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| | Features | 32 GB capacity for about 8000 songs, 40,000 photos, or 40 hours of video; SD card slot for expansion64 hours of audio or 11 hours of video playback on a single charge3.3-inch, 16-million color AMOLED display with 480 x 272 pixel resolutionSupports MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, WAV and APE audio formats; AVI, WMV, and ASF video formats (DivX/Xvid/WMV codecs); JPEG image format; TXT text filesOne-year limited warranty
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| | Description | 3.3-inch 16:9 Wide AMOLED, 16 million colors, res. 480x272, ultra portable. Play all your digital entertainment , movies, TV shows, photos and music. Touch sensitive interface. Bluetooth, Voice recorder with internal microphone, FM radio and TV-out supporting composite connections. Maximum 11 hours of video playback and maximum 64 hours of audio playback. Standard microSD card slot and built-in speaker. | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 3.7 inches | | Product Width: | 3.7 inches | | Product Height: | 5.9 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.68 pounds | | Package Length: | 6.1 inches | | Package Width: | 3.9 inches | | Package Height: | 3.9 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.6 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 96 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 96 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
79 of 81 found the following review helpful:
 WHAT?! Aug 13, 2010
By F. Soto
"Zotof"
My Creative Zen:M was getting old, and I had already replaced the battery once so doing it twice was too much for me so I decided to upgrade. That's where the Cowon J3 came in, after doing my research I decided to take a chance on a brand I'd never heard of before.
PROS:
- Touchscreen is fast and accurate to the touch
- Beautiful AMOLED screen even when the brightness is toned down
- Plays AAC,MP3,FLAC,WAV,etc etc etc
- Video looks great and is smooth
- Plenty of options for video
- Plenty of options for music
- Recording, speaker, and mic are surprisingly decent
- Jet Effects 3.0 has tons of EQ presets and 4 customizable user options
- Alarm and Radio work great, you get tons of stations
- 3 ways to view everything on your screen, you can switch between them instantly
- Lock option on the side makes it easy to not accidentally turn on the player while it's in your pocket
- Play and volume buttons on other side of also make it practical when you don't want to turn on the player to change tracks
- Sound is amazing, especially with the BBE+ options as mentioned before
- Battery life is great so far, I get tons of hours before a quarter of the battery is even used
- Switches from horizontal to vertical back and forth with ease
- MicroSD slot
- Screen is very durable, it's gorilla glass just like the Cowon S9.
- Did i mentions there's tons of options for the user on this? well there's a ton, it does not disappoint in this reagard
CONS:
- Album art does not show up when you change to horizontal view*
- screen is very prone to finger prints as well as back of player, essentially the whole thing
- when you're listening to the radio and want to change the dial up(numbers ascending) you have to press the back button instead of the forward*
*can be corrected with a nice firmware update.
One thing I do recommend is that you don't purchase this directly from jetmall. Well, that's unless you like multiple charges on your credit/debit card. Amazon is the best way to go, as usually is the case. Overall this product deserves the praise it's been recently getting, just for the sound alone. It's so easy to use the design is simply great. If you want the white version of this though, you're not going to find it on Amazon yet, but it looks just as great from what I can tell and I expect Amazon to make it available soon. About the only thing I could find wrong was how easy it is to smudge the screen, but that's expected with any touchscreen, I'd recommend an anti-glare screen for this problem. Any other problems can be corrected with a firmware update. I have the 2.21 version right now, but I'm sure more are in the works as is per usual with these things. I recommend this product to any music fan, good luck on your search though, it never hurts to keep looking although I'm personally sticking with this one.
EDIT:
JUST DOWNLOADED FIRMWARE UPDATE 2.2 AND THE ALBUM COVERS ARE NOW VIEWABLE THROUGH LANDSCAPE MODE(HORIZONTAL).
33 of 33 found the following review helpful:
Unsurpassed Audio Sep 02, 2010
By Richard Madigan
I preface this review by noting that I have used it only in a PC environment. It is my understanding that it is very easy to inadvertantly "brick" this player when using it with anything Apple, even when running windows on a Mac using a VM (virtual machine).
