Cowon iAudio F2

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029995,49291501,00.htm

Reviewed 19 July 2007

Reviewed by Nate Lanxon

Cowon's iAudio F2 is a very compact little MP3 player that boasts support for loads of audio formats, including the open-source MP3 alternative OGG. With a maximum capacity of 4GB, the support for lossless audio formats and full-screen video seems slightly overzealous, but it scores full marks for trying.

Coming in at £99 for the 4GB version, £89 for 2GB and £80 for the 1GB model, the F2 is up against the likes of Creative's Zen V Plus and the iPod nano. Can Cowon top audio expert Creative at its own game within a fiercely competitive market? We had a look at the 1GB model to find out.

Design
Firstly, you'd be forgiven for thinking the F2 was a Bluetooth headset. It's also trying to look as much like a mobile phone as the Samsung X830 tries to look like an MP3 player. The placement of the nine navigational buttons and the dimensions of the screen are all curiously reminiscent of many mobiles from 2001.

Sadly, the layout of the controls makes it nigh-on impossible to control comfortably. You'll find your fingers flying around to support the thing as you furiously try to press buttons with your thumb. 

Perhaps to alleviate the confusion over the thought that this might be a mobile phone, Cowon has actually engraved 'Digital Audio Player' into one of the side panels. As well as this, there are two audio sockets on the top: one for headphones and one for line-in recording. These two functions could have been combined like they were for the TrekStor vibez, but this way means you'll be able to record and listen simultaneously.

You'll also find a little loophole for a lanyard and a physical lock switch.

Features
Like most of Cowon's other players, the F2 plays a multitude of audio formats, including FLAC, OGG, ASF, MP3 and WMA. There's support for copy-protected content and subscriptions from the likes of Napster and Rhapsody. Downloads from the iTunes Store won't work though, including the DRM-free files. A simple application comes in the box, which handles video conversion into the player's native format and also takes care of transferring content on to the device. JPEG images are also supported.

Watching these videos and photos means staring at a screen the size of a postage stamp, and not even one of those larger special edition ones you see. Staring at a screen with a resolution of 128x160 pixels is only marginally more pleasant than getting an insect in your eye, but as long as you don't plan on watching the Lord of The Rings trilogy on here, you'll probably survive any permanent eye damage.

The built-in FM radio's auto-seek was useless -- it managed to find the grand total of two stations in our office. Most other players find at least 15. Manually seeking stations is much more effective. Still, discovered stations can be recorded to WMA at up to 128kbps, along with voice via the built-in microphone, or by plugging in an external source. The mic is pretty sensitive and the quality is very clear at the highest bit rate.

The F2 has an extensive range of options to muck about with, from play speeds and dynamic EQ settings down to the display options and recording bit rates. It's definitely one of the most customisable MP3 players we've ever seen.

Sadly the menu takes a bit of getting used to. Instead of navigating up, down, left and right like on the majority of players, the positioning of the nine buttons corresponds to an item on the main menu. These functions change between modes, so becoming accustomed to this style of browsing will take a degree of patience.

Performance
Sound quality is lovely, though some may scoff at its flatness. Adding the Mach3Bass EQ on its highest setting made an enormous difference to the bass reproduction -- something dance fans will love -- though doing so takes some clarity away from the high end and makes the mid-range sound quite muddy. The 3D surround option makes an odd difference that seems to over-emphasise the mid-range by making other frequencies quieter and more distant.

All supported audio formats sound great, though FLAC, the lossless format, sounds noticeably better. We did notice that highly compressed FLAC files -- ones coded at the highest FLAC level, 8 -- crash the player. This is odd because Cowon states this encoding level is supported. Tracks ripped at FLAC level 6 or below play fine.

Video playback can hit an acceptable 15 frames per second (fps). Considering how small the screen is, 15fps is fine for the short clips you'll be able to fit on to the maximum 4GB capacity. Pictures rarely fill the whole screen because of the odd resolution dimensions, and when they do they're pretty poor quality. We don't like being reminded of what inferior LCD screens used to be like, Cowon, thanks all the same.

Files can be dragged and dropped through Windows Explorer, so no additional software is needed. 1GB of music took six minutes to copy using our office machine and the simple little app, mentioned earlier, handles video conversion. A 30-minute clip took ten minutes to transcode, and came out at 100MB -- this is MPEG-4 we're talking about, and 100MB is stupidly large for a 128x160-pixel video file. We threw on a few episodes of Crave TV's Space Bubble and found it reasonably watchable. In fact, videos look better than still images. The mind boggles.

Battery life is rated at 22 hours. We actually got just over 22 in our general usage tests.

Conclusion
Aside from its crude menu structure, the F2 is an excellent player. The huge sets of options and customisable playback features are incredible, plus support for FLAC and OGG files adds a further level of usefulness. We were impressed with sound quality overall, too. The main problems of the F2 lie with its design and interface -- the buttons are badly positioned and require more effort to use than we like in a player.

For very little more dosh, Creative's Zen V Plus offers superior sound, easier controls and a much, much better menu system. Or, if you're just after great audio and want to save a bit more cash, perhaps consider the Zen Stone Plus, also from Creative.

Supplier: Advanced MP3Players.com

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield