Cowon P5 - Bluetooth and Mobile TV in a premium PMP

Cowon have announced the new Cowon P5 Personal Media Player. Actually, “Personal” may be pushing it a bit, as the thing is so huge it comes with its own remote control! Coming with a huge 5″ touchscreen capable of showing 16.7 million colours at an 800 x 480 resolution, the Cowon P5 is aimed well and truly at the premium end of PMPs. In fact, the P5 is so well specced, it can almost be called a PC!

More details and pics of the Cowon P5 PMP after the jump.

Cowon P5 PMP overview

The first thing you note about the Cowon P5 is its huge size. Five inches is not a small screen, and we can be thankful that the P5 comes with a touchscreen rather than buttons to control it, as this at least keeps the size of the overall unit down to something just slightly bigger than the size of the display. That said, at 138.8 x 88.5 x 20.0mm, and weighing in at 380g, it’s not exactly in the lightweight class!

The second thing you note about it is its looks. With a “luxury hairline metal” look (or “brushed aluminium” as we call it!), it looks a step up from your average plasticy PMP.

Fortunately its size is due entirely to its long list of features, the most impressive of which are as follows:

• 5 inch touchscreen with 800×480px resolution
• Widget + Haptic User interface
• T-DMB TV tuner
• FM radio
• Bluetooth
• Audio formats: MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC, WV, MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer3, WMA, OGG Vorbis, Wave, FLAC, MusePack, WavPack
• Video formats: AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, OGM, DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, WMV9
• Photo player
• Electronic Dictionary
• MS Office Document viewer
• USB host and USB 2.0 jack
• Battery life: 14 hour audio playback, 9 hour video playback
• 700MHz RMI Alchemy AU1250 CPU
• Windows CE 5.0 Operating System

Phew! That’s some list. In fact, it’s so long, it would almost shame a mobile phone!

Translating this list for the non-geeks out there, the P5 gives you mobile TV, FM radio, the ability to playback sounds and video recorded using virtually any recording format, and a touchscreen user interface that vibrates slightly whenever you pass your fingers over a button (i.e. haptic).

You can also view Microsoft Office documents, but this, I think, is just a gimmick, as you can’t edit them. Equally, with no built-in support for Wi-Fi (although you can buy a Wi-Fi USB stick for it), the only way you can upload any documents is to plug in a USB stick and upload them onto the P5’s generous 40GB, 60GB or 80GB hard disk (size dependent on which model you choose). If you go to all this bother just to view some documents, though, why not just bring your laptop with you? It’ll probably be about the same size!

The main purpose of the P5 is obviously to consume your media, whether listening to tunes, browsing photos, watching videos or TV. This is where the size comes in really handy, as you won’t have to squint at the screen any more than you have to squint at your TV (assuming your TV’s not 5″ in size - but then if it is, you might as well buy the P5!).

For those of you who get bored easily, the P5 makes perfect sense. Fire up your videos on the plane, or use it while relaxing by the pool. The days of reading a book on holiday are numbered!

The Cowon P5 release date will be the 29th July 2008 in Korea, and should make its way to other markets shortly afterwards. Price is expected to be $434 for the 40GB version and $592 for the 80GB version.

[Source: TechShout, SlashGear]