NOTE: I am a former iriver h320 owner. everything here is in comparison.
So I ordered an X5L 30GB, a cradle for the X5L 20/30gb, and a Zcover echo case. The order was made through amazon but the seller was JetAudio (Cowon America). Anyway....package arrived today. I was very happy. Opened up the box, and first unboxed the player. Took out the player, the usb cable, and the charging cable. left everything else in the box (i already have good headphones to use with it, Etymotic ER-4p, and the subpack has been replaced by the dock). The quality of the player itself is phenomenal. On a scale of 1 to 10 if the H320 is an 8.0, and 10.0 is a tank...the cowon is a 9.0. Its a bit chunkier than first expected, but then again this is the L version, so for being a 35-hour battery player (as compared to irivers 14 hours) the size of the X5 is pretty favorable. One thing unfavorable about the X5 is that the factory screen protector has a picture on it, so you need to get a 3rd party protector, or a case with an integrated one (zcover has one built in as far as i know...right?). The H320 factory protector was clear and attached well (no bubbles).. so i actually kept it on there for the life of the player (2.5 years)
The accessories are another story. The stock headphones feel better than the stock phones that came with the iriver (some cheapo sennheisers), dont really care how they sound since i wont be using them. All the other accessories however I must rank 3.0 to 4.0 range on the quality scale. The subpack and dock are of really think cheap plastic, even the cord for the AC plug was of worse quality than that of the H320. So cowon accessories are way worse in terms of quality than i would have liked.
As for the Z-Cover...it never came, instead i got a B-type iAudio leather case (AX5LCS). I was instantly like wtf mates? So i went on tech support trying to find a phone #...nope. I guess live support is next best thing while they are still open. After about 20 min of wait some1 finally talked to me. An RMA was set up so now i have to do an exchange to get the correct case. In the meantime...i am afraid to take my x5 out of the house as to not damage it / scratch screen. so Zcover review pending.
i turned on the player and the menus seemed pretty intuitive. Some things it does different than the H320...some act in pretty much the same way. But all in all navigating the player makes sense and is not very hard to figure out. I like that. On teh down size the default firmware (2.10-e) is kinda on teh ugly side compared to iriver. One good thing i must say is that boot time is substantially faster on the cowon. Then i transfered my music (about 15 gigs worth)... took a hair over 20 minutes, but the player got REALLY HOT. The iriver was warm after file transfers...but not THIS warm. does the x5 have any thermal issues i should be aware of? (currently the player is charging). Then i tried to navigate some more and listen to a sample of 192kbps ogg sound and sounds good. impressed w/ the sound quality. easily on par with the iriver. the downside of the navigation. in some of my folders files are 01. file name 02. file name... and in those folders it songs in correct order. in other folders its 1. file name 2. file name 10. file name.... and there the cowon lists 1. filename 10. file name 11. filename 2. filename ... and so on. I am pretty sure rockbox resolves that issue....but I am not gonna rockbox the cowon just yet (yes...i was an avid rockbox user on my h320).
This is basically all that comes to mind at this time. i'll prolly post more later if stuff comes up.
questions, comments, concerns?
