and your recent history. You can choose to go right to your collection, the marketplace, or the social upon launch, if you want. The software now supports Windows 7 features like jumplists and a mouseover taskbar player that has the little heart-rating added. The library and marketplace interfaces have been touched up, and are cleaner and better organized than iTunes 9. The best new feature is something Microsoft calls "Smart DJ." There's a new Smart DJ icon on every album and artist in your collection or the marketplace. Click this to get a custom playlist of that artist and similar ones. It's a bit like Pandora, only it generates a playlist about 30 items long instead of a continuous stream. Unlike iTunes 9's new Genius Mix feature, it includes both local content and streaming music from the marketplace (you can turn that off if you like). You can even save any Smart DJ mix as a playlist, and then adjust how long it should be (in songs or minutes) and how often (in days) it should be refreshed, if at all. You can then sync these Smart DJ playlists to your Zune device, and it'll be refreshed when you sync.

Features like these add tremendous value to the Zune Pass, Microsoft's $15 a month all-you-can-eat music subscription service. Smart DJ is a great way to discover and download new music. Zune Pass subscribers also get unlimited streaming of full songs, not just preview clips, from any web browser on any PC or Mac by going to Zune.net. Yeah, the Zune Pass content is laden with DRM (how else would it expire if you don't renew your subscription?), but they even give you 10 song credits a month you can use to download totally DRM-free MP3s that you'll own forever. The marketplace's tight integration between device, desktop, and web make the Zune Pass a seriously good deal for music fans.

If there's an Achilles' heel to the Zune HD, it's apps. There are only nine apps in the marketplace, all of them free and seven of them games. They're nothing special, really. You'd have paid a couple bucks for some of them when the iPhone App Store launched, but they pale in comparison to what you can get today. Others are coming this fall, including Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition, Vans SK8: Pool Service, and Audiosurf Tilt in addition to Facebook and Twitter. That's good, but this is a device that desperately needs a real app marketplace. Perhaps it isn't too far away - Microsoft just updated the XNA development framework to version 3.1, adding support for the Zune HD's accelerometer and multi-touch screen.

So is the Zune HD better than the iPod Touch against which it competes? That all depends on what you're looking for. If you want a portable player primarily for media, the Zune HD trounces the iPod Touch. Music, video, and podcast offerings are similar, but the Zune has FM and HD radio, marginally better sound quality, 720p video output, the optional Zune Pass subscription service for music, and an honest-to-goodness superior interface. The software on both desktop and device is designed to be vastly better for discovering new music. If you want a pocket computer to run apps and play games, with music and video playing as a second-tier function, the incredibly robust App Store on the iPod Touch make it still the obvious choice.

Microsoft still has work to do, of course. With all that hi-def video and subscription music, we desperately need a 64GB model. The hardware and software service aren't available outside the U.S., and really needs to be expanded internationally. The required Zune software is Windows-only, which leaves Mac users out in the cold, or at the very least requires Boot Camp or virtualization of them. Most of all, a truly robust app marketplace needs to be built, and fast. For those looking to buy a portable media player for, you know, media, the Zune HD is a truly awesome little device. Microsoft has a product that has captured the enthusiasm of gadget geeks across the web, and it doesn't disappoint.

Haier Rhapsody Ibiza

Michael Brown — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:30:46 -0600

When talk turns to digital media players, Apple’s iPod and Microsoft’s second-generation Zune (with its third-gen firmware) dominate the conversation. But if you’re a Rhapsody-to-Go subscriber ($15 per month), there’s only one media player you should consider: Haier’s Rhapsody Ibiza.

The Ibiza is available in three configurations: flash memory models with 4GB and 8GB capacities (priced at $200 and $230, respectively) and the 30GB hard-drive model ($300) reviewed here. All three play videos and display digital photos as well as play music; they also support Bluetooth headphones.