AUDIO - This player definitely cements Cowon's reputation for making the best sounding portable players available. The only real problem with the sound is that the player is cabable of reproducing audio at a level that far outstrips the included headphones. It is almost like putting bicycle tires on a Ferrari. Anyone considering purchasing this player would do well to opt for a really good set of noise isolating or cancelling earphones. This is especially true if you listen to digital files recorded with a lossless format (like FLAC) rather than MP3.
VIDEO - The AMOLED screen is very bright and sharp regardless of viewing angle. The capacative touch screen is responsive and easy to manipulate. Picture quality is of such a really high caliber I do not think that there is much that can be improved upon. The main drawback regarding video on this player is that it is not supported by Amazon Unbox so forget about downloading and watching portable files in the .amzn format.
SOFTWARE - The only real downside to this player is the operating software/menu system. To describe it as counterintuitive and confusing is a bit of an understatement. Reading (and re-reading) the manual helps. I suppose that eventually one can get used to using any type of interface, but this really detracts from what is otherwise a very good portable media player. Cowon frequently updates firmware adding incremental improvements, so it is important to periodically check and make sure that you are running the latest firmware version (the one that ships with the unit is not, so immediate updating should be done as soon as the unit is charged).
CONCLUSION - This PMP is geared towards users who are willing to pay a premium for an improved listening experience compared to other units on the market. It meets those expectations right out of the box, but for really superlative audio, splurge on earphones that can take advantage of the J3's capabilities.
57 of 61 found the following review helpful:
The best player out there Oct 27, 2010
By Audiophile
I spent months researching various portable media and audio players. I knew iPods were not the best in terms of sound quality, and I knew I was missing out on a lot by listening on an iPod. I have all of my music encoded in FLAC lossless audio, something Apple and Steve Jobs refused to allow iPods to play. I refuse to encode all of my files in Apple Lossless, plus the iTunes CD extraction program is terrible...and obviously the songs you download on iTunes are compressed and low bit rate songs. Using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) I have all of my music in FLAC, the highest quality track you can have recorded. Now, I just needed a player to play these files.
I looked into the Nationite s:flo2, the Cowon S9, the Cowon J3, Samsung P3, Sansa Clip, Sansa Fuze, and the other common audiophile player. I wanted a well-designed, sleek player that could play my FLAC files and give me the best portable listening experience. In other words, sound quality was of the utmost importance to me. Because all of the above players can play or be modded to play back FLAC (and many reviews said the differences in sound quality were negligible, if audible at all), it came down to other factors.
The ability to play back video files really separate the J3, S9, and s:flo2 from the rest of the back. I eliminated the others based solely on that capability. And the J3 and S9 beat out the s:flo2 with its BRILLIANT Amoled screen. Believe me, this has to be seen to be believed. It was tough for me to see the screen quality through video reviews, but I had to trust what the critics said...and they were right. The screen is amazing, and picture and video quality is unparalleled.
I chose the J3 over the S9 because of the additional slot for up to 32GB of microSD memory (64GB total), built in speaker, and other small features. The total memory capacity of 64GB over 32GB in the J3 was the most major difference. Another benefit I have no realized is that the J3 has a flat back, which allow it to be easily paired with a portable amp. The S9 is curved, and so a portable rig with amp is more difficult to combine and carry.
I have Denon AHD2000 headphones, and the J3 can power them very well with its own power. When paired with an external or portable amp, the sound quality is much higher and I can most certainly hear an improvement, but do not worry about absolutely needing one.
My final comment is that the s:flo2 is the most comparable product, and many audiophiles go with the s:flo2 over the J3 or S9. Let me just say that the s:flo2 looks a lot like an iTouch or iPhone, and when non-audiophiles (99% of the population) see the s:flo2, they think you just bought an Apple knockoff product and are cheap. Although this is most certainly not the case (the s:flo2 does have a line-out, whereas the Cowon J3 and S9 do not, and it has very similar sound quality output), some and myself included think it is important to have a good looking player. I have shown a number of people my J3 and I have come across as more of an audio enthusiast who knows his stuff, rather than someone who cheaped out and got a knockoff Apple product.
I want to reiterate all the pros that were listed above, but hopefully my comments here have provided additional insight. This player is awesome, and you will not be let down.
