iPhone or iPod touch? Help me decide

[ring_wraith]

Archos is by far the best PMP out there.
If you need style and a gorgeous interface, get the iPhone
If you just want a good MP3 player and not a PMP, the iRiver Clix 2G is super pwnage.

 

[desiibond]

does a3 have a touch screen

nope. it's vanigation is using joystick and four functional keys.

 

[girish.g]

nope. it's vanigation is using joystick and four functional keys.

did you mean navigation?

 

[desiibond]

lol. yes.

 

[ajayritik]

One big plus with A3 is that it supports lot of models but without touch screen it doesn't look so sleek. Is the brand very popular? Any idea whether this is available in India? From where should I ask him to buy if at all he has to buy?

desiibond you still have not told me the difference between flash and hdd! Friends what would be the best place to buy these from? Amazon?

 

[desiibond]

^^ Touch screen is not an important factor for PMP's. Yes. the brand is very popular in US. If you remember jetaudio application, that's developed by Cowon and expanded to America as JetAudio Inc. Later changed name to Cowon America. South Korean company doing pure music since 1995.


go to deals2buy.com to find out best deals for this player. You can check the following stores:

1) buy.com
2) tigerdirect.com
3) walmart.com
4) amazon.com
5) circuitcity.com
6) newegg.com
Differences between flash and HDD:

1) flash reduces size of the player
2) flash is faster than HDD
3) flash is much more costly
4) you get 160Gb HDD (hard disk drive) for the price of 16Gb flash. and 80Gb HDD for the price of 8Gb flash.

Moreover, Cowon D2 is flash player that competes directly with ipod touch:

Video & Audio Player / FM Tuner / Voice Recorder / Text & Photo Viewer-2.5 inch 16 million color 24bit TFT-LCD - QVGA (320x240) Touchscreen-SD / SDHC Memory Expansion-Up to 52 hours (Music) of continuous playback (Movie 10 hours)**-DRM-protected content Support (PlaysForSure, etc.)
Audio: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, FLAC, APE, WAV, AAC (only on older firmware versions)
Video: MPEG4-SP (DivX, XviD, ...), WMV9 - 320 x 240, 30fps
Photo: JPEG (no size limit)
Screen: 2.5", 24 bit (16 million) color, 320 x 240, TFT-LCD
Dimensions: 78.0 x 55.4 x 16.6 mm (3.07 x 2.18 x 0.65 inches)
Weight: 91 g (3.21 oz)
Rated battery life: 52 hours for music, 10 hours for video
Other features: Touch screen, SD/SDHC card slot, TV-out, FM radio, voice/line-in/FM recorder, BBE sound enhancements, user-configurable effect presets, text viewer, date/time/alarm, bookmarks, on-the-go playlist, deleting files on the player
Dimension: 78.0 X 55.4 X 16.6 mm
8gb for $200, transcend 8Gb SDHC card for $33 at amazon.com
comes with a handy stylus/kickstand

If you need a flash player and don't worry about converting every single video you have and you get into MP4 format for ipod, you can go ahead and get ipod touch but belive me, ipod touch's video clarity will not where be near to cowon A3's.

 

[ring_wraith]

^^ I hope you mean that the iPod touch has so-so Video Quality.

@OP, if you are an audio/video phile [i.e. Sound and Video Quality are of prime importance] then DO NOT get the iPod touch, considering that it has only "okay" sound quality and the videos aren't great either.

If you do need great sound and video quality, nothing beats the Cowon D2. If you want what is positively the best video experience out there, get the Creative Zen Vision W.

If you want a great balance of both and a truckload of features, get the Archos 605.

 

[ajayritik]

What is the difference between Cowon A3 and Cowon D2? Is it only that the latter has touch screen? what about the price and features comparitively? which is better of the two mentioned?

 

[desiibond]

nope. Cowon D2 supports less number of video and audio formats. Much ni line with zenvison:W and far more than ipod's.

What is the difference between Cowon A3 and Cowon D2? Is it only that the latter has touch screen? what about the price and features comparitively? which is better of the two mentioned?

Cowon A3 is better than any current generation PMP.

 

[napster007]

where can i get archos in delhi??

 

[desiibond]

One more player but price is very high at $549.

cowon Q5W.

Main features:

1) 5" 16M touch screen (800x480).
2) wifi with internet browsing
3) Windows CE Office viewer
4) 64MB NOR Flash, 128MB DDR2 SDRAM, 40/60Gb HDD
5) Bluetooth Class 2, Ver. 2.0 +EDR, which means you can use bluetooth headphones with this
6) WinCE 5.0 Professional Operating system running
7) 5.46 x 3.48 x 0.79 inch
8) audio fomats: MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC
9) video formats: AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, OGM, DivX, XviD, MPEG4, WMV7/8/9
10) TV Out: COMPONENT, S-VIDEO, COMPOSITE
11) Voice recorder, FM.
12) audio resolutoin: 8 ~ 1.4Mbps (based on MP3 format)
13) works as USB host. Copy photos from digicam directly to this player. Also connect Windows CE compatible USB devices like Microsoft mouse and keyboard

Package content:

1) player
2) handstrap
3) earphones
4) wireless remote
5) AV cable
6) AC Adaptor
7) USB cable


*www.cowonamerica.com/products/cowon/q5w/index.html

 

[ajayritik]

Today I was going through Digit magazine March Edition. According to Digit iPod wins hands down. I see almost all iPod products being recommended by Digit! Strange when compared to the people here in forum who suggest anything but iPod!

 

[MetalheadGautham]

Today I was going through Digit magazine March Edition. According to Digit iPod wins hands down. I see almost all iPod products being recommended by Digit! Strange when compared to the people here in forum who suggest anything but iPod!

who cares what digit says ? They don't test more important things like geek friendliness, format compatibility, future firmware expantion availability, processing power, etc. And digit thinks we all need only 4 gb of space maximum for our music, while many PMP users like to have a carbon copy(often synchronised) of their Music partition within their PMP. Digit is way too mainstream and hence not at all paid heed to by extremists.

 

[desiibond]

Today I was going through Digit magazine March Edition. According to Digit iPod wins hands down. I see almost all iPod products being recommended by Digit! Strange when compared to the people here in forum who suggest anything but iPod!

that review was totally biased towards ipod. I had mentioned few points in the March feedback thread. You can take a look there. They prefer thinness over performance. If it's shiny, it wins the best buy award.

 

[ajayritik]

Too be really honest its been some time since I went through the reviews given by Digit for any of the computer products. I had a feeling it was biased towards iPod, so I wanted to confirm with you all. I agree I went through one of the posts where it was mentioned about the digit review on Music Players and how it was biased.

 

[ajayritik]

The other day I went to Apple Retail store and checked out how the quality of iPod touch was. It was ok not that great! Maybe headphones were not that good!

 

[krazzy]

^^ Apple earphones are crap. You should've taken your own headphones with you.

 

[ajayritik]

Guys I think it's time for me to decide. So please once again let me hear from you all again! What's your final say? what should I go for?
1. Cowon A3
2. Archos
3. iPod Touch

 

[ring_wraith]

@Gautham and DesiiBond, totally +1. I noticed that too. The reviews contradicted all major websites.

@Krazyfrog, I did, I took along my EP-630s, and heard the iPod touch. There was a significant amount of detail loss, Music was bright, and very muddy.

According to me, the nano sounds slightly better. At least it's not muddy sound. But still bright and some detail loss.

 

[krazzy]

^^ I know you did. I was telling ajayritik who used Apple earphones for testing. I'm sure his experience was far worse than yours.

ajayritik, I think you should go for Cowon A3.