The Ibiza can connect to 802.11g Wi-Fi networks, which means you can stream and download songs from Rhapsody (and listen to Rhapsody’s Internet radio channels) without plugging the player into your PC. Synchronizing the Ibiza to your PC, on the other hand, requires a hard-wired connection.

This device leverages everything that we like about the Rhapsody service. If you’re online while listening to a song, for instance, a menu displayed next to the album art gives you the choice of downloading the track (or the entire album) to the player, purchasing and downloading the song or album to the player, sampling other tracks from the album, or calling up a biography of the artist. Choose “more by this artist” and the player will open a submenu with choices that include an artist sampler, a list of all the albums the artist has recorded, a “top tracks” list, and a list of similar artists.

The Ibiza’s software is excellent—in stark contrast to Rhapsody’s absolutely dreadful PC software—but we do have one complaint: Drill deep down into its nested menus and the only way to get back to the home screen is to repeatedly stab the back button.

“Tethered” tracks, of course, remain available only as long as you maintain your subscription, but we’re disappointed that the player doesn’t inform you whether the tracks you purchase are infested with DRM (Rhapsody sells both encrypted and DRM-free tracks).

The Ibiza is close to being the perfect portable companion for Rhapsody customers, but there’s very little to recommend to folks outside that circle. Its total lack of support for lossless audio codecs, meanwhile, is a major disappointment.

Slacker G2 Personal Radio

Michael Brown — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:24:25 -0500

Slacker announced a new version of its portable radio today, and we’re happy to say the Slacker G2 kicks just as much ass as the original product we reviewed last April.

Here’s Slacker in a nutshell (for those who don’t want to re-read our previous review): The service component of Slacker is much like Pandora or Last.FM in that you can listen to music on the Internet for free (along with an occasional advertisement) while the Slacker A.I. analyzes your expressed tastes in music, and recommends new artists it thinks you’ll enjoy.

But there are trade-offs: You can't always choose which songs you want to hear, and you can skip only a limited number of tracks. Slacker also offers a subscription plan ($7.50 per month if you pay for a year at a time) that eliminates the ads, enables you to call up saved tracks at will (as long as you maintain your subscription), and allows you to skip an unlimited number of tracks.

As for the new Slacker hardware, it has all the same tools as the browser-based product, but gives you the freedom to listen to music anywhere. You can transfer music from your PC to the mobile device, or you can connect the G2 to your wireless network, and it will automatically download a batch of tunes from the Slacker website.

The G2 player also comes with the Devicescape application built in. This app enables the G2 to log on to commercial Wi-Fi hot spots -- provided you have an account with the service provider, of course.

The Slacker G2 is about half the size of its predecessor, but the base model comes with twice as much memory (4GB of flash, which is enough to store 25 of the custom radio stations you create with the service; an 8GB model capable of storing 40 stations will sell for $250). More importantly, the G2 doesn’t sacrifice any of the delicious features that made the original portable so cool.

The first-generation device was slightly larger than a cell phone, which meant it just barely fit in a shirt pocket. And while it had a gi-normous display (consuming nearly its entire face), accommodating that huge LCD forced the designers to move all the control buttons to the sides of the player, which rendered it awkward to use with one hand.

The G2’s screen is considerably smaller (2.4 inches compared to the original’s 4.0-inch screen), but it shares the player’s faceplate with all the most important buttons for controlling the device. The “favorite” and “ban” buttons—which allow you to indicate your preference or disdain, respectively, for a particular song—sit above the screen. The skip forward/skip back buttons that enable you to move up and down the tracks stored in your library are at the bottom, along with a play/pause button. The volume control is on top of the device, next to the headphone jack.

The new device retains the ability to display large album-art images and detailed artist bios. And Slacker continues to employ professional deejays to program its radio channels. As with the original device, you can use some of its storage capacity to save your own music in MP3 or WMA format.

