Customer Reviews

iAUDIO I7-16RD 16GB Portable Multimedia Player Red

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I ALMOST found the perfect mp3 player for me. I listen to audiobooks and sometimes music, I have pictures, a few movies, and some txt files, too. I have my books and music organized into folders and this is just like a jump drive. I can plug it into ANY computer without any software preloaded and just drop and drag. My audiobooks play in perfect order and they sound great. It has a delete right on the unit, so I can delete as I go. Its 16 gbs so I can carry a lot of music and books and listen to what I want when I want. I have approximately 700 songs and 200 books, along with a handful of pictures loaded at the present moment. I love running and since this is a flash player, I don't have to worry about messing up a hard drive based player. The unit is tiny - smaller than my cell phone. It will record, play movies, FM radio, view text files and all that if that is what interest you. My only problem is the slide selector. Even at the least sensitive setting, it is HORRIBLE. I am hoping I will get used to it with time, because I would even read some txt ebooks on here if I could get used to the control. Instead, I keep going back and forth trying to pinpoint the exact spot I want to be. I have almost 6000 files on my player, but they are all in folders and the player recognizes them all. I was concerned when I read an earlier review, but it must mean if they are all lumped onto the player. If it wasn't for the selector, this unit would be the perfect player. Update: 2 Oct. I found that when I was using the player for running or anything, I would have to put it on hold and not touch it. This got to be a pain if I wanted to rewind a bit and listen to something I missed on my audiobook or skip a song or whatever. I couldn't do it without being able to SEE the screen. I love Cowon and have the XL5, but don't want to run with that. I ended up buying the 8 gb U5 for running with. I just reach down and skip, pause, or rewind. I don't use this player much anymore. The sound, battery life and everything else are still awesome on this player, though.

Anybody who reads my reviews or visits my websites knows that I am partial to the Cowon iAudio products. I've owned at least a dozen, including the 4 GB and 8 GB versions of this unit. The sound quality of the iAudio 7 may not be "true audiophile" quality, but it's about as close as you're going to get for under $700. For most earbuds (I normally use Ultimate Ears super.fi 5s) and open-air headphones, the power output is more than adequate. The EQ functions also offer an amazing range of flexibility in compensating for headphone deficiencies. But if you're going to use a better headphone (like my Sony MDR-SA3000s), then you really do need a quality headphone amplifier. This is not a deficiency in the iAudio 7; I'm not aware of any portable media player that will drive the Sonys even as well as the Cowon products. But you simply have to be realistic. I use a C&C XO headphone amp and get excellent results.

Three other very positive features need to be noted. First, the iAudio 7 will play several file formats that many others will not, including OGG and FLAC. Second, the DRM restrictions on the player are very generous and you normally don't have any problems loading any files that you have created yourself. Third, the battery life is absolutely phenomenal...doubtless the best I've seen.

However, there ARE downsides to the unit. The controls and user interface are not only too sensitive, but they're also not very intuitive. If this is your first Cowon unit, allow some extra time to get used to them. Also, the USB transfers on the 16 GB unit are noticeably slower than on the 8 GB unit (which probably remains your best value.)

One comment on the lack of "true playlists"...I don't care. Frankly, I grew up listening to vinyl albums and it would never even occur to me to make a playlist. I don't use them and never have. This is a big difference between those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s and those who now download a single track at a time. Call it the "AOR Syndrome" or whatever. I simply think in terms of album sides. When I convert music to put on my player, I rip the entire album and catalog it that way.

Overall, I'd rank this as perhaps the "second best buy" in a portable media player. The 8 GB unit is still tops in my book, primarily due to the faster USB transfer speeds. And do yourself a favor...either use a higher efficiency set of headphones/earphones or invest in a decent headphone amp. This unit is very, very good, but it's no miracle-worker.

UPDATE: A recent firmware upgrade and a FAQ on the Cowon website have addressed the issue of slow USB connection and file transfer. I'd now rank this unit at least half a star higher.

