H320 owner gone X5 owner.... 1st day account

[munkymonkjr]

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 left everything else in the box (i already have good headphones to use with it, Etymotic ER-4p, and the subpack has been replaced by the dock).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?

[Nike T]

Why aren't you gonna rockbox it right now? How thick is it compared to the H320? And what happened to the H320?

[musichound]

And what happened to the H320?

I thought this was answered in the other forum.

Munkymonkjr, thank you for posting this information. Please fill us in what you like and don't like about it as time goes on.

[DreamTactix291]

I have an X5 60GB which is physically the same size as the 30GB X5L and it's not really all that big. It is several mm thicker at the top than at the bottom. Mine has never really seemed hot from transferring, so there aren't really any thermal issues I can think of. The subpack is kinda a pain, but I just leave mine in the bottom of the player a lot since I use the line-out in my car.

Once you finally get the zCover I think you'll like it; I'm quite fond of mine. I didn't get mine for like a week after getting the X5 so I was pretty paranoid as well. It is a pretty durable little machine though.

I can't really comment on the Cowon firmware as I never used it. I put on Rockbox right away but to each his own. Once you do install Rockbox it'll be almost the exact same as using it on your H320 was.

If you use IEMs I think you'll notice less hiss than you did with your H320. I have considerably less on my X5 than my H160.

Well, congratulations on getting the X5L and I hope you like it a lot as you use it more.

[munkymonkjr]

basically i rockboxed it and it feels different from the h300 port..... like its missing something. so somewhat disappointed there. but all in all not too bad i suppose.

so far my verdict is that between the H320 and the X5... the H320 is a better package. i'm happy with the X5... i think its probably one of the best DAPs out there today.... but now that i've tried cowon.... going back to iriver doesn't sound like a bad idea (when the X5 dies hopefully we will have some solid state drive daps... perhaps a 30gb Clix3 )