In addition to a ubiquitous mini USB port, the G2 has a CEA 2017 docking port on its bottom, although Slacker doesn’t currently have any products capable of mating with it. The Consumer Electronics Association—the group that puts on the annual CES trade show—defined the CEA 2017 standard in the theory that it would foster a market for third-party peripherals (e.g., speaker docks), but the interface been around for more than a year, and this is the first media player we’ve seen that makes use of it. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait for the year 2017 for it to gain traction.

As for the Slacker G2—we dig it!

Cowon A3 Portable Multimedia Player

Michael Brown — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:00:00 -0500

If you’re willing to look beyond everyone’s favorite fruit company when you shop for a digital media player, you’ll encounter some wildly underrated alternatives. Cowon manufactures more than a few, including the nearly divine A3.

In fact, there’s just one feature that kills our enthusiasm for this chunky player: The joystick you must use to control the player and navigate its user interface.

Pushing the tiny, sturdy stick to the left or right (to skip tracks or navigate menus) is easy enough, as is moving it up and down (to control the volume, for instance); but pushing it in to select a file requires the kind of pinpoint accuracy that’s nearly impossible to achieve with as blunt an instrument as your thumb. The slightest amount of off-axis pressure pushes the stick to the right, left, up, or down, triggering an unintended action.

Navigating the graphic user interface with the thumb stick is a snap—until you want to select a file or initiate playback by pushing down on the stick. In our experience, nine out 10 depressions resulted in an unintended action (such as the selector moving to a different function or target file or folder).

It’s an unfortunate flaw, because the rest of the A3’s feature set is absolutely delicious. The player has a four-inch display boasting resolution of 800x480 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio), for starters. It supports a wide variety of video codecs (DivX 3.11 through DivX 6, XviD, H.264, WMV, MPEG-4—even M-JPEG!), every important non-proprietary audio codec (MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, and more), and a broad range of digital photo file formats (JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIF, BMP, and RAW). The A3 also has CSD viewer software that enables it to convert and display documents saved in PDF, DOC, HTML, PPT (PowerPoint), XLS (Excel spreadsheet), and several other formats.

We listened to a wide variety of FLAC-encoded tracks (including Lyle Lovett’s cover of “Bears,” from Step Inside This House) and were very impressed with the A3’s audio fidelity. We used TBI’s Millenia amplifier and Majestic Diamond IR speakers for our playback tests. The screen does a fabulous job of displaying digital photos and video clips, too.

The player has every input and output port you could want: headphone, mic, audio in/out, and video in/out (using a proprietary cable with S- and composite video jacks). There’s a set of built-in stereo speakers, too. We wouldn’t recommend listening to them for very long, but they are convenient. The device can function as a USB host, which means you can plug it straight into your digital camera and offload photos from that device’s storage media.

The A3 is a tad too thick (0.75 inches) and heavy (9.8 ounces) to carry in a shirt pocket for long, but much of that bulk can be attributed to the fact that it’s packing a 1.8-inch 30GB hard drive (higher-priced models with 60- and 80GB drives are also available). A padded carrying case is the only other accessory we can think of that Cowon should consider throwing in the box.

Now if they could just do something about that finicky joystick.

iRiver E100 Digital Media Player

Michael Brown — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:18:14 -0500

iRiver’s new E100 digital media player offers a several terrific features, including a MicroSD memory slot, FLAC and OGG support, and the ability to record audio (there’s a built-in mic and a line-level input). Unfortunately, all that goodness is undermined by the device’s many flaws.

Some would argue that FLAC files are too large to use with a 4GB flash player (there's an available 8GB model, too), but sometimes we’d rather carry fewer songs (and change them out more often) than subject our ears to music ripped using a lossy codec. iRiver includes a software utility for transferring files from your PC to the E100, but the software will only recognize the player if it has been formatted in MSC mode (in which case it behaves as an external drive when connected to the PC). Subscription music services such as Rhapsody, however, require the device to be formatted in MTP mode. Since that’s how the player is shipped in the U.S. market, the software is useless for file transfers (unless you reformat the player).

