It's not just video playback which gets a look-in with the V5, as Cowon's also included an RSS reader, Flash games and a T-DMB TV tuner if you want to spring extra moolah for it. It runs Windows CE 6.0, and has up to 32GB of storage (albeit via the SD card slot, internal flash memory is just 8GB.)

The touchscreen TFT LCD has 800 x 480 pixels, with the overall measurements listed as 128 x 82 x 15.7mm. Most impressively, the battery life is quoted as 45hrs for audio, though there's just 10hrs for video. A HDMI output will let you hook it up to your telly, which is one advantage over the S9.

It'll cost 299,000 KRW (around $253) when it goes on sale in South Korea on January 1st, but expect it in other markets soon after, in black, pink, white and silver colorways. [TheDarkSide via Anything But iPod]

Here's what we know: Not much. The leaked sheet contains no image, no real specs and no launch date. The tablet speculation only arrives once you consider Cowon's MO, paired with Atom. Yeah, definitely a stretch, but an interesting one to consider on this lazy, post-Halloween Sunday afternoon. [DAP Review via Engadget]

Since we don't know anything about this keychain-esque DAP, we're left to guess based on the interesting ad, with its repetition of the "circle + square" tag. Is it a lost-in-translation attempt at our "square peg in a round hole" idiom? A nod to the design of the gadget itself, which is, in fact, a circle combined with a square? A hint at the future aesthetic of Cowon's players (which have certainly been more attractive lately; compare the blocky utilitarian square of the D2 with the sleek curves of the S9)?

I personally hope it doubles as a USB drive—I really miss the design of the first iPod Shuffle and the Sansa Express, low-profile DAPs with built-in USB. That was so convenient! But we'll have to wait for a real announcement from Cowon to figure out what's going on here. [DAPReview]

For now, the device is only listed on Cowon's Korean site, and there's no official word regarding when, or if, it'll be released in the US, although I'd point to English language marketing materials and, more convincingly, FCC badging as clues that it eventually will. [Pocketables via Engadget]

The only trouble with that is, as the link to the P5 shows, Cowon has had a few months head start. The P5 also has a bigger screen (SmartQ 5 checks in at 4.3 inches—why not 5?), although the two devices share the same 800x480 resolution. Both devices also come standard with wifi, Bluetooth, GPS via USB and all the other little PMP features we expect today, like touchscreens. Oh, the exception is 3G, which is unavailable on both devices. Boo.

So what's the big differentiators here? Well, there's only one we can seen, and it relates to price. PMPtoday speculates the SmartQ 5 will surprise PMP fans with its comparatively lower price point. Is that enough? [zol via PMPToday]

This review has been over a month in the making. Let me explain. While the S9 comes packaged with proprietary PC-only iTunesish software, I planned to mount the S9 like a USB drive and drag and drop my music and videos. While a firmware update and the actual file transfers seemed to go fine, when I started opening folders within the S9 itself (yes, you have to deal with folders), I'd get endless lists of gibberish, often followed by a system freeze that only a hard reset would fix.

I dealt with tech support (who of course had never seen the problem), and it was finally determined that I should get a new one. I was shipped another unit and the same thing happened. I have no doubt that somewhere along the line I was doing something wrong (though it's hard to fathom given the dragging and dropping), but no one could spot it. That's disconcerting.

I was finally shipped an updated, promised-to-be-working S9, and it really did finally work. It plays XviD and WMV movies, but no generic MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 content (you can forget about h.264). Also, like other players, if the file has too great a resolution, it fails—my high definition .wmv of The Dark Knight just wouldn't play, nor would a high definition XviD that I tested. Music-wise, the S9 plays MP3, WMA, and a bunch of others, but no DRM-free AAC. (Again, possibly an MPEG-4 codec issue.)

On the plus side, audio reproduction seemed good and the system is very quick with video media—I could skip around a one-hour, standard def XviD of Mad Men instantly. And I should add, clips really pop off the S9's 3.3-inch OLED screen with smooth framerate reproduction.

Recording audio with the integrated microphone worked fine—functional but not stellar—which is to be expected: The mic is but a tiny hole in the case. You can also conveniently one-button record the radio, the quality of which is only limited by the generally decent reception. Plus, after bootlegging the radio, you can drag the created WMA files from the S9 right onto your computer's hard drive, no questions asked.
Despite many of these functions being excellent, nothing about the UI is as fluid or intuitive as you'd hope to make the experience fun or fulfilling.

