Cowon iAUDIO U2
MP3 | February 4th, 2008
The U2 comes with a decent amount of accessories. You have your standard stock earbuds, line-in cable, USB mini cable, USB mini plug, lanyard, plastic case, software CD (Win98 drivers, JetShell 4.10 PRO, JetAudio 6.21 Basic), warranty card, quick installation guide, and user’s guide. Judging from pictures on the internet it seems like the plastic case is a replacement for the case that used to come with the player, a flexible fabric case from the looks of it. There doesn’t seem to be any accessories available for the U2 other than what’s in the box, so the included case is a big bonus, although personally the older case looks better than what I got. Cowon chose to include two USB solutions, the standard USB cable along with a USB to mini USB plug, which is meant to make the D2 function like a USB stick. With the U2’s relatively small size, it’s an OK solution, but it’s not something you’ll want to have plugged into the player at all times. The line-in cable is a standard cable with a 3.5mm (1/8″) male jack plug in each end. The U2 has a line-in jack right beside the headphone jack on the player, so you don’t need a subpack, adapter or anything like that to use line-in - purely plug and pl…record.
The iAudio U2 was very easy to setup and use. Just plug in the device and a Windows Explorer window pops-up giving you access to the device’s 1GB flash-memory. All you do is drag music files onto the window and it’s instantly transferred onto the device. The U2 supports MP3, WAV, ASF, protected WMA, and even OGG files! JetShell, a music transfer program, also comes with the device, but we decided to just stick with the Windows Explorer drag-and-drop method the add/remove files from the device.
The U2’s 128×64-pixel display may look small, but it manages to cram in plenty of information, including artist, album, and track names; time elapsed, time remaining, and a progress bar; graphic music levels; file format and bit-rate info; the current repeat mode; and a battery-life indicator. Unfortunately, we have bad news for fans of the iAudio 4’s cool, multicolor background lights: You won’t find them on the U2. Blue is all you get.
Specifications
Playback Format All ranges of MPEG 1/2/2.5 layer 3 (8kbps~320kbps) (8kHz~48kHz) and VBR
All ranges of WMA (20kbps~192kbps) (8kHz~48khz)
WAV (PCM format only, up to 44.1 Khz Stereo)
Memory 256MB/512MB/1GB/2GB*
PC interface
USB 2.0 (Up to 20Mbps)
Power
Built-in Lithium-polymer rechargeable battery
Charging Time
Normal charging (2 hour), Slow charging (6.5 hours)
Buttons 7 buttons (Play, REC, Menu, FF, REW, VOL+, VOL-)
Switch 1 switch (Hold)
Display 128 x 64 wide graphic LCD
SNR 95 dB
Output 16 Ohm earphone : 13mW + 13mW
Frequency Range 20Hz ~ 20KHz
Size 2.91 X 0.98 X 0.71 inch (73.8 x 25.0 x 18.0 mm)
Weight 1.2 oz (34 g) (including built-in battery)