We did use the software to convert some WMV files (the player supports MPEG-4, WMV9, and XVID file formats) to the player’s maximum supported resolution of 320x240, but we weren’t impressed with the results: The video was grainy and exhibited poor contrast, and bright colors—especially yellow—appeared blotchy and badly pixelated. Off-axis viewing was even worse.

When we copied a FLAC file to the device using Vista’s Windows Explorer, the OS served up an error message stating that it would gladly transfer the file to the E100, but that the device wouldn’t be capable of playing it; as it turned out, FLAC files played just fine. We experienced a slightly different problem with tracks we ripped from CD and encoded in MP3 format: This time, the album art we embedded in the tracks showed up, but it was scrambled beyond recognition. When we synced the player to our Rhapsody library, on the other hand, the album art came over without a hitch. Go figure.

Reformatting the player to MSC mode got rid of the error message when transferring FLAC files, but it didn’t solve the problem of the missing album art. In this mode, however, you can’t use the E100 with Rhapsody, nor can you use Windows Media Player 11 (or MediaMonkey ) to sync the player to your PC’s music library.

The E100 has a pair of miniature speakers built into the back of the case, but they sound so tinny that we’d recommend listening to them only if you use the built-in mic to record brief voice memos (verbal shopping lists come to mind); they’re useless for music playback. Listening to the player with a good set of headphones delivers much better results, although nothing better than we’ve heard from any number of other digital media players lately.

You control the player and navigate its menus using a set of five buttons at the bottom of the player—four are the points of the compass points and the fifth is in the center. Drilling down into the nested menus requires lots of button mashing—and just as much to back out again. But there were many times in which the device responded sluggishly to a button click, and a few occasions in which the player didn’t respond at all. Not good.

With so many very strong digital media players on the market, there’s just not much of a reason to give the iRiver E100 a second thought.

Cambridge SoundWorks SoundWorks i765

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:46:33 -0500

The tabletop radio made a major comeback a few years ago when Tom DeVesto, cofounder of Cambridge SoundWorks, left that company to form Tivoli Audio. But Tom’s old company hasn’t lost its knack for building great-sounding audio gear either, and the Cambridge SoundWorks’ SoundWorks i765 is a tabletop radio on steroids.

The i765 includes not only an AM/FM radio but also a slot-fed CD/DVD player (capable of playing burned MP3 and WMA files, as well as CDs and DVDs), an alarm clock, and an iPod dock, too. So the i765 has you covered whether you want to wake up to your favorite tune, a specific radio station, or even a movie on DVD. All this functionality comes at a price, however; the i765 retails for the princely sum of $500—that’s a lot of lettuce for an alarm clock.

But if you’re a heavy sleeper envisioning yourself waking to Al Pacino on the TV inviting you to say hello to his little friend (you know, the line from Scarface), be aware that if the alarm is set to DVD, it will simply play the disc from the beginning—there’s no way to cue up a specific scene. A docked iPod will play whatever song you set it to play before you go to bed, but you can’t do this with a CD. And of course, the two independent alarm clocks can play any preset AM or FM radio station, too.

The front-panel LCD shows the time, but it also comes in handy when you’re programming the alarm clock, storing radio stations in the 24 presets (eight for FM1, eight for FM2, and eight for AM), or displaying song titles from a disc, a connected iPod, or broadcast Radio Data Text (if your favorite FM station supports that feature).

There’s a large, programmable snooze bar on top of the cabinet, so you can postpone the inevitable from between five and 22 minutes. The placement of the iPod dock, however (and the lack of any substantial support for a docked player), leaves us concerned that an awakening sleeper might damage the i765, the iPod, or both if he or she gets too aggressive while reaching out for that snooze bar.

