One year on with my Cowon iAudio E2

Over the last three years or there abouts, I’ve been purchasing a new portable media player pretty much every six months, some as upgrades, and some just for convenience. My very first mp3 was a Creative ZEN, and I grew to love it, (even though it broke twice). I then churned through a Creative ZEN Stone (which I lost), a Samsung S2 (Or the “Pebble”, which I eventually sold off), a Creative ZEN X-fi, a Creative ZEN Stone Plus w/Speaker (which I also have lost), and have finally calmed down with a Cowon iAudio E2, and a 32gb Microsoft Zune HD.

Reasoning for churning through so many is because I’ve always been picky with how I use and choose my mp3 players. Primarily, one for on-the-go, and another for containing much more of my music library. And so, my Cowon iAudio E2, is my on-the-go media player, for both convenience, and sound quality, and I believe that it is very much, close to perfect for me. I could even say, that it’s the best mp3 player I’ve ever owned.

I never got around to reviewing it, but basically, it’s a 4gb screenless mp3 player with a minimalist design (which I love) and as expected from a Cowon product, it has stellar sound quality. Cowon’s BBE+ sound enhancements go a long way to help making your music sound better, without distorting it and making everything sound weird and artificial. The E2 also serves as a solution to my former Creatives and my current Zune’s annoying limited audio codec support, able to playback almost any audio file you can throw at it.

Though, that’s not to say that I don’t have any gripes with it. The rated battery life is only 11 hours, and navigation through the library on it isn’t great, but Cowon does do their best in making it easier to use without a screen. It also doesn’t have gapless playback (unlike some Cowon mp3s), and quite frankly, trying to figure out what button does what is painfully annoying, especially when trying to operate it in the dark. (The design is pretty much symmetrical, so the buttons are the same on either side, but have different functionality, eg, the “EQ/Shuffle” button is mirrored by the “Power”, and so when I try turning on the shuffle, there’s a good chance I’ll turn the E2 off unwillingly by pressing the wrong button.

But as you can see, my E2 has been through quite a bit (by my standards at least), being used as a keyring, mixed with pens, pencils and various other sharp objects, multiple brushes with walls and corners etc. One year on, I still use it frequently, at home and out and about and it still works perfectly, and in someways better than when I originally purchased it thanks to a firmware update from Cowon. Paired with my Shure SE420s, music is just… beautiful…

For some people, paying $64 (here in Aus) for a 4gb screenless mp3 player sounds expensive, but then I’d like to point them to the iPod Shuffle which still sells truckloads at $69 for 2gb. But for me, I think the Cowon E2 is one of the best purchases I’ve made in my gadget purchasing history.