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
Cowon J3 Review and Impressions Jan 23, 2011
By Antonio M. Cuevas
"My Sony CT-100 Settings (and PS3 Settings) http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=745"
One day... one day is all it took to fall in love with Cowon all over again. The Cowon J3 may be a refresh of Cowon's flagsh[/B]ip model the Cowon S9; it has some welcome improvements that justify it as being a successor of the Cowon S9. So without further ado, here is the Cowon J3 - the very mp3 player that rolls out the red carpet to its faithful customers and fans to let them know that Cowon does listen and learn from their mistakes.
Introduction
As some may remember I have been with Cowon since the Initial D2 era and followed deeply when the Cowon S9 was announced as the Cowon D2's probable successor and months waited intently for specs and a release date (even a delay or two from it projected release date.) The Cowon S9 came out as entirely different device than expected with a drastic curved design and an introduction of Gorrilla glass on top of a beautiful AMOLED capacitive screen. BBE++ and eventual introduction of BBE 3.0 made enjoying your music even better with some great customizability and fantastic sounding presets. Greeted by positive reviews by almost everyone (*shakes fist at CNET*), the Cowon S9 became a smash success - moreso to the point that Cowon decided to pop out their first foray into the 32GB flash memory field. I'm sure in Cowons building everything seemed great, another device they can put under their belt as being another great.
But with every good must come a bad; the S9 feels that due to pressure building to its release, some things feel rushed interface wise and certain design choices didn't entirely make sense. Due to the drastic design of the Cowon S9, button placement like the play button and such are placed near the very top of the device which are a bit hard to reach and the play button looks to be possible to break in the future as its protruding a bit outside of the device (Donald bell from CNET almost broke it off as he thought it was a stylus for a capacitive screen) The on/off/lock switch is also most likely to eventually break off as most have already did as its design alone reminds me of the breakable d2 switch. Also, a few potential customers like prior D2 owners were bummed out that there was no expandable memory slot. Now the UI was a straight debacle with an awful widget mainmenu that even an update wasn't enough to make it any better. A music UI that seemed to be stuck in the D2 days of small album art with an added blegh of an unknown coverflow system with forced album sorting and an unnecessary quick list (again an update did improve the UI but not by alot). The mainmenu UIs were easy enough to follow but were to generic to even bother writing home about. The Cowon fan Community was the only thing that saved the UI of the Cowon S9.
Cowon must have read of these flaws from somewhere or knew they rushed the device out as we now have here this pretty great device that addresses all the issues mentioned above.
Design
Same with the Cowon S9, a design was chosen to bring the Cowon J3 to the forefront as being a sleeker device over the Cowon S9. The Cowon J3 is a much slimmer device than the Cowon S9 with the Cowon J3 being less than 10mm versus the Cowon S9s 13mm. The Cowon J3 is less curved as well - it's able to lay completely flat on a table unlike its older boat like design of a brother Cowon S9. Don't be surprised for passerbyers to confuse the Cowon J3 as a phone as it somewhat really looks like one. The bigger models that have been released worldwide are black (recently released 8gb model is white) all around with the exception of its front chrome border (imagine the Creative Zen 2008 model). It still feels about the same weight as the Cowon S9, probably because the device is still made out of plastic as well, though there is this very small metal piece near the bottom of the front of the device.
With these design improvements, Cowon decided to fix the button placement and put all the play control buttons on the sides of the device similar to what most phones now a days have. The play button on the J3 looks like the rest of the buttons on the device and not a confused Donald bell S9 stylus. After all the devices made by Cowon, the on/off/hold switch has finally been ditched - Instead you now have a multifunction button that does all the work now. Pressing it once locks the screen, pressing it twice turns off the screen, and pressing it once in lock or screen off mode brings the device back to a useable state while holding the button turns on or off the J3. This may become a problem in the future as it's really easy to get out of lock/ screen off mode, which could cause some wasted battery amounts unknown to the user if it was in their pocket and they happened to bump into the button by accident.
That's pretty much all there is about the buttons on the device, the bottom side of the device is where people get excited about. Beside the headphone jack is a long compartment with a latch that holds the similar usb port on the Cowon S9 and drum roll please... an expansion slot, something alot of D2 and S9 users were wanting on the original S9! It's of course the now standard micro sd cards expandable to 32GB - which means 8GB users get 40GB, 16GB users get 48GB, and 32GB users get 64GB maximum. Take note that the micro SD causes longer power on times and that it only merges with your music in album/artist sorting mode, its considered as a separate drive on other occasions.