This definitely isn't true audiophile quality, it probably is thought to be for various reasons. I think most people refer to the sound as being audiophile-like, because everything out there for a portable flash/hd based player sounds like a$$ "for the most part" (this being much better than competing Creative, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Sandisk products available). But mostly, people do not understand (how high the ceiling goes) or live in that audiophile realm ($1500-$100,000+ receivers, speakers and such). I have owned 2 prior iRiver models and 2 other iAudio's (I have also used other peoples Ipods, Nanos, Creative, Samsung and Sandisk products for trial over the last 5 years). This model is definitely an improvement in sound quality over the previous Cowon U3 4gb I owned. And closer to, if not surpassing the quality of my 895 iRiver and the 512mb model before that. I own some HD580 and HD600 Sennheiser's and they sound listenable, but there is definitely a lack of punch, depth to the soundstage, but thats ok, because thats about as good as it gets for now with portables and I personally need something for the gym. It's a great player once you get used to the sensitivity controls and menus, which is expected. I definitely wish Cowon would add true playlist support, so people can create multiple playlists at home on their pc and store them in a player folder for playback later on the portable. The iAudio 7 8gb is probably the best model currently as it doesn't seem to suffer from the transfer speed problems of the 16gb model, and surpassing 4,000 files would be quite hard with 8gb. As long you are willing to swap files around occasionally (if opting away from the 16gb model), it's a better value until Cowon irons out some kinks and players get even bigger. (Amazon wouldn't let me post my response comment due to some guideline I couldn't figure out, so I am just posting my comment as a review, enjoy)

I bought this product based on all the rave reviews about the sound quality all over the web (since you can't just go down to your local Best Buy and listen to one - they're only available over the internet, and I think in brick-and-mortar stores in LA and NYC). Everyone talks about how the iAudio7 sounds great, wonderful, "audiophile quality sound", etc., etc.

Let me preface this by saying that I am an audiophile - I love listening to music and I am extremely particular about the way my music sounds. I love listening to CDs through my Grado 325i headphones at home.

I didn't think the iAudio7 lived up to all the hype the first few days I used it - thus the two stars in my rating. In fact, I thought it sounded terrible and couldn't understand how anyone could think it sounded good.

Turns out, the headphone jack is a little weird - sort of. I've plugged into this thing numerous times over the past few days and the headphone plug never went all the way into the headphone jack. I always pushed it in until I felt significant resistance, then stopped pushing for fear of breaking it (I can be the proverbial bull in a china shop sometimes - "careful" is not one my strong traits). I thought it odd that that headphone plug never went fully into the jack on the player, but thought it was just a bad design. Well, today, I vowed to listen to it one more time before sending it back for a refund, and accidentally pushed the headphone plug all the way into the jack. What a difference that made in sound!

Now I would say the Cowon sounds pretty good for the price. I won't make any claims that it has "audiophile-quality" sound - that's quite a stretch, but I actually think it sounds pretty decent using the "Normal" EQ setting (i.e., set flat). I'm listening to files in FLAC format (lossless compression) and they sound pretty good. This will be plenty good for work and travel. I still like my home system much better, but it cost a lot more than the iAudio7.

One thing they don't tell you before buying it is that it only holds 4,000 files or 2,000 folders. This is true of both the 8GB and 16GB models. If you're using FLAC format for your music files, you won't have to worry about this. At about 4MB/minute of playing time, a 3 minute FLAC-format recording will use up 12MB of memory in the player. But if for some reason you had, say, 4000 files that were 2MB each, that would use up only 8GB of the 16GB of available memory and even though you would still have 8GB of free memory on your player, you won't be able to use it because you hit the 4000 file limit. I don't know likely it is that anyone will run into these limits, but it is possible.

The other thing that still bugs me is the user-interface. The first couple of days it drove me batty and I wanted to throw the thing across the room - I could not get it to do anything that I wanted it to do and it made me so angry. I consulted the documentation provided on the CD, but it wasn't very helpful. The user-interface is touch sensitive, and when I say "sensitive", I'm not kidding! It is -extremely- touch sensitive; it's easy to accidentally brush against some control on the screen and have it do something unwanted. Until you get used to it, it may drive you nuts. Once you get everything set the way you want it, you can move a "hold" switch that locks out further changes until you move the switch back again. Very helpful feature!

I use mine set "flat" - all the tone controls and adjustments turned off. But if you listen to mp3s or you prefer your sound different than I like mine, it has a lot of options for changing the sound. There's an equalizer along with a handful of presets (rock, pop, etc), there's an mp3 adjustment that seems to do something to open up the sound - it can make the recording sound more open and airy, a bass boost, and a few other settings. So if you like to tweak the sound, you can have lots of fun with these settings.

The only real limitations I've noticed with all the tone settings set "flat" are that it doesn't have as much bass as my home system (it has plenty of bass, just not as much as my home system), and it can't give you as much detail and separation of instruments as a good home system. I also find it lacks "punch" on many recordings. But the lack of "punch" I didn't really notice until I listened to an old live CD ("Waiting for Columbus") by the band "Little Feat" on my home system and I thought it sounded GREAT! So I ripped it to FLAC (lossless) format and put it on my IAudio7, anxious to listen to it at work. I plugged in at work and it was just plan missing the punch", the "excitement", "life", "realism" of my home system. Maybe if I hadn't listed to the CD first I'd have appreciated it better.

