High quality, solid MP3 player with unbelievable sound (Cowon iAudio X5L 20 GB)

Member Name: DannoStanno

Product:	Cowon iAudio X5L 20 GB
Date:	14/05/09 (26 review reads)
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Advantages: Sound quality, Drag and Drop, battery life

Disadvantages: Video/photo ability, extra dongle needed for transfers

Being averse to the I-Pod and to Creative's range, plus not a fan of the huge price of the Zune, I needed some alternative to feel my strict criteria in MP3 players. My criteria was the following: a) great sound (above average as I know there are some shoddy sounding players out there), b) over 20GB, c) no limitations in sharing music both via a computer and directly from device to device, d) the option of drag and drop technology when transferring files, e) a very strong battery life, e) ability to play many formats of music, including WMA, f) radio ability. I can honestly say that this player fufils all these criteria and, even several years after it was released, is possibly the only player on the market that does.

I do love this player and believe that the sound is better than any other model I have tried. Also I cannot fault the 30 hour plus battery life. However, there are a couple of things that have slowly got on my nerves after having the player two years now:

20 GB is still not quite big enough for my liking and it is the old hard-drive technology which means there is a slowish start up time. Also the 'dongle' that is needed to attach to the player in order to charge and transfer is a pain, as it is necessary to carry around and is easily lost. Also I believe there is a video function, yet I have never been able to get this to work and if it's as slow as the photo function I would not bother anyhow.

Still I feel these pitfalls take nothing away from the quality it holds as a music player and due to it's high quality and positive features, I am stuck trying to find a player larger than 20GB to replace this with.

Summary: Really top of the range company and still a great mp3 player if just for the sound, even though seve

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