Cowon's 160GB X7 Hits India

Cowon have announced the release of their next PMP – the 160GB X7. Rather than launching a successor to the J3 that came out earlier this year, Cowon have instead decided to go after the HDD-type market. The 160GB PMP will provide competition to the 160GB iPod Classic, which has pretty much been the only option for people looking at that amount of storage.

The X7 comes with a 4.3" touchscreen, which on first look should impress people looking to watch videos on their PMP. However, you are bound to spot two downers if you look under the surface – a resistive touchpanel, and a display resolution of 480x272. I would’ve been going ga-ga at specs like that three years ago, but now… not so much.

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Two aspects of Cowon’s devices most audiophiles would trust blindly, and I’m no different, are the audio quality and format support. As usual, the X7 supports a mammoth amount of formats, FLAC included, and features the now-familiar BBE+ and JetEffect 3.0 EQ filters.

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The PMP also boasts of a ridiculously long battery life – over ten hours of video, and over a hundred hours of audio. That’s more hours than a long weekend! Additionally, the X7 supports Bluetooth, internal speakers, FM radio, voice recording, TV-Out, etc. I don’t know what to think of the User Interface though, as it really does look like a clone of the Zune HD interface - from what I’ve seen of it from pictures, anyway.

As you can clearly see from the S9 and J3 reviews, we love our Cowon devices. We absolutely cannot wait to get our hands on this one, and if you can’t either, cash in on that pre-order discount and get yourself an X7 for Rs. 15,550 over at the Cowon India website.

The Cowon X7 comes in black and white, and has an MRP of Rs. 18,000/-.