Cowon S9 priced, packed for U.S.

The Cowon S9 portable media player.

(Credit: Cowon)

Despite rumors of shipping delays, Cowon America has announced that its S9 touch-screen media player will arrive in the U.S. before the year is out. If all goes as planned, The S9 will be available to order by December 19 from Jetmall for $199 (8GB) or $239 (16GB).

Designed to compete against Apple's iPod Touch and Samsung's YP-P2, the Cowon S9 includes a 3.3-inch touch-screen display, Bluetooth audio streaming, BBE+ sound-enhancement effects, FM radio, Flash player, and an above-average assortment of audio and video format support (MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG, WAV, APE, AVI, WMV, and XVID).

With luck, we will have a full review to offer by the end of the week. Until then, you can see last week's video of the Cowon S9 in action.

[DarkHawke]

If it's going to compete with the iPod Touch, they need to double the memory I really love the look of this puppy, but my music library is at 21 GB and growing. Add in the fun of video playback, and 16 GB is a mighty low number. I'd love an iPhone for a lot of reasons, but the same low storage numbers are holding me off till the next generation. I look forward to the review.

[Zeeshan47]

Unless you absolutely need all 21 gigs with you, you're gonna be stuck with hard-disk based players for a while. I made the compromise a while ago when I got my 8 gig nano, and I haven't regretted it at all. it really does take all of 5 minutes to get some new stuff that you're listening to onto your iPod. As soon as I'm done watching a vid, I'll move it off the next time i sync. I can't say that it'll work for you, but I'll take the tradeoff for portability any day.

[etarfdc]

Remember that the 32GB model will reportedly follow these releases in time. I'd prefer more space, or at least an expansion slot, but I'll make the sacrifice. I still have doubts about the viability of touchscreens for video players for me, personally. I hate few things more than fingerprints on a screen.

[johnbuker]

No expansion slot? I'll stick with my D2 for now- especially with the price of the bigger SDHC cards coming way down.

[4dthinker]

With no WiFi it's true competiton includes the iriver SPINN and Samsung P2/P3. Mine is on the way from Jetmall. I'll let you know how it competes in a week or so.

4D (http://www.4dthinker.blogspot.com)