Review: Cowon Iaudio Q5W portable media player

A serious rival for the more established players?

Cowon is looking to take on the big names in the portable media player market with its Iaudio Q5W.

The 5in display takes up the bulk of the front panel, but there's still room for a full-sized USB port for transferring digital content from other devices, and one for porting content directly to a TV. It’s feature-packed on the inside as well, with support for all the modern audio and video formats and codecs, FM radio, built-in Wifi, Bluetooth, Flash player and voice recorder.

These features are accessed by selecting from an icon-base list of categories down the left and right sides of the screen. The Cowon allows you to change view modes quickly and features a bigger icon view for finger operation and a smaller one for using the built-in stylus – a nice idea but the small buttons are tricky to use with your finger.

Stylus operation is painless and will make it far easier to access the massive range of customisation and control settings for each category of media, including an unprecedented degree of video control, the Jeteffect equalizer for audio and full slideshow creation for photos.

We found that there was a noticeable pause when switching between the various applications, perhaps a result of the Q5W’s interface being overlaid on to a Windows CE 5.0 operating system. Aside from the fact version 6.0 has been around for some time, this choice of operating system offers both advantages and drawbacks.

A big plus is that you have Windows-style access to your media and files and can even run compatible games and applications as you would on similar devices. But it doesn’t do much for user friendliness and we can see less tech-savvy users becoming frustrated by the verbose menus and, at times, clinical interf a ce. Those looking for that extra degree of control might find it a sacrifice worth making.

As well as viewing media directly you can hook the Q5W up to a television using either component or composite connections. We were pleased by the playback quality but disappointed by the unresponsive and rather quizzically designed remote control, which makes it difficult to access the sorts of settings you’d usually browse through with the stylus.

In general, audio and video performance is good, in particular the excellent quality of the 800x480 resolution display. It’s superbly clear and vibrant, making it perfect for viewing photos and video. After setting up a wireless connection you can browse the internet through the CE interface using Internet Explorer.

Video clips can be viewed from sites such as Youtube and content can be downloaded to the internal hard drive (40GB and 60GB versions are available). The Q5W certainly appears to be a worthy contender, and packs an impressive array of features into a fairly portable, albeit rather heavy, frame.

Its strengths include the impressive degree of control over your media and the flexibility that the CE-based approach offers, but in reality it’s not nearly as pleasing to use as those in the Archos range. And, as you can see from the price tag, it’s also substantially more expensive for a relatively meagre internal capacity.

We can see how some users might prefer the Q5W to more mainstream offerings, but for us there are a few too many niggling issues for us to recommend it over alternatives from Cowon’s rivals.