Customer Reviews
Nice, but no built-in speaker 
2008-06-25
This product has served me well so far, but there is one glaring weakness - it has no built in speaker. So to listen to anything on it, you have to use headphones or hook it up to a speaker.
One feature I love though is you can use it as a radio (plus the option to record).
The software does a good job of converting videos to its format.
The only other wish for this device was that it was a little bigger. But people have commented that the display is very nice for the size.
I use it to listen to watch movies and/or audios while working out - works great.
The BOMB BABY!!! & 16gb now available!!! 
2008-04-28
I really feel I can't add to other customers reviews as they pretty much have it all covered BUT - With the exception of not doing playlists very well & it doesn't do DRM - this is the best sounding player money can buy!!! Only the new Sony players can give it a run for its money - so I would only say BUY THIS AND YOU CAN'T GO WRONG!!! I re-purchased this player as I thought there would be better sounding ones out there - I was sadly mistaken. I love my D2 and will not go back!!! If you need more space wait for Amazon to get the new 16gb model in stock, or go to JetMall and order. I'd wait to get it through Amazon myself though.
Bar far the nicest player out there. 2008-04-26
I received my Cowon D2 a couple weeks ago and love it. I opened the box, powered it on and started playing around with the touchscreen UI right away. It is incredibly intuitive, the touch screen response is excellent, the brightness and clarity of the screen is outstanding. I started loading mp3's and avi movied on it right away and it plays everything flawlessly. Sound quality is terrific.
Prior to this unit, I had an iRiver PMP-120, which I also liked a lot, but this Cowon unit is way better in terms of features and a much more user friendly interface. I got the 8GB model, and bought another 8GB SD card for a total of 16GB storage.
The unit is much smaller than I had thought it would be, but after playing with it for a bit, it is a perfect size. Its small enough to fit easily in your pocket, and you could easily job or walk with it and not even know its there. Its very light weight, but feels solid, not cheap or flimsy. The buttons on the screen are very small, but I can still use my index finger to touch the buttons with no trouble at all.
I am also a hardcore linux user (havent touched a windows machine in about 4 years), and this is another plus for this player. It mounts in linux as a scsi device and allows you to load music, videos and photos as easily as copying files on your local filesystem. I hate everything about itunes, so being able to manage my own music in a standard directory hierarchy (like a *nix filesystem) is also a big win for me. I did not want to have to mess around with id3 tags and all that crap, just drop entire directories of music in place and navigate around like that, and this player works perfectly for this. It can also sort and read id3 tags though too, if thats your thing.
The battery life is insane. You can listen for days without a recharge, and watch videos for a half a day before having to charge it back again. Mad props to Cowon for this.
All in all, this player is amazing. I think Cowon got everything right on this one, and there isnt anything I would change about it. If you are looking for a nice alternative to the ipod world, and want better battery life, tons more features, freedom from itunes, and lots of storage for lots less $$, this is the one for you.
Great performance, but lousy documentation 2008-04-09
This is a great piece of electronics. I am completely satisfied with it. My main use is music, however I use the freeware program SUPER to render video content in the avi format. I like the fact you can play FLAC files directly.
I had one aggravating experience while setting up the device with my computer. I allowed some automatic installation of a windows media player plug-in by accident. It asked if I wanted to set it up for use with media player. Unfortunately, it identified it as a windows media hardware device, which precluded using it with windows explorer as a hard drive.
You should only use it as a hard drive, i.e. as if it is simply a usb flash drive. Then all you have to do is drag and drop media files in the predefined folders. Their JetShell program makes this a little easier, but it is not necessary. If you get stuck with the stupid windows media device problem, just go to control panel and uninstall it in the device manager. Then reboot. I am leaving this here, because I saw allusions to this problem, but nobody offered a solution.
I have purchased a 16 Gb HDSD card and now have 24 Gb total storage available. I haven't filled it up yet, but I will!
It is able to run everything from earbud headphones all the way up to large high-end headphones, with power to spare. This is not true of all mp3 players. I haven't seen the battery drain much yet. That is unusual and appreciated.
I only gave it 4 stars, due to the poor documentation. The hardware itself is great.
