Cowon’s touchscreen O2 PMP: unboxed and hands-on
December 1, 2008 by Insider Staff
While your average iPod can play video, it’s not much fun watching a Kevin Costner epic on a two-inch screen – for more than one reason! If you want to watch movies on the move, you need an MP3 player that does video first, not just a glorified jukebox. That’s where Cowon comes in. The Korean company has just released its latest touchscreen video player, the O2, and we’ve got a hold of one right here to unbox for your eyes only.
It may be chunkier than an iPod Classic, but you won’t begrudge the extra weight as the O2 packs a 4.3-inch screen to do the bidding of your fingers, a massive 32GB of Flash storage and an SD card if that’s still not enough. It’ll play just about any file format you can throw at it, and even scale down non-native rezzy videos so you don’t have to convert anything – just drag and drop. The O2 will be available in 32GB and 16GB flavours shortly, but in the mean time, check out the gallery below.
From the box inwards, the Cowon O2 rocks the white minimalisty look as well as any Apple product.
The O2 itself ditches buttons, click wheels and all that shizzle for a gorgeous screen capable of 16.7 million colours instead.
A USB cable and some decent earphones are to be expected, but the mains charger is a welcome extra.
The O2 is heavy, but still fits in the palm of your hand, so it’s a perfect commuter contraption.
The touchscreen interface is fairly basic and does little you couldn’t do with a trackwheel or D-pad. That said it’s still accurate and responsive.
The O2 plays music as well as video, and even allows you to browse the tracklists while watching films.
Top talents
Media mogul
The O2 has played every video file, resolution and codec we tried. It didn’t even break a sweat. Which ais natural, seeing as it doesn’t have sweat glands.
Storage tanker
With up to 32GB of Flash memory, you shouldn’t run out of space for a long while, but if you do, you can always pop in an SD card for more movies.
Panoramic PMP
Unlike many media players, this offers a widescreen 16:9 ratio, though you can switch back to 4:3 if needs be.
Going up against
iPod Touch 2G – Just as much storage, and plenty more apps available too.
Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB – A smaller screen at 2.5 inches, but media streaming via WiFi is a major breakthrough in something so small.
Archos 705 WiFi 160GB – Old school mechanical hard drives may drain battery, but you sure can store a lot on them.
Get chatting about all the latest MP3 Players on the PriceRunner forum.
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[...] portable media players go, we were pretty impressed by Cowon’s O2 multimedia box. Cowon itself can’t have been satisfied though, because it’s now slipped out another [...]