I just recieved it and did some initial testing. It will replace a 20 GB iAudio X5 which had weak battery life. I've also read pretty much every user and professional review on the net about it (the word impulse buy doesn't exist for me).
Let me begin with explaining how Engineers and Marketing probably worked together for this product at Cowon:
Marketing: It has to be very light.
Engineers: But we like our aluminium casing on the X5.
Result: Marketing people +1, the casing is made from plastic (very good plastic, but still plastic and the weight is too light)
Marketing: It hast to be shiny.
Engineers: But fingerprints and scratches suck.
Result: A tie, the sides are made from matte plastic and they are a bit higher than the shiny front and back, which protects the shiny surfaces (I will report how easy it scratches because I will never use a sock or case for my MP3 players and mobile phones, that is retarded).
Marketing: It has to have some fancy feature to seperate it from the competition, like touch sensitive buttons.
Engineers: But the knob on the X5 is one of the best in the market.
Result: Marketing +1, even tough the engineers got the buttons working nicely I think the knob was more practical for blind use (firmware upgrade is a must to correct an error but that is piece of cake with iAudio products)
Marketing: It has to be small, preferably thin.
Engineers: But we can’t get a good battery life with a thin player.
Result: Engineers +1, It is a bit smaller than a regular mars bar (European regular size). I think that it is too small already for my not so big hands.
Things that kick *** about the 7:
It works just as a USB stick, just drag and drop your music files on and off it (no software needed).
Folder based browsing, for the people that keep their music organised (also supports ID3 tags)
Plays a lot of formats.
Battery life tested in REVIEWS with real life settings is 40 hours or more(60 is factory
spec). I will sure report my findings once I’ve tested it.
High Quality Voice recording: Will get more use than you think for lectures, interviews, meetings and of course the famous „Note to myself…“
Great Audio Quality with good headphones and enough power for more demanding ones (the stock ones are good compared to others, but he typical iAudio customer has his own)
Enhancements for crappy audio files: If you have a lot of music in lower quality formats, you get a wide array of enhancements and an equalizer (and it doesn’t just make the bass louder, even tough even the most hardcore drum &bass people will be very happy with how good you can make a loud bass sound)
It will be available (or already is) in 16 GB size and the price is right (at least for the 8 GB I got).
It is easy to use unless you are a n00b (If you had a X5 before, it's almost the same).
things that need to be elimitated in the future to make space for more usefull stuff:
Radio: If radio content would be good, MP3 players wouldn’t exist. Altough, if you are in the UK recording the Essential Mix while you listen to it is kinda cool (haven’t tried that myself).
Video: When you can watch the News streaming from a wireless network it might make sense but watching any video content on a small screen is just a pain in the ***.
Line in Recording: Quality is low and there aren’t many people left with music in other formats than files.
X5 vs 7, a few lessons went through:
No more subpack for connecting it.
It’s smaller and the shape is streamlined (no bump like on the X5).
No more stuff written on the front.
Conlcusion:
If you have been waiting on a flash based player with higher than 4 GB capacity that doesn't have the drawbacks the products from Sandisk (Audio Quality) and Apple (iTunes) have, the 7 is for you.
__________________