But with all its features, the i765 is obviously much more than an alarm clock. In fact, we had to study the manual for 15 minutes to figure out how to set it to wake us up. And it’s a good thing we used our familiar box as a backup; because for all that, we didn’t get it right the first time. If you’re living in a small apartment or want something for a vacation cabin, this little box connected to a TV can serve all your audio and visual entertainment needs (apart from gaming, that is). There are composite and S-video outputs in back, so you can connect the system to a TV, a front-panel headphone output, an auxiliary input (in case you don’t have an iPod), and a rear-panel audio out (in the unlikely event you’d like to connect to a larger amplified speaker system). The remote control, which has no fewer than 43 buttons, can manage every one of the i765’s functions as well as those of a docked iPod.

Although we’re getting to this last, sound quality is one of the most important features when you consider any audio device, and the i765 doesn’t disappoint. The amp delivers 4.5 watts to each of the stereo speakers, and 13 watts to the down-firing, ported subwoofer. The box delivers huge sound with bass to spare—no complaints there—but there’s one other thing you should be aware of: The i765 is pretty small for a multifunction device, but as an alarm clock, it’s a behemoth that will dwarf anything else on your nightstand.

Correction, 4/14: This story has been updated with the correct retail price. --mb

Slacker Portable Radio

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:22:47 -0500

Just when we’d concluded that there was nothing new under the sun when it comes to digital music players, along comes the Slacker Portable Radio to smash all our preconceived notions. This $200 device takes the music-discovery innovations pioneered by Pandora and Last.fm and puts them in the palm of our hand.

The hardware works with Slacker’s Internet radio service, but you don’t always need to be tied to a live Internet connection for it to work. Using your PC you can populate the radio with either pre-fab radio stations or create custom stations by populating them with your favorite artists. Slacker’s software will then identify other artists of the same vein. You can fine-tune each station by adjusting how aggressively it exposes you to artists and songs other than those you’ve identified as your favorites, how often it plays popular songs versus those closer to the fringe, and whether it plays only current tunes, just the classics, or some combination of the two.

Once you’ve done that, you download the stations and a batch of songs (in AAC Pro v2 format) to the Slacker Player via USB or an 802.11b/g network. The device supports WEP and WPA Wi-Fi security for connecting to your own network; and thanks to a recently announced partnership with Devicescape, Slacker Portable Radios can automatically connect to free Wi-Fi hotspots in participating hotels, airports, and restaurants (including Starbucks and McDonalds). (Firmware upgrades such as this are automatically pushed out to the player whenever it connects to a network.) While you listen, you can press a Heart button to identify songs you really like and a Ban button to mark the ones you don’t. The player will upload this information when you connect to the server, and Slacker’s music-discovery algorithms will take them into account while selecting your next batch of songs.

Audio quality is excellent, and the music is free but interspersed with advertisements. The optional paid Slacker Premium service eliminates the ads and the limit on how many songs you can skip per hour. Subscriptions range from $7.50 to $10 per month, depending on the length of your contract. We reviewed the 2GB Slacker Player, which has enough memory to store 15 radio stations and 1,500 songs, with 500MB left over for your own music (in MP3 or WMA format, including WMA Lossless) or, if you’re a subscriber, songs you’ve marked for retention in the player’s library. Slacker also offers 4GB and 8GB models that sell for $250 and $300, respectively.

The Slacker Player is chunky for a flash-based device, but the huge display (4-inch diagonal with 480x272 resolution) makes the size worthwhile. All that screen real estate allows for not only easy-to-read menus but also the display of lots of information, including artist biographies and album reviews sourced from All Music Guide. The screen goes dark after 30 seconds (a battery-conservation decision), which is barely enough time to read all that great material. You can tap a button to reactivate it, but we recommend changing this value to 60 seconds or even indefinite).

The player has two buttons on one side, four on the other (one of which is integrated into a wheel), and two on the top, a configuration that requires two hands to navigate. (And we feel compelled to mention that the On/Off/Lock button feels sloppy and cheap.) You’d think all those buttons would make the Slacker difficult to navigate, but the user interface is easily mastered. The Playlist function, on the other hand, is nearly useless in its current iteration—but for us, the Slacker Player’s big attraction is that we don’t need to make playlists.

