Cowon’s A3 is a bulky, yet simple portable media player. More importantly, it supports a wide range of file types, playing OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, Apple Lossless, WMA, FLAC, MP3, and even unprotected AAC files. You can enjoy watching videos with its big 4-inch display. It boasts of a 10 band equalizer that, according to the reviewer, produces the best audio he has heard from a portable media player. One thing the reviewer doesn’t like about the A3 is its joystick control, which he believes should be redesigned. The joystick is overly sensitive and requires a very delicate touch, making it prone to navigational mistakes. However, the reviewer notes that once you get past that flaw, the A3 is an awesome portable media player.

Great display, cool sounds and compatibility to a hefty amount of multimedia file types makes the Cowon A3 a great portable media player. It may not have Bluetooth, WiFi or other features found on other media players, it does offer an excellent viewing and listening experience. With a 4-inch 800 x 480-pixel LCD display capable of displaying 16 million colors, images are sharp and crisp. Foregoing the touch screen fad, the Cowon A3 features a joystick which may take some time getting used to. While most players are stuck with the common MP3, WMA and AAC codecs for audio and AVI and MP4 for video, Cowon A3 is packed with a whole lot more. You can even listen to FM stations, download podcasts, and even view (but not edit) documents such as Word, Powerpoint or Excel. The reviewer found the lack of ID3 tag sorting to be the most glaring caveat of the Cowon. Despite the flaws, the Cowon A3 is hard to pass up if what you are looking for is great sounds and stunning displays.