iAudio E2. My Review.

I became a fan of Cowon/iAudio products when I first got their flagship Cowon S9. They make a less expensive player, the iAudio 9 (review coming later), which for audio performance is equal to the S9. At the low end of their offerings is the iAudio E2, and so I bought one to find out how well it would do against the larger models.

Black is the only color available in the U.S. at the moment. It appears they intend to sell the E2 as a fashion accessory in several other colors though. Time will tell.I like the E2's design. A simple rectangle intersected with a circle, the statement is clean and striking. The circle/ring also presents a few options for attaching the device to oneself, and the whole device can be easily mistaken for a "fancy" USB thumb drive.

It's not tiny but it's size is just large enough to provide room for the required buttons. You get external power, volume and track rockers, and an Options button. The lone jack serves as the headphone jack and the USB charge/sync connection which requires the included unique USB cable. There is a reset hole on the back next to a tiny LED that indicate charging/charged and on/off status of the E2Music: Although you can use the E2 as a portable thumb drive, it's primary function is to play music. It supports several formats your music might come as, including MP3/2/1, WMA, FLAC, OGG, and WAV. It finds any music files you've transferred to it's memory and will play them sequentially or shuffled. It's only major shortcoming is in not giving you a way to easily jump through folders or albums. If you put 1000 songs on it expect to spend a tediously long time finding a specific one. The E2 doesn't play consecutive songs gaplessly (with no gaps between songs), but the gap is very short. You get to enjoy a subset of Cowon's BBE EQ/sound enhancement presets. With a quick tap on the Options button you can switch between Normal, BBE, BBE ViVA, BBE ViVA 2, BBE Mach3Bass, and BBE MP, BBE Headphone (1,2,and 3). Hold down that same Options button to switch between shuffle and consecutive play. You get a pleasant female voice to confirm your choice. Audio output sounds great to me, with both the included earbuds and through my favorite Sennheisers HD595s.

Conclusions: At $64 for 4gb, the E2 is priced $10 under the 4gb iPod Shuffle. I haven't listened to a Shuffle and won't buy one to test as I think it is the poorest designed MP3 player Apple has ever come up with. The E2 is a solid performer though, and easily worth the price. You get a great music player and an eye-catching conversation starter. I haven't found anywhere to buy the optional belt/pocket clip shown on Cowon's web sight, but did discover I can clip it to my belt with a little d-ring or hang it from my neck by passing a loop of leather cord through the ring. If you're looking for a great MP3 player to replace an old shuffle, the E2 is a hard one to beat.

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A Tablet Scattershot.

Apple's iSlate, JooJoo, Freescale Tablet, HTC/Chrome Tablet, Archos 9, and a half dozen more. That's what we can expect to see this month. Will anyone get it right? Does anyone need a tablet PC? It's not an original idea. These won't be the first tablet devices on the market. Of those listed above expect at least four different UI/operating systems.

You know what everyone really wants, don't you? It's Star Trek's everything tablet. That thin pad Jordi or Trip would reference for Enterprise specs or anyone on board would look up a family history or read a book on. They are everywhere, and a commodity. They apparently charge whenever set down, or are so thrifty they run forever on their initial battery/capacitor/fuel cell charge. Will anyone get it right? I don't think they will on the first shot. Someone will get close, though. It's inevitable with a scatter shot. Yet no one knows what we really can use since we don't have one yet. This month will be full of experiments. The company that learns the most from their first device will have an easier shot the next time.

Why have previous tablets failed:
- Lack of portability. You'll need a large coat pocket, briefcase, or purse to carry yours in.
- Price: If you can't carry one easily around, you'll want one for home, your car, and your workplace. At $300 to $1000 no one will want to buy more than one. Make it a $99 device or three for $279 and it's got a chance. Add auto syncing between your pads so they all have the same content and state like the Kindle ebook device and apps have. Set one down and whichever one you pick up will be right where you left the last one at.
- Fingerprints. Sure, a stylus can keep the screen clean, but it limits you to mono-touch. Multi-touch is the future. Move directly to fingers and subsequent prints. Most of us would stop using our keyboards if we could easily see how dirty they are. There's a reason they are usually black. You can't hide the smear when you have to look through it though. We'll need a new surface and/or way to interface with this new tablet.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Apple's Jobs has been dissatisfied with their tablet development up until now. Expect something original as an interface from Apple. Facial Expression Recognition maybe? Their iSlate will certainly have a web cam. Maybe it will read lips. Everyone else looks to be moving today's touchscreen UIs onto larger tablets. I've seen several different strategies, and more than a few that were horrible. Move past single-handed use and the ergonomics completely change. I would expect a voice command interface if we were always alone with our tablets. We live with other people though and are already annoyed when someone talks on their cell phone in our presence. Imagine everyone around you now who has a cell phone all of a sudden talking to their new iSlate. Voice command won't cut it.

I'm enjoying my Archos 5. It is thin but could be thinner. It could also be lighter. It could also be cheaper. The UI isn't ideal either. Yet it works. It may be the closest thing to that Star Trek pad we see though.

This will certainly be an interesting month. A tablet may be THE device of this decade. Do you want your own Trek pad? What would you pay? Please leave a comment.

