Cowon iAudio M3L

Posted by T3 Online on Mon 22 Oct 2007

Plenty of juice but too much wedge

The troublemakers at CoWon turned a lot of heads with the original version of this player, purely because it was the first MP3 jukebox to be thinner than Apple's iPod. Now the company is back to further stir things up.

The "L" on the end of the name stands for "long play", and in that department, this 20GB jukebox doesn't disappoint. It can bang out tunes for a mammoth 30 hours from a single charge. However, to achieve such ferociously lengthy playing time, the designers have had to add extra bulk to the device, making it 4mm thicker than the previous model, and - crucially - thicker than the new iPod.

Elsewhere, things haven't really changed. The screen for controlling the player is still mounted on the headphones remote control, and is still tiny and too difficult to read. The interface remains very basic - you can only navigate by folders, not by artist or album title - and the controls are fiddly.

On the plus side, you do get a built-in FM tuner, as well as an on-board encoder for recording MP3s from, say, a record deck or MiniDisc player.

Unfortunately, this model now seems quite expensive compared to the new, cheaper iPod, and really doesn't cut it when it comes to ease of use and overall desirability. If you genuinely need the long battery life and encoding features, it's worth a look, but for most people the iPod will still be the better all-round MP3 player.