My favorite mp3 player! 2008-03-28
In my mind this is the best mp3 out on the market!! It has 50 hours battery life for music and 10 hour battery life if you just want to watch movies on it. The touch screen is very easy to use. If you worried about using it on the go, stop worrying!! It has volume buttons on the top of the player, and a hold switch so nothing gets pressed on accident. I put all my pictures on it along with all of my music and a couple of music videos as well. I still have about 3 gb left on it! I can't recommend this player enough. My last mp3 player was a creative zen micro. It's not even in the same league as the D2. I had to charge the zen every day it seemed like. Out of the month I've used the D2, I've only had to charge it a few times. A great site that supports this player if you have any further questions is iaudiophile.net. They have a great forum over there for support. Anyway I hope this review helped!
The best so far 2008-07-12
The Cowon D2, is a really good device for listening to music, watching videos, and looking at photos. I have about 400 songs, 20 videos, and 5 photos, and a couple of flashgames. I still have 3 GB left from 8 GBs. And the touch screen is really simple to use, and the device is the best so far.
Great Portable Media Player! 2008-07-12
Welcome to the world of ~$5/gallon gasoline. Goodbye car, hello public transportation!
With worsening economic conditions in my local economy, it's just not feasible to drive to work. I've picked up a bus pass and some walking shoes to help save money. Music has helped make the wait times for the bus more enjoyable, as well as the walk for the time I decide to hoof it.
I started looking for a new player after I left my old one on an airplane. I had several requirements: Long battery life, flash-memory, SD slot, PlaysForSure compatibility (I use Napster), and a good screen for watching movies. After googling a bunch of players, I came across a review of the Cowon D2 and I was sold.
I ordered from jetaudio through Amazon and received my player quickly.
Impressions:
It's ugly. This is no Jonathon Ives product. The player is credit card sized, but still manages to have a little heft and bulk and thicker than the pictures imply. Sexy is not a word I'd use, but "industrial" might be more fitting. However, I like the way it looks. It's very utilitarian and there's no gigantic scroll wheel or control pad taking space away from the screen.
The screen? It's great. It's crap in sunlight, though, just like everything else out there, and I can't wait for sunlight readable screens to become cheap enough for consumer products. I keep a few movies on it, and have no problems watching tv shows and the like. The touch screen is really cool, as well, and while you can use your fingers, I've found that using the little stylus really is more accurate for skipping through songs and makes hitting the wrong button less likely.
Firmware updates and Theming: The default "interface" is pretty darned ugly. It's functional, and that's all I can say about it. I updated my firmware from the Cowon site, and that went flawlessly, then installed a theme, and now it looks really nice. It's my understanding that Cowon updates their firmware quite regularly and it's refreshing to see a company support it's products well after the sale. From the release notes, they seem to add more functionality with each release.
PlaysForSure: It works flawlessly. There does seem to be a couple hiccups when filling up the device: 1) PFS is slow. The file transfer is fast, but I suppose something with the DRM pauses the transfer at the end before it completes. Regular MP3s and movies just zip right across in MSC mode (I assume I can do this with MTP mode, as well). 2) When uploading a ton of content to the player in MSC mode, it seems around the 4 gig mark it starts to have issues. From reading on the net, when it gets to this point, stop transfers, unplug D2 and turn it on, let the interface come up, turn it back off and plug it back in and resume your transfers. Otherwise, you will sit there all day starting/restarting files and pull your hair out from weird errors. This isn't just a Cowon problem, however, I've had issues similar with other devices.
SDHC slot: this is awesome. I have the 8 gig player, and having expansion is a god-send. I can keep my videos on a separate card and pop them in when I'm in the mood. Basically, this means I never really have to buy a bigger player, ever, just buy another SDHC card and keep going.
Battery Life: I've never run the battery out. Ever. I'm sure it'll run out eventually, especially if I play a lot of movies, but this is easily one of the better products I've ever had when it comes to batteries. I charge it via USB when I"m at work once a week or so (also while I rearrange music) and I'm good to go. It comes with a wall charger, but I've never used it. If I'm not mistaken mine came with a european adaptor, as well, which is really cool.