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Philips GoGear Muse, 16gb. My Review

This will be my third Philips portable media player. The first was the cryptically named SA5245BT. I still enjoy using that player. The included Bluetooth is great. Yet with a non-memorable name it is hard to recommend to anyone in conversation. Philips got smart this year and started giving their products family (GoGear) and model names (Muse). I love the name. Cleverly appropriate. Perhaps they've been reading my blog.

Dimensions: 110 x 55 x 8.9 mm or 4.33 x 2.16 x .35 inches. It weighs 95 grams or 3.35 ounces.
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Included: USB charge/sync cable, slip case, noise cancelling ear buds with 3 different sized tips, registration form, warranty info, a Quick Start guide, offers from Audible and Rhapsody, and an installation CD.
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I HIGHLY recommend the Muse. Why? It plays just about every form of media I throw onto it. The Noise Cancelling works well, and the included (required) earbuds are comfortable. It's well made (is that stainless steel?). The big LCD screen is great to watch Photos and Videos on. They've already updated the firmware with a more colorful and animated set of icons. Lastly, it sounds great!

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Specs and Features can be found HERE. What stands out to me are the supported codecs:

- Audio includes MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, APE, and Real Audio.

- Video includes AVI, WMV, MP4, and RMVB. Resolutions up to D1 (720 × 576) in AVI and MP4, with up to VGA (640 x 480) in WMV and RMWB. WM-DRM is also supported.
- Picture support includes JPEG, BMP, GIF, and PNG files. It came with some 800 x 480 photos on board which look great when displayed.
- You also get FM Radio and text display with the Muse. FM includes RDS for additional information about the station and song you may be listening to. There are 20 station presets you can program. You can mute FM Radio too. Not all players can. Text files (.TXT) will also display on the screen.
- You can record FM radio to the Muse as MP3 (stereo) files. There's also a built-in microphone for recording voice messages in MP3 (Mono) format.

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Details: Across the top is a noise cancelling switch and volume control rocker.

The microphone is on the right edge next to a slot to tie a lanyard or wrist-strap through.

UI: Getting around through the icons and menus is done using a 4-way direction pad with pause/play/select in the middle. There's also a back button bottom left of the pad and an options button top left of the pad.

A Power and Hold slider is on the bottom edge next to the USB port. Far right on the bottom edge is the headphone jack.

The headphone jack has an extra "keyhole" slot to key with the noise cancelling headphone's plug. The player will also take standard headphone plugs. That key keeps you from using the included headphones with any other player though.

As non-touchscreens interfaces go, this is average. To finding one song in a long list is not too bad. The longer you hold down the down button the faster the list scrolls. A little better than typical.

Music: With noise cancelling (NC) the Muse is more of a pleasure to listen to than most players. With NC on the ordinary sounds of living go away and leave just your music to enjoy. I type this with my CPU case next to my monitor on my desk, and the CPU has the expected fan and hard drive sounds coming from it. Plug into the Muse and that din disappears. Getting to the music is surprisingly easy as well. The Music icon is first in line and takes one tap of the play button to select. You can then choose from All songs, Rhapsody channels, Smart Shuffle, Artists, Album Art, Albums, Genres, Rating, Playlists, and Audiobooks. The screen area is well used. While any song or book is playing you'll see cover art/album art on the left and information on the right. From the Options menu you can adjust sound settings, Add the current song to a playlist, Bookmark, Delete, Rate, and choose play mode. The only thing I haven't been able to do is play all songs (across more than one album) from an artist. There are 10 preset EQ settings, and one 5-band custom EQ you can set yourself. You've also got Philips Full Sound option to turn on or off. Lastly there is an option to set a volume limit. Music play gets an A from me.

Video: What I love about the Muse is that I can drop about any video files I have on it and it will play. MP4 Videos at 480 x 320 for the iPhone and iPod Touch are most easy to come by and they play fine on the Muse. AVI files formatted for my players with 480 x 272 pixel screens also play fine. I've thrown 512 x 288 and 640 x 360 MP4 files onto the Muse and they play as well. They only thing to keep away from is DRM encoded videos. Video gets an A.

Pictures: The Muse displayed photos taken right off my 7mp digital camera. It's obviously internally shrinks then to display on it's screen. It doesn't offer any Zoom capability that I could find. You can rotate images in 90 degrees steps. Photos look typical for an LCD screen, and will fade out as you tilt away from a straight-on view of the screen. There is a slide show function. You can select the time between photos, as well as shuffled or sequenced play order. There is an option to add individual photos to an Album. You can also delete photos from the player. To display the photos in a single folder use the browser to find that folder first. I'll give the Photo app a B- for not having a zoom option.

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Conclusion: The Muse from Philips leaves me with a generally good feeling. There are no major flaws or shortcomings among it's features. The price (mine was $128 from amazon.com) is right for what you get, and what you get is a versatile and great sounding media player. Philips seems to know there is little 3rd-party support for it's player so they throw in a nice slip-case to keep the muse in. A simple but appreciated touch. Should you buy a Muse? I see no reason why not. There is no memory expansion slot on the Muse, but you can get one with 32gb memory installed if you need it.

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