Cowon's X9 music player available for pre-order

These days, dedicated music playing devices have been losing popularity with the advent of smartphones that can do more or less everything. Though, a few companies still put out devices in that segment, still trying to wrestle market share away from the ever popular Apple iPod devices.

Cowon has announced that the pre-order for its new X9 device has started. The X9 comes in three variants. One with 8GB memory (costing Rs. 10,500), one with 16GB (costing Rs. 11,500) and one with 32GB (costing Rs. 13,400). The device is also available in either black or white and also comes with a microSD slot, with memory expandable to up to 32GB.

The Cowon X9 measures 72.5mm x 114.9mm x 12.2mm, weighs 159 g and sports a 4.3-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 272. Cowon players offer a wide range of codec support. All of its players offer FLAC (Free Lossless Audio codec) and OGG file format support, which lets you enjoy music in a clearer and more professional audio quality. Video format list includes AVI, WMV, DAT and MKV to name a few popular ones. The device also has FM radio.

The device boasts a battery life of 110 hours while playing music, 13 hours of video and 600 hours in sleep mode. Along with the ability to play audio and video, the device also has support for pictures and documents. Some of the pre-installed apps in the device include a voice recorder, a flash player and a dictionary. The X9 will also feature JetEffect 5 offering greater selection of tones. It’s an upgrade to the JetEffect 3 and in all 48 preset sound fields.

The white Cowon X9

The Cowon X9 also has a built in speaker, a gravity sensor and users can connect the device to a TV through a TV Out port.

Earlier this year, Cowon had launched the Z2 Plenue, which runs on Android. The Z2 has it all, from abilities to serve as a media player to web surfing, high storage capacity and access to Android apps.

This device promises superior playback and a realistic sound field. It comes with maximized functionality through the Android operating system and also various apps. It is fueled by a CPU with 1GHz horsepower and a video processor that supports full HD and 3D graphics, which helps increase processing power for apps and other multimedia content. It embeds a 3.7-inch AMOLED display for delivering full HD and is accompanied by 4+GB of file transfer capacity and HDMI output. Further, the storage capacity can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card, just like your smartphone. Yes, it sounds like a spec sheet of an Android handset. Needless to say, it doesn’t support voice calls.

The Android flavour adds access to a variety of apps. It can handle SNS apps and VoIP functions as well, and also allows surfing the web and checking e-mail over Wi-Fi. Cowon has included some services, like Membership Wallet, uCloud and more, and is also equipped with a dictionary and a scientific calculator.

The Cowon X9 is available for pre-order from Cowon’s website.