For instance, you want to listen to music, so you click the "Music" icon. Easy! But your music isn't necessarily there. You actually have to follow a green, animated arrow that leads you to a submenu of subfolders. That's where you actually find your content. Once you're within these folders, you can actually skip album to album smoothly (just hitting the track forward button), as the system remembers where your content is and even sets up other virtual folders for organizing by genre or year (depending on your meta data information). But why did we mess with this green arrow garbage? If you know where my music is, just skip the maze of clicks and take me to it.

The problems are beyond mere organization. Following the well-designed home screen, the entire OS is driven by icons that are only identifiable by trial and error. It's frustrating, and I could never just hand this player to one of my parents to use.

It's not just that I'm an Apple fanboy. I loved the Clix—remember the Clix? The Clix was great! Its interface made sense and was pretty to boot. And other devices from Samsung, SanDisk and Creative have had decent showings in spite of the iPod's success. It's just that the S9's interface is alright-looking, but nowhere as quick and convenient to navigate as you'd hope.

But here's the thing—to me, the fatal flaw with the S9 wasn't that strange series of bugs I was able to duplicate on two units, nor was it the confusing directory system. It was that when I held the S9, a pretty decent-looking device, it felt cheap.
It's too light for its size, almost hollow. In the above shot you can see that the S9 is thicker than an iPhone (and way thicker than an iPod touch). And touching a plastic screen (OK, apparently it's glass but it sure as heck feels like plastic) that's not lightning responsive —there's a micro delay after each button press—is simply a second rate experience to the iPhone/iTouch super-responsive glass.
At $240 for 16GB, maybe you thought that the Cowon S9 would be a tempting device to play your Bittorrent collection of movies without conversions. But given limitations with resolutions/format, a disappointing UI and the subpar build, it's hard to know why the S9 makes a solid alternative to the iPod touch. [Cowon]

For more on the Curve's iffy GUI, here's our own John Herrman:

Instead of building out from the user interfaces found in their larger PMPs, Cowon seems to have gone for something fresh. And by "fresh", I mean "variously lifted from popular PMP interfaces, including that one that you don't want to lift from, because everyone will call you on it immediately."

Like I said, form over function, for $240. [Amazon — Thanks, Erich!]

Instead of building out from the user interfaces found in their larger PMPs, Cowon seems to have gone for something fresh. And by "fresh", I mean "variously lifted from popular PMP interfaces, including that one that you don't want to lift from, because everyone will call you on it immediately." This is the second day of not-so-great news for teetery player, as yesterday its US release was pushed back to a murky "early 2009."

A few pictures don't tell the whole story though—despite the lack of a browser, the Curve still has the potential to give most available PMPs—iPod Touch included—a run for their money. Furthermore, prospective Curve owners should count themselves lucky; early Cowon players didn't have GUIs. [Digihunter]

Just to let you all know what you're not going to be getting for Christmas, there's a 3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen built into this thing, capable of 16 million colors. A 500 MHz CPU tops off the remainder of the features, as well as T-DMB, Bluetooth and even an electronic dictionary app! Oh, and that's all on top of a 40-hour charge and an accelerometer too. No price.
[OLED-Info, Thanks Ron!]

It'll play every file you throw at it: on the audio front, we've got (take a deep breath) MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3, FLAC, OGG, Monkey Audio, and a bunch of others I've barely heard of. For video, which is the real draw of the O2, we've got AVI, WMV, MP4, MKV, H.264, DivX and XviD, and again, way more. It'll play videos up to 1,280x720 resolution at 30 FPS. What does that dictionary of acronyms mean? No more converting videos. Ever.

The GUI looks a little dated, awfully similar to my aging D2, but very functional all the same. The O2 has Cowon's vaunted stellar sound quality, but battery life isn't all that hot: 8 hours of video, which is great, but only 18 hours of audio, which is below average these days. Still, this looks to be right at the top of the heap of portable video players, if only because it'll actually play your videos without making you transcode first. The Cowon O2 goes on sale tomorrow (the 25th) in black or white, direct from the manufacturer. [CNET]

The Price: $319 for 30GB, $349 for 60GB on Amazon

The Verdict: Just as great as the Q5W. The A3's got a 800x480 display which is fantastically watchable, and supports just about every codec anyone would imagine throwing at it: DivX 3.11/4/5/6, XviD, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, WMV 9/8/7, H.264 MP, M-JPEG, MPEG 1/2 for video, MPEG1 Layer 1/2/3, WMA, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, APPLELossless, AAC/AAC+, AC3, True Audio, Monkey Audio, MusePack, WavPack, G.726, PCM for audio.