I was listening to Kim Wilson's "Tigerman" CD, and there's a song on it called "Reel Eleven Take One" (I'm pretty sure that's the track), and it starts right off with harmonica and other instruments. I was listening to it at work the other day and thought, "this is a weird recording. I absolutely cannot sort out the instruments in the first 20 seconds of this track". I listened to it a couple of times, and just couldn't identity the several instruments - it was just kind of a "wall of sound". I went home and listened to the CD on my home system and it was clear right away what instruments I was listening to. On that basis, I cannot agree with those who say the IAudio7 is "audiophile quality". It is very good on almost everything, but audiophile it is not. I don't think you're going to find portable audiophile quality equipment. If you're satisfied with pretty good sound for the money, then you should be happy with the IAudio7.

I would now give the iAudio7 a three or four star rating, but I can't edit the number of stars in my review for some reason so it will still show two stars when I would really give it four stars.

Like Stephen Hawking, this player is brilliant but trapped in an uncooperative body. The ONLY reason to buy this player is for the unreal battery life. If you're someone that needs to be untethered as much as possible, this is the player to have. Short of a player that uses disposable batteries, the iAudio7 is in a class of it's own. The manufacturer claims the battery life to be 50-60 hours (Cowon says both in it's literature). Real-world battery life is 40+ in my experience. This includes fast forwarding, navigation, turning on and off, loading and removing files and so on. The sound quality is excellent and overall fit and finish is very good. It supports a number of formats including video formats. Now the downside. As good as this player is, the user-interface is far from class leading. The form factor is just too small as far as I'm concerned. As small as it is, it feels chunky. My daily player is an Insignia Pilot. It has 2X the surface area but is half the thickness. When the Pilot is in my pocket, it disappears. When the iAudio7 is in my pocket, I'm always aware of it. It's like a little brick. Much better to stay with a form factor like the Pilot, Nano and Zune for example that have a lot more surface area but are about half as thick. This also alows for a display human eyes can actually read without magnification. The UI is just awful. Given the size of the player, compromise is inevitable. Regardless, the designers made a few major errors in my opinion. The touch sensitive controls are too sensitive. Even with the latest firmware which was supposed to address this issue, it's far too easy to over shoot what you're doing. Small buttons or a smooth four way rocker switch (ie. the Rio Carbon) would have been a far better choice given the size of this player. Lastly, the firmware is far from intuitive. I've always been able to jump in and figure these things out quickly with little time reading. In this case, the manual is poorly translated and not entirely accurate. For example, I dare anyone to try setting a bookmark (for the first time) and/or setting a bookmark and then returning to the bookmark without at least a half hour of futzing, reading and trial and error. Bottom line: fantastic battery life, excellent format support and sound quality. Unless you absolutely need a player with this battery life, there are many better alternatives.

The Good
--------------

1) Linux Friendly - Works like a regular USB device, no need for any software.
2) Plays Ogg and flac files.
3) Good sound quality.
4) You can create your own play list by creating sub directories.
5) Size but see below.
6) Long battery life but it doesn't seem to be the 60 hours claimed.
7) Storage - 16 GB's.

The Bad
------------
1) Non - Replaceable Battery.
2) Only records in WMA format. I find this baffling.
3) Does not come with a separate wall charger, just the USB cable.
4) The interface takes a lot of getting used to and is not user friendly (IMO).
5) Size-Small screen is tough to see especially for those of us over 55.
6) Virtually impossible to see in sunlight.
7) Controls are way too sensitive.

The Conclusion:

All things considered this is a very nice unit, especially if you have sharp eyes. Not needing any additional software for transferring files is a big plus, I only wish it had a replaceable battery. I'm not an audiophile, but it does sound very good with a good sound stage and details for ear bud headphones. The sensitivity of the controls is a pain in the neck since I am constantly switching from locked mode to unlocked mode. If I don't put it in locked mode, the song will change by the time I get it into my pocked or even from train vibrations. I'm not the only one who has been frustrated by the interface, but after a while you start to get used to it. Sometimes I find it easier to create a playlist in a sub-directory than to use the dynamic playlist feature of the device. Being able to browse music by artist or other tags would make this device much easier to navigate. A lot of the interface problems might be due to the small size of the unit.

