Cowon Z2

While the sound quality is very good indeed (the reason I purchased it and I am using it with Shure SE535s), it must be said that in terms of realistically functional features included in the box and the reliability of player's firmware (even with the latest and updated version installed) this is overall the most useless and irritating music player I have ever used. let me explain...

If you don't mind a player that doesn't do what it should half the time, crashes for literally no reason at all far too often, and randomly decides the microSD card is corrupt (when it really isn't) then this might be a suitable player for you. I put up with it for too long and finally have got around to warning others. There are other players out there which are far more reliable.

I could go on... So I will.

For some reason the integrated music player doesn't recognise 90% of my artists, instead labelling everything as "Unknown", spleen-rupturingly irritating. Combine that with it's inability to recognise album art for almost all music, an inablity to play ALAC and the fact it has randomly stopped accepting the use of the side buttons and you have a bad egg. Also, just little things, like the fact that there is only one volume setting, that is to say that there isn't a headphone and speaker volume differential. Hence, sticking headphones in can cause quite deafening noise unexpectedly while you swear excessively and rip the headphones out of the socket, having to turn down the generic volume. (fyi using 3rd party apps does very little to performance asides from enabling ALAC/FLAC etc, and even then you can't use the side buttons most of the time.) There are occasionally random "pops" for no reason at all when playing music (at first I thought I was losing it). Also, the song occasionally momentarily stops, plays at MAXIMUM VOLUME for a few seconds, then returns to normal... painful and expletive-worthy.

It's a massive shame really, what could have been a wonderful player is in my opinion overpriced and comparatively useless. It's too late for me, leave me behind filled with regret, just don't make the same mistake.

I'm sure there's more, (there is, the Wifi is diabolical, the battery life makes me want to die, and the bluetooth is as reliable as a fire-extinguisher filled with petrol) but I've repressed the memories to avoid having an actual mental breakdown at the thought of how much money I wasted (I now use my Samsung galaxy S2 as a music player more often just cause that actually works). 

I'm being serious, avoid.

I got my Z2 as I wanted a great sounding player with great storage capability - I have all the music that I want stored as flac files that sit on 2 X 64 GB micro sd cards. Love it!