The video player is smooth (load times are a second or two), but navigation is a little wonky with the 4-way stick taking the place of a directional pad. It's not too bad, but occasional down-clicks for selecting something didn't get registered, or got registered as an up click instead.

Photo viewing is also sweet on the bright and ample display, and the transition time between photos is negligible. The only problem comes from the navigation stick and trying to cleanly press down on it without moving the stick in another direction as well.

Music support: great. Document (text reader) support: great. What's even cooler about the A3, that only some of you will use, is its recording feature. You can record Mobile TV (if you're not in the US), FM radio, microphone audio, or audio/video from an external source, such as your analog TV. These all worked as advertised, but like Archos units with DVR recording, it's unlikely that most people will be using the A3 for recording and consuming media, but mostly the latter. In the end, we can't give this full points because of the navigation system and the slightly sluggish UI, but if you're a rabid consumer of downloaded video, the Cowon A3 is extremely portable and has format support that can't be beat. [Amazon]

The Price: $599 for 60GB, $549 for 40GB

The Performance: Since the Cowon has so many features, any combination of which could be the deciding point for you, we'll go through each one in bullet point form.

• Movie playback: Fantastic. The screen is bright and crisp, and played back all the DivX/XviD files we threw at it. No stutter, no lag, no problem. It handles all aspect ratios just fine, expanding it to fit the generous 5-inch screen. Its built-in speakers are pretty good for watching stuff without headphones as well.

• Audio playback: It supports a laundry list of audio formats, and has a playback screen that's slightly too complex for a normal PMP. On the other hand, this isn't a normal PMP that's meant to be used with one finger. You definitely need the stylus.

• FM Radio: It does the job, but you need to have the headphones plugged in to hear anything, much like the first Sirius Stilettos.

• GPS Navigation: Fantastic. Just plug the unit into the dock, plug the dock into the cigarette adapter, and you're ready to go. The dock even has an FM transmitter so you can broadcast GPS sound, music, or movie (audio) over your car's speakers. The actual navigation is great too, with a pleasing female narrator and airplane-esque ding noise. The icons are large enough that you can hit with your finger instead of the stylus, and the UI has a 2D, 3D, and 2D/3D view. You can even listen to your on-board music while you're navigating as well.

• Photo Browser: It's a pretty decent photo browser, but where it really excels is its ability to read RAW files from various camera manufacturers. It ate up our Canon RAW files and displayed them at just about the same speed as the JPG files from our Samsung point and shoot. Good times. Very useful for photogs on the go.

• Internet connectivity: Because the whole device runs on Windows CE, you get Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger as part of the deal. As long as you're connected to Wi-Fi, you chat and browse with the onscreen keyboard just fine.

• Flaws: Although the Q5 is fast when you're inside an app (such as video or audio), getting around the device is kind of sluggish. You also have to make sure the task bar is unhidden in order to bring up the on-screen keyboard, something we had to get help on. The Wi-Fi antenna is also kind of flimsy, and you pretty much need to use the stylus for everything. Other than that, the only major flaw is that it's running on Windows CE, which is fine for some but may infuriate others.

The Verdict: The Q5W is super rich in features and plays back loads of video and audio files. It's fast, but kind of heavy, and is on the borderline of being pocketable (assuming you don't wear Bruce Springsteen jeans circa 1985). The GPS features are awesome for a PMP, and should make this a definite keeper in the car. If you're looking for a device that plays just about every file you have on the plane, on the train, or to work, you can do a whole lot worse than the Cowon Q5W. [Cowon]

It's got Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 600MHz processor, 5-inch touchscreen LCD, 40-60GB of storage, flash-player, wireless remote, FM radio, voice recorder, stereo speakers, component/composite/S-Video TV out, RAW support for various cameras, super video codec support (DivX, XviD, MPEG4, WMV7/8/9) at 720x480, super audio support MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC), and a battery life of 13 hours (audio) and seven hours (video). Best of all it's only $549 for the 40GB version and $599 for the 60GB version. Even better? There's an optional car mount in order to either use all its multimedia capabilities on, OR, use it as a GPS! Stick around for a hands-on of this in the next couple of days. [Cowon]