Cowon A3

Cowon's latest A3 portable video player, I have to say is pretty impressing. Being a high-capacity portable video player, the A3 offers spectacular video resolution (800x480) and supports just about every file format out there. Along with its built-in video recording capability and a high-quality video output, the Cowon A3 is something nice out there in the market.

It's disappointing to see that the A3 aside from a dramatic jump in format support and screen resolution, is almost indistinguishable from the Cowon A2. The A2's frustrating miniature joystick navigation and lack of support for DRM-protected WMV and WMA files were some of the issues with the previous player but even now, the new A3 still hasn't addressed these drawbacks. Competitors to the A3 such as the Archos 605 WiFi and Creative Zen Vision W, might not have the support for a large number of file formats, but they are ahead of the A3 on navigation and support for video and music download services.

Despite all the wizardry packed into the A3, it seems that it's going to be a hard time for Cowon to sell the A3's. Archos is selling their 160GB Wi-Fi-enabled PVP, the 605 WiFi, for the same $399 price as Cowon's 60GB, non-Wi-Fi, A3. Maybe the A3 is technically superior to the Archos in many ways, but the allure of the 605's increased storage, touch-screen interface, and Wi-Fi capabilities, is hard to resist.