Another subtle hardware improvement is on the back of the device where the mic and reset holes are still at - a builtin speaker! For those who own a Cowon S9, the only way to listen to your music is by plugging something into the headphone jack. The Cowon J3 gives you two ways for you to listen to your music and even though listening to your music through the speaker doesn't sound as good as a pair of headphones, it's still pretty loud and allows you to easily "share" your song with someone without a headphone splitter or letting them use your headphones.
The last improvement was requested by alot of Cowon S9 users. Even though the Cowon J3 still sports a Gorrilla glasssed 3.3" AMOLED screen (which is still gorgeous to watch videos and pictures on), the capacitive screen was given a function this time around to put it to good use. You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'... multitouch! Yep, chucking that zoom slider, you can now pinch to zoom in or out of your pictures and text files. This is something I've recently started to grow to love due to my tablet and I'm lovin' the addition to the Cowon J3. Its hit or miss sometimes but most of the time it works. So overall all the hardware improvements on the J3 are enough to make you wonder why the S9 didn't have these set features.
User Interface and Interaction
On the UI side of the J3, it seems Cowon learned their lesson and decided to spend more time on the J3 this time around or spent some money to bring in a UI designer. All three of the mainmenu UIs are really thought out well. First one is a bit similar to the Cowon S9 but has a better icon set and is g-sensored enabled meaning the icons turn according to where the devices position is turned to (forgotten to mention earlier that this device also has a g-sensor). It also has a small "Whats Playing" bar near the bottom of the mainenu. The second mainenu is a very informative UI as it counts practically all your files per file type on the menus bars. Imagine a simplified Zune interface (not the HD model) with access to move the menus bars around by holding it with you finger and then sliding it down to wherever you like. Each menu bars description like Music for instance hae below its title the number of music types it found on the device. Pretty cool but also as mentioned very informative. The third mainmenu is also a big question mark just like the S9 was, it's technically non-existent but at the same time is due to custom UIs being able to access it. The fourth mainmenu, the widget mainmenu, is still not that great but it is alot better than the S9's current rendition. All three of the usable mainmenus have a bottom slide bar that gives options of switching UIs turning off the device or making go into sleep mode. The music UI has been improved with a nice simple layout and big album art. They ditched the quicklist and revamped their coverflow which is a bit similar to the upgrade the S9 users received, although a bit snappier but still using the forced album sorting. Cowons browser isn't so ugly this time around and is very smooth, especiallly nice is that they added a search function. All mainmenus though, with the exception of the widget mainmenu, is replaceable through custom UIs. Playlist support isn't too good though just like the S9 but custom UI's like Kizunes recent music UI help alleviate a bit of the pain.
The big buzz right now is Kizune's Chakra and Aero Music UI, which are so customizable, super rich with features, and fun to use - S9 and J3 owners both agree that they have no clue why Cowon hasn't bothered to offer him a job yet (all custom UI's by the way are found on iaudiophilesvJ3 or S9 forums). El Maco has also brought a big contribution to the J3 and S9 community by making a fully functional coverflow that can be used with any music UI, even moreso to the point that it's a major plugin for Kizunes Aero Music. As you can tell, Custom UIs have been a great cornerstone that Cowon allows and supports (guides are online) for most of their devices like the J3.
Additional Info
Since we delved into the devices internals, software wise, the Cowon J3 still impresses with its technical specs just like the S9. With so many formats supported by the J3 for music, it's surprising that AAC is now supported on the J3 - albeit unofficially but it's also something alot of prior fruit users were wanting on the S9 (in other words, J3 has mostly all possible format for music now). Cowon is still the cream of the crop when it comes to sound quality and the J3 is another testament to the continued praise. BBE 3.0 sound enhancement and Wolfson sound chip combo alone is what kept me staying with my Cowon S9 and the J3 is following in the same footsteps. Love, love, love popping on my favorite songs on the J3 and fall head over heels everytime (especially paired with my Sunrise Charms and Fiio E5). Video formats supported by the J3 may not be as large as the O2 but the J3 does have unofficial support (again) for H.264, at least on re-encoding through the baseline format like the S9. You'll get 11 hours of video playback just like the Cowon S9, most devices on the market do 8+ hours so anything above that is great! When it comes to the hours for the J3 for music, it is much higher than the Cowon S9 and trumps the D2 as well - 64 hours is a great accomplishment compared to other mp3 makers (excluding Cowons X7). This number is dependent on its material as Cowon tests these hours in backlight set at 1 or off and with a 128kps mp3 format song (lovers and friends on most of Cowon's devices) song lasting about 4 minutes (and Bluetooth off). My testing was about the same (Bluetooth off and screen off) but different range of songs - which resulted in 50+ hours. Again, that's still pretty high compared to others. So expect less recharging and more enjoying of your music if you strictly use it for that (which I do).
