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Hands-on with the Cowon iAudio 7 MP3 player

Cowon's iAudio 7 is the brand spankin' new MP3 player from the open-source-loving gadget maker. We've had our hands on it over the weekend -- here's our first report

Nate Lanxon Special to CNET News
2 min read

Hey there, gadgeteers. Nice weekend? Good. The Monday MP3 player this week is Cowon's iAudio 7. It arrived at Crave HQ on Friday afternoon and its touch-tensitive body has us as exhilarated as a midget in Charlie's Chocolate Factory. You may smirk, but what our knee-high passersby particularly appreciate in Oompa Loompa land is the iAudio 7's awesome sound quality and its professional design and finish.

Like most of Cowon's players, this model plays a whole heap of file formats, including FLAC and OGG (we're very, very fond of FLAC here at Crave). The most remarkable feature of the 7 is its battery life -- all 60 hours of it. That's right, six-zero hours. This is obviously something we're dying to test, but it'll take three solid days just to try, during which time we're going to be penning our review.

We've got the 8GB version, so we're able to squeeze loads of videos on to it too. Sadly, the screen, while very sharp, is about the size of a postage stamp, so you'll spend most of the time wondering what the hell's going on. If that's your idea of a good time, you're going to, er, have a good time.

The 8GB version is on sale now for £149.99, with a 4GB model hungry for just £109.99, and you can expect our full review soon. For now, go and entertain yourself by watching a massive iPhone wander in a lonely stupor around London. It will amuse midgets and full-sizers alike. -Nate Lanxon

Update: a Cowon iAudio 7 review is now on the site