Customer Reviews

Cowon iAudio F2 2 GB Digital Media Player (Black)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

[...]. This is a small player with small buttons that fits in the jeans change pocket. The navigation is simple and straight forward press the button for menu item then press center OK button your in. The sound quality is Excellent, sturdy and well built body. Line in for direct encoding from another device, portable or home system: MP3 player, CD player, boom box if it has line out or headphone jack it will take the signal and encode to play on the player. Plug and play with other devices, connect to USB, line in, or Aux on home stereo, computer, or boom box and control or play. Don't forget to use in the car...

Screen is small, however, store movies on the player to play on portable DVD player and leave the DVDs home or for a quick flight watch fromm screen.

Supports many codacs MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, WAV and DRM protected files.

This is a good choice for Gym, Runners or working outside no moving internal parts to come lose.

My daughter enjoys this player and the extra space she has. Has her to favorite movies on it, however, uses more for music, pictures and FM radio.

I like the Cowon players, you get many extras that you can't get, or have to pay more for with iPod. iPod CAN NOT touch these players in what counts most the SOUND QUALITY. This company has been making players before iPods, however, Jobs has done an EXCELLENT job at marketing the iPod.

I did a lot of research before ordering this ite. CNET review is very helpful (something "reviewer" Geosoto should have perused before ordering a product and then blaming the product for his own lack of knowledge). The sound is very good, and the cusomization and options are nearly endless. The feature set is wonderful. Timed FM recording was one reason I got this unit. It works very well. The podcast capture features are very good too. I use the unit with pop/rock music at the gym with middle-line headset and on the road (music & podcasts) paired the IRiver AFT100 FM transmitter. Can't truly appreciate the quality of sound with the FM transmitter, but with headset it's really good. The learning curve could be a bit challenging for some people. One issue is "context sensitive" buttons which do something different depending on what mode/screen you are in. It's not that hard to learn, but it's not completely intuitive right out of the box. Good sound and full use of features requires some study and trial and error. Some think the buttons are too small, but I have pudgy fingers and haven't found that to be an issue. More cell-phone-like protruding buttons would have eliminated this as a concern for anyone. After 10 days, I'm loving this player.

Pros: Great sound, good battery life, good volume level and up/down increments, FM tuner is good and has lots of presets, FM timed record is really handy for shows that are not avail as podcasts, pocket size, amazing feature set, sturdy feel, good tactile button response, pretty good software included,looks better in person than in pictures, very well-thought-out menus/screens, cool and user-friendly on-screen interfaces, really easy to get going on podcasts, line-in recording, 2gb is a lot of room for audio files, plays every sound file format under the sun, did I mention really good sound?

Cons: Learning curve (for some), context-sensitive buttons make "blind" use of anything but on/off and volume challenging, can't use video without proprietary conversion (included software) first, must use "safely remove hardware" feature when disconnecting from PC, documentation in box is very sparse (full manual is avail as PDF online), A/C adapter not included, smaller manufacturer means fewer after-market add-ons like clips, cases, etc available. No slot to expand memory. No included lanyard or clip.

This is my first MP3 player and I'm pretty critical of things in general. This unit is really excellent, super sound quality, software is easy to use with drag and drop menues. I don't care too much for the way the earpieces fit in my ears, they like to fall out but it's typical of other units like this one. I've played some music videos and they look first class on the screen, color and sync is perfect. I've had the unit about a month and battery life is also excellent, 20 hr's or so. Depends on how often you use it for video. The radio reception is also great, I couldn't believe how well it works. I have not tried the record functions yet.

Great player. It comes with some pretty good software for converting and storing your songs, movies or whatever. If you cant figurs out the software there is always the drag and drop feature that you can use by going to my computer and selecting the F2. battery life on the site is suggested to be about 20 hours. however that is music play not video playback. Perfect for all of the people who are looking to find an alternative to buying something from apple.

As the title suggest, I don't think this portable audio player is for everyone. It might have a slightly complicated interface to those who aren't gadget freaks, but I think those are are want to fiddle about with computers and electronics will find the options available for configuration of thing fascinating, rather than frustrating.

It's small. Smaller than I thought it would be, and I don't think you could use it with gloves on. That being said, it didn't take me but maybe 10 minutes to get the menu system down, which can also be configured to how you like it (configurable hotkeys do whatever you want them to do). Perhaps one of the most daunting things to some might be the sheer number of settings you can configure within this player. I personally revel in this fact; I want something to work exactly how I want it to, and major kudos to the engineers who allow me complete (well, almost) control over every setting in the device. Scan length (default is 3 second skips, mine is set to 15 seconds now), customizable EQ, and not only EQ, but surround, pan, BBE, Bass, can all be saved as their own preset, and yes, you can setup a hotkey to switch to your favorite preset instantly.

