The Creative Zen

Perhaps you’re wondering “The Creative Zen what? Could you finish the sentence please?” After all, Creative always starts their product with Zen (just like the relationship between Apple and iPod). Not anymore – the Creative Zen is the official successor to the commercially-successful and popular Creative Zen Vision: M. And boy, what a successor it is! Need I also mention the possibility that Creative will be moving on past the “Zen” line and into a new name (but that’s another story)?

The ZEN was announced on August 29, 2007, and as of September 14, is currently available. The flash player is the official successor of the ZEN Vision:M, and is available in capacities of 4GB, 8GB and 16GB, and is advertised to be the “size of a credit card”. This is the first ZEN to have an SD card slot, support for unprotected AAC (in a “.m4a” extension), as well as a 24-bit (16.7 million colours) screen, which is 2.5 inches long diagonally in QVGA (320 by 240 pixels) TFT LCD, and is the slimmest ZEN and the second slimmest Creative player (other than the MuVo Slim) so far. The player plays up to 25 hours of continuous audio playback, and 5 hours of video. The ZEN also supports MP3, WMA (including protected and lossless), WAV, and Audible 2, 3, and 4 formats. It can play MJPEG, WMV, AVI, MPEG4-SP, DivX4/5 and XviD3 videos (MPEG1/2 are supported through transcoding) and display JPEG images. It also includes a built-in FM tuner and microphone, and the ability to synchronize organizer data from Microsoft Outlook. The ZEN is not to be confused with the ZEN Micro-based player of the same name.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_zen#ZEN_.28Micro-based_hard_drive_player.29

I had my doubts about whether any product could succeed the Zen Vision: M, but the Creative Zen has definitely impressed me enough to approve of it. It’s got upgradeable storage, excellent support for multiple formats, and video and photo capabilities – which are now current standard features that way too many companies neglect. Its physical dimensions are more than appealing, which makes it all the more enticing of a device to get.

So if you’re looking to buy a new digital audio player, rather than go mainstream for an iPod, why not try a Creative Zen? Sure, it might not have the touch capabilities, but it also comes with a lighter price tag (another overlooked aspect).