Headphones: they sound alright, but they have this goofy left side shorter than the right side thing going on that bothers me to no end. Not to mention the cable really isn't all that long. I generally keep my player in my back pocket (be careful, I'm afraid that you might sit wrong on the screen and crack it) or my front pocket. The front pocket in my shorts just barely gives enough clearance, but in my back pocket, if I move my head, the left bud pops out. It's irritating, but for stock ear buds, they sound pretty good. I'll be shopping for some new ones soon, though.
I've owned an iPod Nano, which was nice. I've gone through a couple cheapie PMPs (think $20-30 range) and they survived quite well. When looking for this PMP, I basically narrowed it down to the following:
Creative Zen
iRiver Clix 2
Cowon D2
My co-worker has the Zen and it's a really nice little device, with SDHC expansion (I think?), but the killer for me was the short battery life (she gets around 10-12 hours).
The iRiver Clix 2 doesn't waste much face space on interface, but gives you a gorgeous screen. But it doesn't have SDHC expansion. Pass.
The Cowon gave me all the features I needed at a very competitive price. Add in the customizable interface (flash based), it really was an easy choice that I've not regretted.
An awful experience for auido-book use 
2008-07-06
As a happy owner of an iAuido X5 I expected the D2 to be a perfect fit. Alas, I found the thing unfit for audio-book use. Here are the problems:
-- The touch-screen interface is inferior to the simple 4-way switch of the X5, requiring much more groping to navigate and more touches to bookmark.
-- Buggy: the unit froze regularly and had to be reset.
-- The 8GB unit I got initially did not fit the power plug, so I had to exchange it.
-- Having copied folders of MP3 tracks to the 8GB D2 I was unable to see track names. After spending some time with Cowon support I did a firmware upgrade for good luck and copied files again to the device, with decreased folder depth. Track names appeared.
-- At that time the 16GB unit came out, so I exchanged to that, reasoning that the company had worked out the kinks. Nope: copying MP3 tracks in folders still resulted in file names being invisible.
-- Weird initial settings: tracks show tags (say, "M" for an MP3 file) by default. You have to change settings to display file names instead. What use is that? It seems most people want to know that a track is Hamlet Act 1 Scene 1 or whatever, not that it's OGG or MP3.
Summary: an awful experience for a primarily auido-book user.
Great Sound. Mediocre Interface. 2008-07-01
The sound is clean and undistorted, if a little underpowered. FM reception is generally very good, but is subject to occasional brief noise; recordings made from FM are high quality, but not quite audiophile.
File management is simple; simply plug it into the USB port of your Windows PC (I haven't tried with other OS's) and use Windows Explorer.
Navigating music menus is somewhat cumbersome, but not a deal breaker for me personally.
Perfect in almost every way. 2008-06-27
Pros: Sound quality, power output, battery life, SD card expansion
Cons: Playlist support weak, Occasional ID3 tag problems, no gapless playback
After being a slave to the iPod for many years, I felt it was time to find something better. I was getting sick of the constant reliability problems, poor craftsmanship and planned obsolescence. My search led me to the Cowon D2, which I have recommended to many of my friends, who have all picked one up after seeing mine. After mating the Cowon D2 to a set of Shure SE530s, I was in pure portable audio bliss. The player completely opens up the music to new dimensions and the main draw of this player is the sound quality. The customizable EQ was a welcome sight, coming from three busted iPods. I didn't care too much for the sound effect settings, but for lower-end earphones, they WILL help a bit. The battery life is rated at 52 hours for audio playback, but real-life usage nets closer to 30-35.
As great as this player is, there are a few problems that are worth mentioning. The playlist support is weak, as there is no .m3u support, or any other sort of playlist file support. There is a custom playlist creator within the unit, but it is cumbersome to use. The database corrupts itself when it sees some id3 tags it doesn't like, meaning your tracks won't be viewable, but not a frequent occurrence. If you have a lot of mixes that are individual files, you will have to deal with a small skip between tracks, as there is no gapless support.
Rounding out the deal is an AM/FM tuner, voice recorder, image viewer, and video playback. The image viewer allows your D2 to be a pseudo digital picture frame, as it has a slideshow function. In order to play back video files, you MUST convert them using the supplied app jetAudio, which is not a bad program in itself, but once they're converted, they play back quite nicely with no sync problems. Oh, by the way, it's touchscreen! :)
Even with it's flaws, there is no other PMP that I would want in my bag while being out and about.