So if you're the savvy type who likes tweaking things to the 'enth degree, you'll have days of fun finding new things to change. But how does it sound? First impression of this is loud. Very loud. So loud, that in fact on some of my louder recordings, I cannot turn it up to full volume without it actually hurting my ears. Once again, I want things to work the way I want them to work, and if I want to make my ears bleed, I like the fact the option is there. If you're not in the US, and wonder why it's not loud, A:) Write to your government and tell them about this thing called freedom, B:) Change the locality section to US C:) Turn it up to 40 on something very loud (Meshuggah? Whatever you like) D:) Pull the headphones out of your ears quickly because it's shockingly loud.

The benefit is that this has enough juice to push large headphones. Ipod's DON'T. Nope. They don't. None of them, no model of Ipod produced today can push a full sized set of headphones to reasonable volume levels. These can, and this is where you notice the quality of the audio output. You can't tell with the provided headphones. But put a flac file on your device, something complicated, plug in your set of Sony studio monitors, and listen to what you've been missing. The playback is that good.
More good news. It plays near everything. Flac, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, wma, wmv, ape, and that's all I've tried so far, but it hasn't missed a beat. Some users report a hissing sound in ogg files, but I haven't been able to reproduce this issue.

The included software is fantastic. That's rare. I don't like Itunes, it's to large a footprint on my system. The supplied video encoder (oh, didn't I mention? It will play videos at 16fps on your tiny little device, with great color rendition, and fantastic audio) works flawlessly, you simply point it to an avi file you want to put on your F2 (xvid, dvix, doesn't seem to care what the encoding method used was), and it does it for you. The integrated iAudio 7 player is the best player I've seen. Yes, it's better than Winamp, better than MediaMonkey. Much better than Itunes and MediaPlayer. Everything is integrated. Tagging, converting, playing, playlist creation, moving to your device, F2 device functions (diagnostics, format, firmware, etc...) are also integrated, it's just... I am still learning all the stuff the iAudio software does, I know it rips CD's to any codec you want as well, but suffice to say, it is quite well designed, and I would purchase this even if I didn't have a Cowon device.

And finally, the bad. The headphones supplied stink. Seriously, you will need to factor in the cost of the device, + whatever you want to spend on headphones. You won't know how good it sounds, and how much detail it can extract from a flac file, for instance, until you've put some good headphones on it. It's alsp small to the point of being too small. It hasn't been a problem for me, but if you've got giant fingers, this will probably more frustrating than anything. Also, the lack of a dedicated volume control I've found to be a little frustrating. The menu system, while I quite liked, might be a bit complicated for some.

Would I buy another one? Yes. In a second. I should have purchased the 4GB model, and I will be purchasing an 8GB model should they come out with one that large (memory continues to shrink). It's completely plug in play, which means if you don't WANT to use their software, it doesn't need it. You can copy everything to the device via Windows Explorer, and the device will play it. More freedom, more choices, I love it. Battery life is good, it seems pretty tough, and for you runners, cyclist, or weight obsessed freaks out there, it's very light.

Features I'd like to see added: Dedicated volume control knob, switch, whatever. Support for pdf files (the screen is pretty good, even though small, I think it would be cool). Hope this helps in your decision; if you don't buy this one, at least by a Cowon or iAudio. They simply are better.

I really enjoy this product. I'm a vocal major in college, so me being able to record my voice lessons and record my music is wonderful. The quality of listening to my MP3's is just amazing. I would suggest this product to everyone. Its really neat that I can listen to the radio too. :)

It works really well. It has great battery life, very readable screen, plays my music with wonderful quality, and needs no special software to connect to the computer.

This thing is really great. It has a beautiful picture, software that converts video to almost 'HALF' the size of the orininal file, an FM radio with nice reception, a voice and line-in recorder that plays back better than most, a pix section, word/text file section, and *of course* the music player. Plus 2 gigs of space! Did I miss anything? I'll bet 'ya I did. Nice drag and drop, non proprietary feature. Built in re-chargeable battery that boasts a lot of play back time. I've gotten 18 hours already. And, oh yeah - the price...........$99.00! Go ahead everyone else - match all these features and sound quality for this price! Love it!

This player is useless if you own a Macintosh. You need the "safely remove hardware" wizard in Windows to modify the charging status. Even if you purchase a power adapter (sold separately) you will not be able to use the software for your player.

Also, the buttons are too small for practical use, and look cheaply made. Overall the player looks like a children's cell phone.