Battery life

By replacing i4's AAA-battery compartment with a built-in rechargeable lithium battery, Cowon will probably have to cope with both criticism and cheering. The AAA-batteries were of course widely available, making it very easy to boost battery capacity to the full 100% again. U2's internal battery outperforms the regular 1.2/1.5V alternative pretty convincingly, though. Whereas the i4 barely got 10 hours of juice out of its AAA-battery, the U2 theoretically can play up to 20 hours continuously.

There are basically two ways of recharging the U2: the slow method and the normal-speed one. The latter consumes 500 mAh, whereas the former is about three times as slow (and thus uses about 150 mAh). iAudio implemented this mode to take care of possible power surge-like situations. Anyway, we're likely to recharge the U2 every now and then - its capacity doesn't go above 1GB, which holds only so many albums. When uploading new tracks, the U2 can automatically recharge through USB. There's also the optional power adapter, using a standard USB-to-mini plug, in case the user isn't located in the direct vicinity of a Pc (now how likely is that huh?).


Now for the actual battery efficiency: as said, official data shows a figure of 20 hours per charge. When enabling random and repeat modes, using various file formats (and compression techniques while we're at it) and maintaining a reasonable volume level, we managed to get up to 17 hours of juice out of U2's internal battery. That's actually a very acceptable achievement by itself and it'll do for most potential buyers. There is a large contingence of competing players out there, though. Some of those make up to 50 hours out of something like a simple AA-battery. Well, to be more specific: there's iAudio's own G3, fitting the latter profile. Adding more power efficiency does often come with design-technical imperfections (as in: it's probably bulkier or something). As we've noticed by now, the U2 does have that compact form factor. To many of us, this will prove just as (or even more) important as the average battery efficiency - which is perfectly okay to begin with.

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