Cowon iAudio T2 (2GB)

In Korean MP3 player circles, it's mostly all about size, in fact, the smaller the better. And it's not because there's a need for the unit to be inconspicuous. It's about making it tiny enough to look flash when you hang it around your jugular. Sort of like a hi-tech pendant. iPod nanos need not apply here.Design
For pendant MP3 players, the neck strap is the important thing. It needs to be comfortable, easy to adjust (no messy tangle of wires) and, hopefully, enables the swapping of the bundled earphones for your own. The T2 scores on the first two points, but not the third. Earphones can be secured via the snap-on catches on the strap when not in use, and the necklace itself is light enough not to cause discomfort. The cord length is fully adjustable and very easy to maneuver without any cable snags.

	Good lanyard design. Works for us.

However, the Cowon penalizes the user if he tries to use the T2 with another pair of earbuds. The bundled earphones are tightly sewn onto the lanyard and cannot be replaced without ripping them apart. In order to listen with an alternate pair of earbuds, the lanyard has to be removed entirely as the securing clasp for the necklace plugs into the 3.5mm audio jack. But one thing we like about the clasp is that the locking mechanism is very tight. No worries of your T2 falling off while you are running after the bus.

Miniscule and blocky, the T2 is eminently pocketable. So much so, it fits into a jeans' watch pocket with change to spare. Button layout is symmetrical with neat button arrays on each side. Still, it's no Click Wheel, but it fits in with the intentional minimalist look of the T2.Features
Sparing with features, the T2 employs a mini OLED display that's good for basic song details but not much else. However, the simplicity of the display is marred by the complexity of the physical control navigation. After being spoiled rotten by the iPod's Click Wheel, iriver's D-click and Creative's vertical scroll, we felt the T2's lack of dedicated navigation controls gave it a rather high learning curve.

	Tight and snug design. Tough to pull apart.

Pressing Menu once will bring the user into a file tree directory, very 2004, and depending on the user, may make or break the deal. Press Menu a second time and the user will enter the graphical user interface (GUI). What's confusing is that there is no clear indication how each button fits into the navigation experience.

The GUI is oriented laterally and organically (click right to enter, left to exit). Both the Skip and Volume buttons work as navigation controls in the main GUI, while the Play button is used to access the sub menu. But things can get hairy once the user enters the submenu. At the sub level, only the Volume keys are used to navigate and the orientation is now switched to a vertical axis; the Skip keys now assume the role of entering and exiting the next set of submenus. Toggling between the sub and main menus (when sampling the equalizers), will take quite a bit of finger work in order to get to grips with the controls. Howls of frustration can be expected initially.

For simplicity's sake, songs are uploaded into the T2 using a drag-and-drop interface. Cowon has also packed a decent set of features into the T2. There's FM/voice recording and a very commendable set of audio codec support, including FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. There's also on-the-go playlist creation and the usual equalizer support (five presets, one user-defined) as well as BBE acoustics digital enhancement. Plenty of fun for those audio tweakers. Performance
FM autoscan on the T2 is very good. It picked up all the major stations in our test location (tall concrete building in Central Business District) with very little static. File transfers on the T2 were also above the average. Using 240MB worth of files, the T2 delivered a zippy 3.28MB per second, and that makes it almost twice as fast as the Creative Zen V Plus and the Samsung YP-Z5F.

Battery life on the T2 was subpar, however. Playing 240MB worth of MP3 files on looped playback, the T2 achieved a time of 12 hours 59 minutes. But that's also due in part to the size of the player; the Lilliputian dimensions of the T2 allow for only a small-sized battery.

Sonics-wise, bass was tight on the T2 with our test track (Massive Attack's Angel), but the mids lacked brightness.