subject: Cowon A3 : This One Might Beat The Ipod Nano [print this page] A shiny off-white pearl finish, a contoured body with sleek steel buttons down the front side of the facia in a neat row, and with dark grey trimming on the outer bezel, sporting powerful hardware under the hood, a brilliant view to the action, and a look that's in a class of its own. You'd be forgiven for thinking we'r writing an advertisement for the latest Aston Martin or something. It is the proverbial Bentley amongst PMPs though, and the moment we laid eyes on it, we knew we beheld something special. It is not as sexy as the iPod nano's but then you'd hard to find any PMP better looking than iPod Nano.
To power itself, the A3 uses a DaVinci dual-core processor. If you wondering where that came from or why Cowon decided on overkill, let us tell you that this device is the first of it's kind to actually support 720p HD content natively without any transcoding. iPod nano should bow itself out, it can heardly play any HD content, leave HD, iPod nano can play only H.264, MOV, MP4 and MPEG-4. Imagine draging huge .VOB files to a PMP and enjoying skip - free video. Or imagine playing a 50 MB audio file (yes! You heard me right) in all it's FLAC splendour without a hiccup. The A3 does it all. It beats iPod Nano hands down in this department. About the only trick Cowon missed is the gimmicky and "in" touchscreen, but we're told they have another A3 like PMP called the Q5W lined up, which addresses "touchaholics". This one might beat the iPod Touch too.
The Cowon A3 is a very good music player, and does everything right if it's all you listen to. The iPod Touch and iPod Nano highlight the sonic limitations of the Cowon A3, unfortunately. Another little niggle is the volume level of the A3, which isn't satisfactorily loud. (we really can't find any fault against iPod nano's music quality) But once you fire up a video on this baby, prepare to be blown away - the Cowon A3 is all rampaging performance, a video player on steroids that delivers quite a wallop for the money you pay. It's got an AV-out cable (better known as TV -Out) as well, which means you can take the action noscreen. I tried a 720p movie on the A3 on my 32-inch LCD screen and the experience was as good as any HD DVD player. You don't need an additional HD player. All the regular features - Cowon's full-fledged equaliser, FM radio, photo viewing, and voice recording - are also present, should you need them.
Quite simply put, if you need the best video PMP around, this is your safest bet. It is also the cheapest bet, as both 30GB and 60GB versions are cheaper that Creative's sole challenger the Vision W. Do remember that it is bulky, and also heavy, so it's not something you'll slip into your denims, its intended as a micro home theatre, so please keep it there.
