iAudio M5 20 GB Metal MP3 Player Silver

by Cowon

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000BLKIP0
• Item model number: M5-20SL
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,664 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great player with flexibility, March 20, 2006

By 

C. McMillan "CMcMillan" (East Coast) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: iAudio M5 20 GB Metal MP3 Player Silver (Electronics)

I bought this player because it plays .flac files and has a 20G hard drive. I also bought a pair of Sennsheiser HD202 headphones ($25) to go with it because I don't like earbuds. My listening has only been on the HD202's.

One thing that sort of baffled me at first was there was no manual... just a quick setup guide. The user manual exists on the device itself. It comes with a cd, but it's just player software and I didn't load it since I have what I need to play files. It may add to the usefulness of this device, I don't know.

When you plug this player into your PC via a USB cable, you get a new drive like a hard drive under 'My Computer'. From there, there are some folders for your use and the user manual can be found.

I simply copied folders of music to this device and started playing. I was amazed at just how many folders/albums I could put on this device. .flac is 60% the size of a .wav; not a huge amount compared to mp3. I've put about 50 albums (700 songs) on my player and it's almost full. This is great for me. I can put it on random and have a week's worth of music for me....(listening 4-8 hours a day) BTW, a 4 Gig ipod Nano costs $20 more than the 20G M5.

My entire audio library is .flac so, having the ability to use that was key for me. If you use something else like mp3, aac, or whatever, you could save a lot more.

The sound quality is very good, but I have no frame of reference for these types of players or headphones. Is it as good as my reference system? No. But it is as good as it needs to be to hear clearly and accurately the music that I enjoy while working.

I had to make a lot of adjustments from the default settings. There was bass-boost and BBE and EQ settings that made things sound unnaturally boomy and peaky at first. In order to get to these settings, you must press and hold the play button.

There is a small learning curve with this device but not much for me, a computer-type person but not a player-type person. Also, I like the little joystick better than the iPod's controller.

I'm very satisfied with the iAudio M5 and would recommend it to anyone.... especially if you need sytem or file flexibility since it works with Apple, Linux, and Windows OS's and does .ogg and .flac. Very cool!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars iAudio X5's little brother - a review for Lyrics enthusiasts...and all, March 17, 2006

By 

Allison Peligrino (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iAudio M5 20 GB Metal MP3 Player Silver (Electronics)

I previously owned a Zen NX 30GB player but since Creative doesn't offer the Lyrics function, for my new player, I had to look elsewhere. I considered, the following:
- iRiver - although the reviews are very good, it looks too clunky and industrial for me
- Olympus M:robe - looked good but a bit expensive and the reviews were rather disheartening
- iPods - great reviews but expensive (though it's gone down considerably since I bought this), not to mention abundant - it's enough to make me scream, "bring back originality, please!"

So I aimed for iAudio; I'd never heard of it before but the reviews in Amazon raised my interest. Although the M3 looked great, fumbling around in my bag for earphones and a remote didn't appeal to me. Then I came across the X5. The reviews were incredible but I didn't want to have to pay for the Video or Photo capabilities. Watching music videos on my computer is so insufficient (ever notice how plasma screens are getting bigger not smaller?) so I for one cannot understand why doing this on an even smaller screen is what's driving the market for mp3 players today. So, what I really wanted was something between the iAudio X5 and iAudio M3.

Hello M5!

- The sound is astounding that I now rarely reach for my B&O earphones (even my friends who own iPods and Creative Zens agree with me on this)
- there's no need to install a driver (very good for those who seldom use computers and want things to be as simple as possible)
- no need to fork out more money for a USB micro-drive when this works as a separate hard-drive
- voice-recording is excellent for meetings and lectures (you can even set the bit rate for it)
- in-line recording - I can connect it to my Cable TV and record the music channels to my iAudio
- play-time goes beyond 14 hours
- available upgrades of firmware and software for the player itself, JetAudio, LDB Manager and Jetshell
- it supports ID3 tagging but doesn't organize music this way; it does it through a folder-structure style (so if you like viewing your music via artist, album, genre, etc, then you may find this irritating)
- it has pre-set equalizer settings or you can set it to your own preferences too - and the best thing is that this doesn't lessen the life of the battery
- file transfer is FAST
- you can read lyrics while listening to the music - my favorite feature!

About the Lyrics, I initially thought 2 things:
- Since I've previously tagged my mp3 files I thought reading lyrics was just a matter of uploading song files into my M5 and nothing more
- I could then use the M5's 'joystick' to scroll through the lyrics

I was wrong. Lyrics need to be loaded using Cowon's LDB (lyrics database) program (which you can download from http://eng.iaudio.com). This can be done either automatically (you click a button and it searches through the server) or manually (for unpopular or non-English songs, you can add lyrics yourself). The way it works is that the player itself scrolls through the song without any action from the user. Although this is quite a cool function, it also means that for manually loaded lyrics (which is for most songs by the way), you will need to sit in front of your PC, use LDB, then periodically press the "Set Sync" button to specify the timing for each line of the song. This is EXTREMELY TEDIOUS for most, but since I actually love reading lyrics and I'm very particular when it comes to tagging my songs (I even fill in the Biography tab of my mp3 files), this isn't much of a step away from the amount of time I spend on tagging my files so it suits me perfectly! PS: the manual doesn't cover how to load lyrics to files so go to http://eng.iaudio.com, then click on Support > FAQ and search "How to use LDB Manager" to find out how the program works.

My only gripe is that the carrying case is sold separately (unlike Creative Zen where it's included in the package) and only comes in one colour and style (kudos to iPod for having so many to choose from). You can however go to www.noreve.com for optional cases however this can set you back a fair bit so until such time when iAudio can provide more of these cases, my `iPaq' case will have to suffice. It may not have as recognizable a look as iPod, but with its amazing sound, countless features and long battery life, you realize IT'S ALSO COOL TO BE DIFFERENT!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I like this MP3 player a lot!, November 10, 2005

By 

jak-uv-ol-traids (Carmichael, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iAudio M5 20 GB Metal MP3 Player Silver (Electronics)

When I recently decided to buy my first mp3 player and did my research, I came across Cowon America's iAudio products and didn't find the typical bad reviews I found on other mp3 players, including the iPod. I had a tough time choosing between the iPod and iAudio but what made me buy the M5 player was that I'm a person who wanted durability and an easy-to-use player. I read quite a few good reviews on iPod but what sold me on iAudio was that, unlike the iPod, it didn't scratch easy and it was durable. Also, Apple doesn't seem to lower their prices for less memory. For example, the 20GB iPod and the 2GB Nano was given the same price. ????? Why go with the nano?? Anyway, I read these iAudio players were new and bought one. I've been using it for 1 month and absolutely love it. It is very durable and scratch-resistant. The only thing I would prefer to have changed is it's joystick-like operation. While good, I would prefer buttons rather than a joystick. Otherwise, very well made product and it's made me very happy.