I bought this as a replacement for my iriver T60, having found the 4gb size to be a bit restrictive. This player was advertised as being a worthy opponent to ipod, and it turned out to be the case. The format of the controls takes a bit of getting used to at first, but is very simple and can be figured out without the use of the manual. Your computer reads the player as a removable mass storage device similar to a jump drive, so it's simple to load. The only glitch is that, if you want to play video on it you will need to download the jetaudio software-included with the player. I didn't utilise this because I already have itunes, and have no interest in using the player for video playback. The sound quality is top notch, as you'd expect and there are multiple options for fine tuning to your personal preferences. I've found that the 'hold' button is essential with this player, due to the sensitivity of the touch interface. It should be noted that I use this player at work primarily, and so toughness was a major factor for me. This thing is built well, and doesn't need to be coddled as so many of the other players do-so if you're looking for something with a lot of capacity, fantastic sound quality and that isn't going to fall apart the minute you look at it wrong, I would highly recommend this player.

Pros: The sound on this is amazing. I am a DJ and profesional electronic musician so I am sensitive to this. My sister's Ipod Nano gets low-end distortion when you use the EQ (wtf is that?). But this unit sounds brilliant. It has a whole host of EQs and settins to make your mix sound wonderful.

Cons: The playlist implementation on this sucks balls. I wanted to smash this thing to bits. I have previously owned an iAudio U2, and even that was better than this. At least you could bookmark things and choose a song order other than alphabetical/numerical. This one is horrible.

Also, the interface isn't that great. It's clumsy. Yeah, it looks cool, but I would prefer some physical buttons rather than this touch crap. Sometimes it messes up and acts weird.

I was lucky to chance on someones review on this, and caustiously ordered it to replace my cramped but venerable iFP-iriver 790.

Stuff I look for and loved in this player:
1. Excellent sound quality a little better than my old river.
2. Auto-off timer during play---useful for sleeping with it on.
3. Hold funtion still allows you use the volume and ffw/rew keys if you wish.
4. Cool swing-touch control that let's you scroll thru music quickly. Some have complained that this is too sensitive, and it is. But I am one of those people, who liks to have their mouse/trackpad on maximum speed & acceleration.
5. Fade-in: that slowly increases the volume of music on first play. Useful for getting shocked with sudden loundness for my weak heart.
6. 40-60 hours battery life. Woo hooo!
7. Some cool music effects: BBE that improvies quality without coloring the music.

Stuff I'd have liked but not deal breakers for me:
1. only a single playlist supported,
2. can't synch song play frequecies (so no support for scrobbling and last.fm users will be dissapointed),
3. firmware-upgrade requires data backup & restoration,
4. Cowon doesn't supply a case.

I haven't tried the supplied earphones since I prefer my Grado SR-60 at home & Sony MDR-EX90LP on-the-go.

Highly reccomended!

I've been aware of this player for quite some time, but always deemed it too expensive. After all, they're charging a buck-twenty for something as small as a pack of gum. But if you've got the cash flow, iAUDIO I7 (16GB) is probably one of the most efficient music players on the market and here's why:

1. It plays a large variety of music files including FLAC (and avi's).
2. File transfer is as simple as drag-and-drop. I7 works just like a thumb drive and instead of annoying playlists you can create your own file system. Proprietary software is included but is largely unnecessary.
3. I7 is unbelievably customizable. You can adjust anything from shuffle mode scope to how touch-sensitive the sliding control bar is, which works just like iPod's click wheel (except it's a bar). You can even chose which group of buttons gets blocked by the 'Hold' switch!
4. It has FM radio.
5. I7 is advertised as having a 60 hour battery life, I've read it's more like 40 and mine doesn't last more than 5-6 hours. But I'm sure it's just bad luck and I am getting a replacement after a week of use.

iAUDIO I7 has a plastic case and 3 plastic buttons none of which feel flimsy. The buttons don't wobble in their nests and the case seems quite sturdy. Aside from limited capacity, it blows the iPod away.

Update: I got a replacement and the battery lives up to about 40 hours and then some. A full recharge takes 3 hours. Replacement works only by sending the defective player back and buying an new one. JetAudio will refund first money within a week. Keep in mind JetAudio does not have customer support and publishes the Amazon phone number on their store front.

So, after a few months use I have to admit that the main controls are a bit too close together and my wide thumbs keep catching a few buttons at a time. I use the 'Hold' button to block out the touch-sensitive controls and set the volume rocker to FF/RW function. Also, when out, the screen gets lots of glare. But nothing is prefect and these minor inconveniences by no means overshadow the versatility, sound output and the stellar battery life of this great player.