No longer a dark horse in the digital audio player space, Cowon continues to pump out solid, if not great, MP3 players, and the Cowon iAudio F1 ($159.99 list) is no exception, despite being gimmicky. Considering the interesting design and ample feature set, the price tag isn't too unreasonable for a 1GB flash-based player. Still, it needs some improvements before it tops our list.

No longer a dark horse in the digital audio player space, Cowon continues to pump out solid, if not great, MP3 players, and the Cowon iAudio F1 ($159.99 list) is no exception, despite being gimmicky. Considering the interesting design and ample feature set, the price tag isn't too unreasonable for a 1GB flash-based player. Still, it needs some improvements before it tops our list.

The 2.9- by 1.4- by 0.8-inch (HWD), 1.4-ounce F1 resembles a shiny black MatchBox Ferrari-style car. Its analog controls are on top of the trunk and include a four-way rocker with a joystick in the center. Markings on the corners of the rocker designate what it controls, which includes play/pause/power, record, the menu, and the contextual menu. The two-color 128-by-64 OLED screen is oriented sideways in the windshield, and there's a hold switch on the left side. A little silver license plate on the front says iAudio. Cute. The kicker comes when you turn the player on: The information displays in analog gauges that look like the dashboard of a racing car. A little gas pump indicates battery life.

Navigation can take a bit of getting used to thanks to some cryptic markings on the rocker, but we really like the contextual menus, which let you set bookmarks, change the repeat mode, delete files, and more. We're not generally impressed by pushable joysticks, though—Samsung recently got the point and eliminated that feature from the Yepp YP-T7J .

The charge/sync cable looks a lot like the one included with the MobiBlu DAH-1500i ; it has a 3.5-inch minijack at one end and a full-size USB plug at the other. The F1 is both USB mass storage class-compliant and compatible with Windows Media Player. File format support is broad and includes MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV, and OGG, as well as lyric (LDB), though there's no support for lossless codecs, protected WMA, or Audible.—