purchase advice

[marcusgi]

Well, I am finally thinking about getting a J3, 3-4 (est) years after its release. I wonder if I purchased one now, if the battery would last very long? It could have been sitting on the shelf for a long time. Does it have a removable battery or is it fairly easy to replace? or would you just wait for the next player if your d2 is still kickin' ?

[andrew_berge]

They started production just two years ago, actually, and have been discontinued just recently. If you're going to buy one, now is the time.
Of course, who knows when/if a successor might be announced...

Anyway, your player should have been made pretty recently, but i guess that could depend on where you buy it. I got mine off amazon.
The battery is not user replaceable, and i haven't heard of anyone trying to replace it yet (or needing to, for that matter).

[Rodster]

For me the J3 is one of the best current model designed Cowons made. I have grown accustomed to the UI and while others have complained about the stock UI being laggy I have had a different experience with it.

I love the sound it puts out and the screen is just stellar. Who knows what Cowon will come up with next to replace the J3. I hope it's not the Z2.

Anyway buy with confidence if you want a J3. You could ask around but a battery is usually more affected by charge cycles and not just sitting on a shelf. The battery on my J3 averages around 25-35 hours and I push it hard.

[Enzyme]

Does it have a removable battery or is it fairly easy to replace?

it is non removable....unless you own a soldering iron.

you can very easily replace the batteries in any of these kind's of devices, even if they dont have a plug it's a 5min solder job.

they use standard sizes that many battery stores will stock online for very reasonable prices.
it's just a matter of opening the device and face ruining the warranty (or the device if your impatient or illiterate).

as mentioned above though, the battery should be fine unless for some weird reason it has been left on the shelf uncharged, which is unlikely as they seem to sell pretty fast and sellers\handlers have to take special care with the newer li-po batteries as they tend to catch fire quite often
(even though the j3 is a li-ion which is labelled as li-po by the fraudsters known as cowon).


if you want to know how it's built or what your chances of swapping the battery are, here's some pic's from a patient user

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=40354

i'm going to change mine for one of greater capacity fairly soon, but with the amp i'm looking at getting and attaching... :S it takes the entire package to 32-35mm thick >< super chunky j3 incoming lol