Final Thoughts
So the question remains... If you are a Cowon S9 user, should you jump ship and board the J3 wagon as an upgrade. Well it depends on your wants and situation, as the J3 is a minor refresh like the D2+, fixing problems and improving the device for the better by design and feature wise. If you love your Cowon S9 but wish the button placement was better or that it wasn't so curved, the J3 may be for you. If you wished the Cowon S9 had multitouch due to its already capacitive screen or you want to let others to hear your music but wished the S9 had some sort of speaker so you didn't have to share the device or headphones, the J3 may be the answer. Finally, if your Cowon S9 is about to burst at the seams due to your storage capacity is almost full or hate swapping in your music to and from your computer due to the full capacity of your S9 and wished they had included some sort of expansion slot for hotswappping cards out for an almost limitless amounts of your music, than the Cowon J3 may be the upgrade you've been wanting. The Cowon J3 is highly recommend by me as it literally addresses alot of the issues I and alot of others (as owners, previous owners, and potentials) have had to put up with when it came to the Cowon S9. Worthy upgrade from my Cowon S9 in my opinion, take a chance and give the Cowon J3 one as well, you won't regret it! No matter how you look at it, Refresh or not, the Cowon J3 is THE successor of the Cowon S9 and current, previous, and potential D2 and S9 owners should gaze a little over here at the Cowon J3 - best mp3 player I bought from Cowon!
PROS:
+ Sleek, Thin, flat style almost identical to modern phones (Improvement over S9)
+ Beautitul Amoled Screen (Ref. S9)
+ Gorilla Glass (Ref. S9)
+ Capacitive touchscreen w/ Multitouch (Improvement over S9)
+ Great button placement on the sides (Improvement over S9)
+ Play/ Pause button now a common button (improvement over S9)
+ On/Off/Display off & On/ Lock combo switch ditched, now a button (Improvement over S9)
+ Cowon Mainmenu UI's and Music UI very friendly and stylish (Improvement over S9)
+ Nice browser for files and has a search function (Improvement over S9)
+ Custom UI support still great
+ Cowons Trademark fantastic Sound Quality
+ BBE 3.0 best sound enhancement available w/ customizable EQ settings
+ Many audio formats supported, AAC unofficially supported (Improvement over S9)
+ Good amount of video formats, H.264 unofficially supported (Improvement over S9)
+ 11hrs of video, 64hrs of Audio (Improvement over S9)
+ Micro SD slot, accepts up to 32GB Micro SDHC cards (Improvement over S9)
+ Loud Small speaker in the back (Improvement over S9)
Cons
- Long Initial load screen if using a Micro SDHC card
- On/Off/Display off & On/ Lock combo button too easy to get out of lock mode
- Above button issue may also cause wasted battery usage unknown to user
- Playlist support just like the S9, not a good thing. Aero Music fixes the problema bit
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
It's good Aug 12, 2010
By raybies
"The time has come to question everything"
I purchased the 32GB black J3 and all I can say is it's good.
Battery lasts ~20hrs continuous playback with FLAC and Shure SE530's.
There's no hissing or sshhhhh; Sound quality is good.
It plays back every video file (xvid/divx) I've thrown at it.
Some of the preset audio enhancements add too much distortion... but that's to be expected.
Using it is a real pleasure.. precise and easy.
The screen is really nice; AMOLED :)
It does what it says in a nice easy to use elegant package.
It loads up ready to use in <3 seconds with 32GB full (FLAC).
Only thing I don't like is the proprietary USB cable.
See all 96 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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