Given Cowon's recent stab at a PDA and portable media player rolled into one—namely, the ungainly Q5W—I approached the Cowon A3, another big-screen PMP, with some skepticism. I'm happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised. The A3 has fewer features—which is a good thing, since most of the Q5W's "extras" weren't well executed. The device focuses on the essentials: music, video, and photos. The result is a solid 30GB hard disk–based player (or 60GB, for $390).