Recently I misplaced my Portable Multimedia Player, or PMP. A PMP is a handheld device designed to play movies, music and display images and/or text. Many devices we call MP3 players are techinically PMPs, though we all know what people mean. I've one last place to look before I am forced to buy replacement. It got me thinking, what do you have?
I misplaced my Cowon A3. Cowon is a South Korean company founded in the mid-90s. They make high-end MP3 players and PMPs, but have limited distribution in the United States (basically you have to but in NYC, LA or online). I bought my A3 for a few reasons.
Sound quality. Cowon devices have some of the best (if not the best sound quality) of any PMP/MP3 players. I actually had to buy Sennheiser headphones just to do my A3 justice.
Video quality. My A3 came with a 4-inch hi-definition screen capable of playing 720p with 16 million colours. It was beautiful and only semi-reflective so it was clearly visible in low to bright light, the only time the screen isn't visible is high-noon on a sunny day.
Compatibility. It can play virtually anything except an FLV. The list of audio, video, and graphic codecs and containers spanned two pages in the manual.
TV recording. I was able to plug my A3 into the TV and record shows at TV-quality.
Memory. 60 GB hard drive. Yes it was a disc, but it was a big disc.
Now, I'm not trying to sell you the A3 (if you can still find one), it had plenty of drawbacks. Battery life was atrocious. 8 hours of music at best and a 3 hour movie was all I could get out of a full charge (which took 4 hours plugged in while off to get). The navigation was clunky. The little joystick was awkward and since it had an HD screen they made it hard for protection (no touchscreen). The firmware was not intuitive once you got past "play" and if you had a long list of music (I had 30 gigs on it) it would take forever to find the artist and song you wanted.
However, as an audiophile it was worth the $350 dollars I spent on it about 2 years ago (and $50 for the headphones). I just carried the charger with me and plugged in whenever possible. When I had 2-hour breaks between classes one semester I watched 2 movies a week at school. Sound quality is the most important feature of a device for me, which is why I cannot stand cell phones as MP3 players. The sound quality is just not there.
Now that I am facing a possible replacement I've immediately gone back to Cowon. I'm a brand-loyal person with a distaste for certain iThings. My MP3 player before the A3 was a SanDisk which was a great value device I used for years. I realised I was being a bit "closeted" when I went straight back to Cowon, especially when an Amazon search turned up an Archos product. So I have a few questions for the folks here at GA.
[*]Do you have an MP3 player or PMP?[*]What brand? Model?[*]Are you loyal to this brand?[*]What is the most important feature of an MP3 player/PMP? (
i.e.