The Cowon S9 is considered to be the first touchscreen MP3 player of 2009 that could be thought as competition to the Apple’s iPod Touch. The Cowon S9 comes with a 16GB storage capacity and is priced approximately at $239. The Cowon S9 is recognised for its amazing sound quality as well as the OLED touchscreen display.

Hardware

The first thing that occurs when you pick up the Cowon S9 is the weight. The device is incredibly light weighted at merely 2.7 ounces. This is half the weight of the Apple iPod Touch. The S9 is so light that it comes across as being a toy rather than a piece of technology and this is an achievement in itself. The S9 is far more resilient to scratches as compared to the iPods and comes in a dark coloured plastic chassis. The design is simple enough and the device has three switches in all – the play switch, the track-skip switch as well as the volume switch. The switches are pretty self explanatory; however the bottom of the S9 presents a power switch, a USB jack as well as the headphone jack.

The screen happens to be the most impressive part of the hardware design in the Cowon S9 and it uses a lightening-fast touch interface, similar to that of the iPhone’s. Moreover, the screen is 3.3 inches and is made out of the OLEDs instead of the traditional LCD. The screen in the S9 is not as large as the iPod Touch but happens to be more substantial than the screen in the Samsumg P2 – another competition to the S9.

The Interface

The user interfaces in the previous models of the Cowon haven’t been so impressive, however the interface in the S9 is considered to be the best presented by the company so far. However, there are quite a few critical aspects about the interface in the device. The manufacturer has tried to mix in a lot of things in the interface and hence it looses the user-friendliness.

Features

The Cowon S9 is loaded with an interesting combination of features in the audio as well as the video formats along with some added attributes like the FM Radio, Bluetooth, sound enhancement features, voice & sound recording compatibility and a Flash media player where you can play all your favourite games, though none are included in the device itself.

It’s the age of podcasts these days and keeping that in mind the Cowon S9 comes with a MyPodder software that would allow you to pull out all the new podcast episodes, on the other hand it lacks the h.264 support that would simplify the podcast viewing experience.

The Pros:

• Attractive OLED touchscreen display,
• Longer battery life,
• Bluetooth,
• Audio & Video recording,
• Photo viewer,
• Flash media support

The Cons:

• User-interface isn’t quite polished,
• The plastic chassis,
• No Wi-Fi and a USB port.

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