Hardware-wise, the Cowon X9 is a disappointment. It distorts way before reaching top volume and offers crude sound quality. Like an iPod touch, the Cowon X9 has an inbuilt speaker on the rear, letting you play music without headphones. But as it’s only useful in the one pre-installed game, we’d have rather had almost anything else. The one extra hardware bit is a G-sensor, which can tell the angle the device is being held at. There’s no Bluetooth, ruling-out being able to use wireless headphones, no Wi-Fi and no GPS. The Cowon X9 connectivity options are surprisingly poor, all told. It’s not one, however, and while a composite video output cable is available, it doesn’t come with the player. Unfortunately, Cowon didn’t think to include a hold switch on the body, making accidental presses of these buttons a bit too easy.Īlongside these buttons is a plastic flap that hides the microSD memory card slot and the proprietary charge connector, which looks uncannily like a miniHDMI slot. It has physical playback buttons on the left edge, controlling which track plays, and acting as play/pause controls. The Cowon X9 brings a feature or two you won’t find in every touchscreen-operated media player. However, its intentions aren’t too far off the results. Cowon says it “expresses refinement and comfortability”, which is not only over-egging it a bit, but actually doesn’t make sense. Its body is all-plastic, but the white of the front and edges combined with the muted grey of the rear provide a relaxed look that has a clear sense of style. Thanks to the generous bezel, it’s almost as wide as a Samsung Galaxy S3 too, which will be too large for smaller hands to hold comfortably.Īside from the dimensions, the Cowon X9 player is reasonably attractive-looking. The 16GB (32GB also available) of internal memory here needn’t take up more space than a thumbnail, so there’s no real excuse for the chunk factor. However, like the A5, the Cowon X9 still feels ungainly as – unlike the elder statesman iPod – this is a solid state memory gadget rather than a hard drive player. It’s around as thick as an iPod Classic, and a little larger thanks to the 4.3-inch screen. The Cowon A5 was positively gargantuan, but thankfully the latest Cowon X9 PMP has slimmed down a little from that blueprint. Consequently, sound quality is great but the X9 does feel a little expensive, and dated in parts.Ĭowon’s players are often on the chunky side.
Now Cowon has to aim squarely at the audio enthusiast crowd to stay afloat. However, back when you were lucky if your phone had a colour screen, dedicated players like the Cowon X9 were big business.
These days, many people use a smartphone as their main music player.
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