14 DAY TRIAL // The touchscreen has become as famous as the "click-wheel" was once, and for this reason, most portable multimedia player manufacturers are trying to capitalize on this trend and to launch some sort of touch-enabled product. That's also the case with South-Korean company Cowon, which has just announced that it's bringing its O2 model, featuring a 4.3-inch touch-screen and up to 32 GB of flash memory, on the US market, thus pitting it against Apple's iPod touch.
The O2 is powered by a Texas Instruments DaVinci chipset and sports a 4.3-inch widescreen digital TFT display with 480x272 resolution, which is also touch-control enabled. Additionally, the device is capable of delivering HD video (up to 720p resolution) using an optional composite cable, which means that it can also be safely used within home entertainment centers.
One of the main selling points of the device from Cowon is represented by its extremely high level of versatility. Practically, this thing will work with just about anything one might decide to throw at it, whether we're talking about video files in AVI, WMV, ASF, MP4, MATROSKA (MKV), OGM, MPG/MPEG, DAT, MTV formats, compressed with the DivX 3.11/4/5/6, XviD, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, WMV 9/8/7, H.264, M-JPEG, MPEG 1 video codecs.
Plus, it also supports a wide range of audio files and codecs as well, including here the MP3/2/1, WMA, ASF, AC3, FLAC, OGG, M4A, MATROSKA (MKA), TTA, APE, MPC, WV, WAV file formats and MPEG1 Layer 1/2/3, WMA, AC3, AAC, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, APPLE Lossless, True Audio, Monkey Audio, MusePack, WavPack, G.726, PCM codecs. Other audio-related functions include a 10-band custom equalizer with eight presets, built-in speaker and JetEffect sound effects.
Completing the all-in-one package of the O2 is a photo viewer with support for JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, BMP and RAW formats, document and CSD (compact shared document) viewer for PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, HTML and other file types, a high-quality FLAC-format audio recorder and a built-in basic/scientific calculator and Notepad.
As far as the issue of storage is concerned, it's worth mentioning that the player from Cowon is available in three different versions, namely 8GB, 16GB or 32GB. However, should this amount prove to be insufficient, there's always the possibility of adding some extra storage space via the SDHC memory expansion slot.
Depending on the specific amount of storage provided, the Cowon O2 sells for $219.99, $249.99 and $299.99, respectively, which certainly makes the player a lot more affordable than its direct competitor, the Apple iPod touch.
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