Harry's Blog

The Cowon S9 32GB is without doubt the best music player I've owned. Previously I had an iRiver Clix 2 4GB that I was very happy with as it combined good sound quality with the ability to read books. I've also got a Creative Zen 32GB which was great as I could get my entire CD collection on it. However the Zen didn't have a book reader.

I began shopping around for a player with a 32GB capacity but also a good book reader. Sound quality was the major factor and after reading many reviews I settled on the S9. I'm really glad I did.

The sound quality is excellent, both through my CX300 in ear phones and my PX100 open phones. The battery life is outstanding and the screen is amazing. It's a delight to watch movies on and TV programmes downloaded from BBC iPlayer.

The book reader is very good too - making it very easy and pleasurable to listen to music and read at the same time. The radio reception is the best I've had in any music player I've owned.

The user interface is very good indeed and tweaked via the freely available CLAW UCI it's even better. My only criticism of the player is that it uses a propriety USB cable rather than a regular mini plug. But that's no big deal. All in all I'm thrilled with the S9.

If you're in the market for a touchscreen music player with good format support, excellent sound quality, an amazing AMOLED screen and super video playback (including BBC iPlayer support) then the S9 is the player to go for.