Photos: Cowon Q5W

What is the Cowon Q5W? Is it a PVP, a tablet PC, or an in-car GPS navigation system?

(Credit: Corinne Schulze / CNET Networks)

It's been just a few days since Cowon's announcement of the U.S. availability of their supercharged Q5W portable media player, and we already have one in the office to play with. It's a real beauty. Take a look at Crave's photo gallery of the Cowon Q5W to see if it's the megagadget it claims to be.

[soldier9599]

Amazing...

This looks like an amazingly well done hybrid between a UMPC and a PVP, with crazy added feature of being a GPS device (further blurring the lines between different types of devices). Archos has always kept up ahead of Cowon, but with this insane diversification of capabilities, this device could arguably be better than any Archos device. I think though, if Archos follows Cowon's ingenuity, they will be able to create a similar device with similar features that is just a tad better than Cowon's, as they always do. The 5 inch screen and added thickness makes it a tad much for pocketability, but maybe Archos can develop something similar in size to the 605. This is a great pioneer device, but if, in the future, other companies can successfully make this even more practical, this would be absolutely amazing. Most UMPCs have been fairly unsuccessful at what they are supposed to be, but this has a slightly different goal in mind, and it looks like if a company like Archos can develop a slightly more pocketable version, it could become very popular. I hope to see this concept develop a lot in the near future, this is really cool.

[q5w_rocks]

cowon has a better culture than archos

be glad than cowon does not try to nickel and dime you to death like archos, the cheese eating surrender monkey company, does. "Licensing" feature upgrades via software in a device like that, or any device really, is a horrifically poor idea.

the Q5W is a brilliant design when coupled with GPS. Although they'd do well to bundle one of three USA urban map of your choice with purchase... so they don't seem like evil archos.

[q5w_rocks]

no hardware video decoder?

the iaudiophile people imply that the Q5W does NOT have a hardware video decoder like the A2/3 does :( $600 that might choke on the new 'standard' H.264? No SDHC slot for a few bucks more..

Q5W NEEDS hardware video decoding