UPDATE: This story was edited on April 7, 2008 to reflect a new firmware update that resolved our complaint about how long the display remains active.

Cowon iAudio 7 Digital Media Player

Michael Brown — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:19:11 -0500

Cowon makes some of the most interesting digital media players we’ve laid hands on. The iAudio 7 is no exception, although it won’t earn a place in our pantheon of favorites.

It’s not for lack of unique features, fabulous sound, or broad codec support; it’s just that we didn’t find ourselves groovin’ on its primitive user interface, chunky formfactor, postage-stamp screen, and odd touch-sensitive control surface. So why are we rating it as high as “7?” Because of its unique features, great sound, and broad codec support.

Let’s start with the features: The iAudio 7 not only has a built-in mic—rendering it handy for recording voice messages or recording a lecture—it also has a 1/8-inch line-level input. Plug in a better-quality mic, or any other audio source, and you can record to the player’s 4GB of flash RAM. You can do the same with the built-in FM radio. The device can also display video (AVI, MPEG-4, and Xvid), photo (JPEG), and even text (TXT) on its 1.3-inch LCD. An alarm clock that can also be used to make scheduled recordings rounds out the player’s long list of features.

We don’t usually talk about the EQ software in media players because it typically sucks; that’s not the case here. If you can’t be bothering dialing-in the five-band graphic equalizer you’ll be cheating yourself if you don’t at least activate the “MP3 Enhance” setting. The effect isn’t nearly as pronounced as Creative’s X-Fi Crystalizer, but the improvement in audio quality is amazing considering the limited hardware that Cowon’s engineers must have to work with. We don’t think we’ve ever heard Emilylou Harris’ voice ever sound as heartbreakingly beautiful on an MP3 player as it did when we heard her sing the opening lines to “If This is Goodbye” (from All the Roadrunning, her amazing collaborative effort with Mark Knopfler). The iAudio 7’s Mach3Bass bass-enhancement features is equally strong—and best deployed in small doses, unless you’re using particularly tinny earbuds.

The iAudio 7 delivered fabulous sound with the broad range of formats and codecs it supports. We listened to tracks in WAV, FLAC, protected WMA, and 320Kb/s MP3 formats and were impressed with the player’s audio fidelity across the board. There’s support for OGG and ASF, too; it’s too bad they didn’t throw WMA Lossless into the mix.

Now for the downside: We appreciate the good ol’ fashioned buttons for volume, power/lock, and mode selection, but the touch-sensitive surface used to control the player’s other aspects droves us a bit batty. It scores high on its technical merits: Using just three movements along the surface, you can play/pause, skip forward and back one track at a time, scrub back and forth within a track, and even loop a segment of a track. (Exactly why you would want to do some of the latter things is a whole other question.)

Flash players should be thin, unless there’s a very good reason for them to be otherwise. Sansa’s Connect is thick around the middle (0.63 inches), but it has a Wi-Fi radio inside (albeit it a soon-to-be--useless Wi-Fi radio, thanks to the demise of Yahoo Music). Microsoft’s Zune has a Wi-Fi radio, too, and it’s just 0.33 inches thick. The iAudio 7 measures a portly 0.7 inches thick. But to be fair to Cowon, Sansa’s and Microsoft’s players aren’t nearly as format friendly (they don’t support FLAC, OGG, or ASF, for instance).

Cowon dedicated more surface area to the iAudio 7’s touch-sensitive control surface than they did for its display. The screen is surprisingly legible for its size, but our eyes tired quickly while browsing folders displayed at a resolution of just 160x128 pixels. Videos and photos look bright and colorful, but they’re so small that we don’t think anyone will spend much time viewing them on this player. To sum up: File support good; touch interface problematic; display much too small.