Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Emulation-packed PMPs are becoming a dime a dozen these days, but Ainol‘s V1000 manages to add a few impressive touches to the media-playing side of this two-faced device. The landscape oriented unit sports a sleek, silver enclosure with a simple five button control layout, and boasts a 2.5-inch QVGA display, 400MHz ADI Blackfin processor, and the ability to give every retro gamer his / her fill of NES emulation. Aside from the obvious Mario love, it supports AVI / MP4 video playback at 30 frames per second, and plays nice with MP3, WMA, and FLAC audio formats on the musical side. Handling all those audiophile-approved lossless files is the 512MB / 1GB of internal storage, while the addition of an SD slot ensures room for that bulging ROM collection. Although details concerning battery life, availability, connectivity, and price aren’t yet available, we’re sure these handy all-in-ones will be popping up in China’s gadget shops real soon.

[Via The MP3 Players]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Cowon may not be the biggest portable audio maker out there, but they make some decent little players. The iAudio F2 features a tiny, 128×160 pixel 1.3-inch display, up to 2 GB flash, line-in recording, 22 hours of audio playback off battery, and the typical list of Cowon supported codecs: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG Vorbis and even FLAC for lovers of lossless. At 39-grams / 34.4 x 72.9 x 16.7-mm, this 2 gigger is small, just not that small and likely includes an integrated FM radio and voice recorder judging by the interface icons. Available starting 22 September for 179,000 won or $187.

[Via CNET Asia, Thanks Garcia and Chris]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

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Cowon’s gotten
some rather mixed reviews in the past for their line of iAudio
DAPs, but the outlook seems mostly positive for the upcoming hard drive-based href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/03/cowons-new-iaudio-6-goes-0-85-inch/">iAudio6, with Anything But iPod
finding very few flaws in the diminutive player’s design, features, or performance. Especially impressive is the
1.3-inch OLED screen, which gets high marks for both color depth and clarity — ABi calls it “simply
brilliant” — and makes watching XviD-encoded movies almost bearable on such a small display. The iAudio6, which
we first spotted at CES, can handle
up to 4GB of MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, or WAV-encoded tracks on its .85-inch drive, but it’s the drive that leads to one of
the few knocks on this model, which is a noticeable lag time between operations. Other nice features include USB host
capability for device-to-device file transfer with other UMS-enabled hardware, software that automatically tags certain
tunes with the corresponding lyrics, line-in and voice recording, and surprisingly powerful output that can drive even
large headphones. If you don’t mind a bit of a delay when recording or changing tracks, or a bit of eye strain when
watching your flicks, then the iAudio6 sounds like it’ll make for a solid purchase whenever it becomes available
Stateside.

[Thanks, James]

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