Cowon I7-04SL iAUDIO 7 Portable MP3 Player 4GB (Silver)

by iAudio

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3 x 1 x 1 inches ; 1.9 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000TAYW2I
• Item model number: I7-04SL
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Ultra Portable MP3 Player

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Improbable battery life, great sound., July 23, 2007

By 

J. Brothwell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cowon I7-04SL iAUDIO 7 Portable MP3 Player 4GB (Silver) (Electronics)

Skip to the bottom if you want the short version ;)

I get to listen to music at work.

Not all the time, but a good amount of it, I'm working on computers and am often plugged into my own little world without much human contact while doing so. So imagine my glee at my boss' permissiveness with having headphones on for 70% of my work day.

Over the years I've accumulated a lot of music players. I've had a small 1gig Cowon player, which was my first iAudio device. Using GNU/linux for my main OS leaves me looking for players that support the .ogg format. The sound quality on that device was what really hooked me on the brand. I've also had my hands on an iPod mini, shuffle, and video. They were very pretty and stylish but lacked the oomph and wide format support that Cowon offers with its players. Earlier this year I picked up a Cowon A2 for watching movies on trips and it has been a very impressive piece of equipment, but I needed something smaller for my day-to-day activities. This is where the iAudio 7 came in.

This little beast is just under 3 inches long and a little less than an inch and a half wide. Those dimensions are pretty friggin tiny, so this player hides easily in the change pocket of my jeans. The kind of unfortunate thing about Cowon's design is that their players tend to be, well, thick. Not slim like the iPods. This one is about 3/4 an inch.

I'm not an audiophile, but I like for my music to sound decent. So I combined this player with some alien-looking sennheiser headphones, and turned up the effects that come with Cowon's players. I aurally assaulted my ears with heavy bass hits and then coaxed them back with some subtle Mozart. After I started falling asleep, I had to start up some jazz and every instrument came across clearly. This player will do any kind of music you throw at it well. It covers all ranges and it really does deserve a little bit nicer of headphones than the ones that come with it. They're decent enough, but not amazing.

Usually I'm so concerned with battery life that I keep the jetaudio effects down a bit. Not on this one. Cowon boasts 60 hours of playback with this player, so I figured if I could even get half of that, I'd be satisfied. With the effects up and playing at about half volume, I have yet to charge this thing.

I received it last week and have been using it during my work days, anywhere from 3-6 hours a day, with a good 20+ hours put in on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on top of that. I've had it going all morning today, as well. I'm well over the halfway point but the player is still going strong. I would expect to get at least 40 hours out of this thing. That's under their "up to 60 hours", but I've never had an iPod last me even half of apple's projected time.

This player runs on everything. Windows, mac, linux distributions, you name it. It simply shows up as an external hard drive. You copy your music onto it and go.

The control scheme is a little goofy, still. The touch sensitivity is nice, and after playing around for a couple of days, you'll get used to it, but it's still nowhere near the iPod's instantly friendly user interface.

It has a microphone built in that you can record from. I managed to record a conversation with coworkers and picked everyone up clearly, even the guy standing 7 feet away. I'm imagining all sorts of mischievous Nixon-like recordings taking place already.

It also picks up radio. Don't tell the RIAA, but you have only to press one button and it will record from the radio. Oh yeah, it also has an input port, in case you want to hook a cord up between two players and record from another one onto this. You dirty pirates out there will love this. I, however, am an HONEST CITIZEN(TM) and have never once in my life recorded anything off of the radio.

If you like, you can play movies or look at pictures on this as well. The screen is about 1.5 inches diagonal and watching a movie on this would be like watching it on a gameboy micro. I have tried the text reader which seems to do a decent enough job for something so tiny, but be ready to bust out your old people specs in order to read it.

*********

The Short Version:

Good: Plays all sorts of file formats, has excellent sound quality, and an impressively long battery life. Small and sleek black design. Has a lot of nice extra features such as radio and a microphone.

Bad: Control scheme is hard to learn(but not difficult). Player is thick enough to spoil the beauty of the other parts of its design.

In the end this player is a nice alternative for those of us who like to own the music we buy(IE: buy the CDs and then import them into the computer, or buy from someplace like magnatune.com, or browse apple's "unrestricted" music collection) or for audiophiles who don't want to take a hit on their sound quality (FLAC player? Nice).

If you're already part of the iPod iTunes scene, then you probably aren't seriously looking at a player like this anyway and would likely have fewer headaches using apple's hardware with their software.

As for me, I'm going to get full use out of this thing every day at work, and enjoy the range of perfectly crisp sound it produces. Maybe I'll also blackmail my coworkers with recorded conversations. That could be my new career! Sounds like I'm well on my way to being an exec...

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Won't Regret It, August 2, 2007

By 

Mohicangirl (Old Town, Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cowon I7-04SL iAUDIO 7 Portable MP3 Player 4GB (Silver) (Electronics)

I read the previous review and just wanted to add a few things.

I wanted to buy a Cowon player for ages, but could never decide which one to buy. My Creative MuVo went caput, so I decided that now was the time. I think I saw the iAudio 7 on their homepage first and was pleased that it was a flash player, which I really wanted.

First, the controls are sensitive, but they are not difficult to use. I would say that overall, the interface is very intuitive. After fiddling for a while, it's like child's play. So, there is the only point with which I would disagree with the previous poster.

Second, the battery life is awesome. I never expected it to be anywhere near 60 hours. I would recommend that you buy the portable charger, rather than doing through your PC. In 2 hours, the player was charged. Like the previous poster, my boss actually encourages everyone to listen to music to relax and get through our days. It's funny how the people who listen to music a lot are the greatest producers.

Third, the sound with the extra bass is fluid and true. It doesn't sound like a fake bass boost. I just use some cheap, great Sony headphones and I can only imagine what the sound is like with the noise cancelling kind.

Lastly, I also wanted a player that would play FLAC and OGG. The FLAC files sound like magic---utterly clear and crisp. I would say the same for the OGG and MP3, but if you listen to a lot of FLAC, you know the difference:)

I forgot to mention the carrying case. I also bought it. It's an ugly crystal grey, but protects the player like nobody's business.

Oh, and the screen may be small, but I sure can see my music videos and other images.

I really like the JetAudio software, but you do not have to use it to load your player---just drag and drop:) The software is especially nice to convert from .mpg to .avi.

Treat yourself to a superior player and don't forget the firmware available at Cowon's site.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as the hype, April 4, 2008

By 

D & A (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cowon I7-04SL iAUDIO 7 Portable MP3 Player 4GB (Silver) (Electronics)

I bought this originally because I had heard good things about Cowon products and liked that Cowon explicitly supported Linux and had players that can play Ogg in addition to MP3.

Boy, was this a disappointment, though.

The only good thing about the player was its battery life. Yup. It does last almost 60 hours without a recharge.

Now to the bad: the controls are far too sensitive, even on the lowest setting. If you even touch the player, you've skipped a song or fast-forwarded. And sometimes if you try to skip a song, you fast-forward instead. That I could deal with, but after only three months, the screen suddenly messed up. It displayed everything all garbled. I didn't crack the screen or sit on it or drop the player. It just broke on its own through regular use--after three months. So I figured it must be covered under the warranty, since it wasn't my fault, but Cowon wanted me to pay $57 to fix the screen.

Needless to say I'm back to using Sandisk. I know others have had positive experiences with Cowon, but I think it's important for people to know that Cowon can turn out cheapy products as well.