Cowon S9 for $210; Should I jump on it?

[coleam45]

I'm looking for a new mp3 player in the 32 gb+ range (I'm currently tooling along with a dinky 2 gb Sansa player). I've been hearing lots of good things about the Cowon players, and I just found out the Amazon has them on sale for $210 for the 32 gb version. How do they compare to, say, the Creative X-Fi2 (~$200) or the Zune (~$250)?

I'm not looking to spend much more than $200, preferably less. Is there anything else I should be looking at with my price range?

 

[jaguarskx]

Yes.

I bought the Cowon S9 32GB for about $280 (more than my Motorola Droid) last year specifically to listen to music (FLAC files) and watch the occasional video (XviD files). It basically has the best sound quality once you purchase a decent pair of headphones. Like the headphoes that comes with any player, the Cowon's adequate.

I also use it to read digital books (e-books) that have been converted to text files. I have a Kindle to read e-books, but I don't want to care it around with me everywhere.

If you are looking to play flash games or looking for something with wifi, then the Cowon S9 is not for you.

I just wish the S9 had a microSD card slot like the Cowon J3 which came out this year.

The only other player I remember considering last year was the Samsung YP-P3 32GB player. It has been replaced by the Samsung P3 Palm Theatre Plus 32 GB MP3 Player, but I never read a review on it and it is more than what you are willing to spend.


http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Palm-Theatre-Player-Black/dp/B002RL8IDQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1288337731&sr=1-4

 

[coleam45]

Thanks for the advice. I ended up ordering it a couple hours ago after spending several hours reading through forums and reviews. From what it sounds like, the main turn-off for the S9 is its UI, which can be vastly improved with add-ons like the ClawUI. The other ones I was looking at seemed like they also had UI problems, and they didn't have the option of changing the UI like the S9.

I'm not looking to play games on it, and I don;t care too much about the wifi. It's something that would have been nice, but not too many players seem to have it, and of those that do in the size range I was looking for, it seems like only the iPod does it well. My brother has an ipod touch, and while I like its interface and its wifi implementation, I've never really liked the sound quality on it (or my dad's nano).

I did look at the J3 because of the expansion slot, but it was $60-80 more, and I wasn't willing to spend that much for the option to add more space. I also looked at the P3, and like you said, it was out of my price range as well (about the same price as the J3) and didn't have the expansion slot, so it was out as well.

Oh, and I also ordered a set of Sennheiser CX500 earbuds. Are those any good? I mostly got them because with the sale price, they were even less than the CX300s, which I've heard good things about.

Everything is supposed to come on Monday-ish, so we'll see how it works out.

 

[jaguarskx]

Sennheiser makes good headphones. Not sure about the CX500 specifically though. I too bought Sennheiser headphones for my S9; I think it's the CX95 or CX950 model; I don't remember exactly.

 

[coleam45]

Best answer selected by coleam45.