The Worlds Best MP3 Player!

If you've been sleeping under a stone, you may have missed our excitement about the latest player to arrive from the masters of quality - Cowon. The S9 has teased us over the last year or so with the promise of the Cowon player we always wanted, but never dared hope would turn out as well as we could imagine.

Well, we're astounded to say, it's better than we could have ever hoped for!

The main points to focus on are the new BBE+ sound architecture, the amazing AMOLED widescreen display, full Bluetooth support and the superb new user interface. As it's the first thing that'll strike you when using the S9, let's take a look at the interface first:

Zoom UI:

This is a real step forward for Cowon's players, which have had a reputation for being slightly complex to use. With this new totally touch screen user interface, Cowon have kept the depth of control possible with previous players, but made day-to-day operation simplicity itself!

Your main functions are represented by a set of simple icons on the main screen and on entering any of these options, you're presented with a simple list of track, or videos or photos. Text too small? Use the zoom bar and make it bigger. Not sure what a certain video file is? A looping thumbnail shows some footage from it, right there on the menu. And again, you can zoom in.

It doesn't stop there - the S9 features G sensor technology, so it knows which way up it's being held. So, you can turn it on it's side and scroll through a list of album covers, instead of a textual track list. Watching a movie, it doesn't matter what way up you hold it, the S9 will re-format the file to display the right way up and as big as possible on the 3.3 inch - 480 x 272 pixel AMOLED screen.

Audio
Normally, on a player with such a ground-breaking screen, we'd start with Video, but on the S9, we really want to make special mention of the audio and why it is the best sounding player we've ever listened to - by far!

That's a pretty big claim, but we're totally confident that you will not in any honesty be able to listen to it back-to-back with any other portable player with the same files on it and say it's anything but the best. We have - it's true!

Video
Now, we've spoken about audio before video, but the video capabilities of this player are, if anything, even more impressive than the audio! This is the first ever use on a portable device of a 3.3" 16 million colour AMOLED display.

What does that mean? Well, traditionally, portable screens use LCD displays. These have a mask layer of pixels, which can change colour - filtering light from a backlight to create images. The technology is well-proven, but has some limitations. There is a lag time with the pixels changing, which can cause rapidly moving images to get slightly 'muddy'. Also, their very design means they waste energy - they filter and cut down light output from a backlight.

AMOLED works differently. It still uses individual pixels (480 x 272 in the S9) but the pixels themselves emit light and change much quicker than LCD. This means the screen is sharper, pixel for pixel, much brighter and movement is pin-sharp.

Movies on the S9 are incredible - this is really the first pocket device we can wholeheartedly say we have no problem watching full length movies on. It's bright and crisp, but not taxing on the eye as there is no ghosting or blur. The S9 can play Xvid SP/ASP and WMV9SP/MP files natively, and supports SMI subtitles. Playback time is an amazing 11 hours of continuous video!

TV Out Functionality
The S9 has the ability (with the separately available TV-Out cables) to display the contents on a full size TV! Imagine, you've gone round to a mates house with your favourite movies saved on your S9 in DVD quality. Simply plug the cables into the back of the TV to show those movies in the original quality on the full-size TV display! It also works with photos, so you can show holiday or family photos when you go to friends for dinner.

Anywhere you see this notice means FREE SHIPPING on that item!

Other Features

Of course, it doesn't stop there. Cowon have long believed in packing their players with additional functionality and thanks to firmware upgrades, have even added functionality (for free) to players long after launch.
Bluetooth - The S9 supports full bluetooth A2DP and AVRCP functionality. This means you can connect the player to bluetooth devices like headphones without a plug-in dongle and even use any buttons the headphones have to control the player. Audio quality is superb - for ultimate quality, we still recommend wired headphones, but the bluetooth output on this is easily the best we've heard.
Picture Viewer - still images can really show off the incredible crispness and brightness of the revolutionary AMOLED screen. It accepts JPEG files and will resize any image for display - so you can bluetooth an image from your 8MP camera phone and the S9 will display in full 3.3 inch 16 million colour AMOLED glory!
FM Radio - With great reception using the headphone cord as an antenna, you'll not be bored with access to radio!
Document Reader - a great use of the crisp screen, you can load text files (and a lot of classic books are available free online as text files) and read them comfortably on the widescreen display - with the benefit of the Zoom UI if you need to make the text larger.
Flash Player - a flash player, allows you to download flash games and utilities from the internet and integrate them with your player
Calculator - already included is a handy calculator and this is indicative of the sort of accessory programs that Cowon tend to include with firmware updates for free!