Gadget: Cowon V5 Portable Media Player

If there's one thing a lot of gadgets lack, it's personality. While we've got minimalist masterpieces from Apple and sumptuous sound quality from Sony, I'm left slightly cold by many of my gadget experiences. Packing a gadget full of functionality is one thing, but embodying it with that elusive je ne sais quoi that turns electronic circuitry into something beyond mere utility is a rare gift.

The Cowon V5 has that quirkiness. Play an MP3 file and a little stick man runs towards his stick sweetheart. Click on the game menu and watch the joypad icon ducking falling missiles. At heart, though, the Cowon V5 is a handheld high-definition film theatre in your pocket. For the V5's forte is movies. It has a 4.8 inch, 800 x 480 touch-screen, about double the resolution of the iPod Touch. And it's one of the first portable media players to have a built-in HDMI slot. Hook it up to your high-def TV and enjoy all those blockbusters at home as well. It played every music and video file I threw at it with ease and kept going longer than Paula Radcliffe, with a heroic 45 hours (music) and ten hours (video) battery life. With a typical HD movie taking up 2GB of space, the V5's 32GB of memory can fill up quickly. Happily, Cowon has included a SD HC memory expansion slot.

With flash games, a document viewer, Microsoft Windows CE under the hood and a host of other features, the V5 is great at multi-tasking. There's a price to pay, though – the 8GB version starts at 219. However, if you're a film fanatic with a penchant for pixel perfect HD loveliness, the V5 is a perfect popcorn companion.

For more information, visit www.cowon.com

This Article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday March 27, 2010