Creative Zen - Gorgeous new MP3 Player!

Tejstar

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Creative have announced the Zen, that's it no model number or name, just the Zen. It seems like Creative have a lot riding on this little beauty judging by the name. It looks like they are also pre-empting Apple's rumoured announcement of a widescreen iPod Nano next week, as this player looks gorgeous imo. The fact that this is Creative's first device to support AAC-encoded songs will also rub salt in the wounds.

This is a flash based player and its form factor will appeal to many. Here's some of its main features:

Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2cm
Flash storage: 4, 8 or 16GB (more memory can be added through SDHC slot)
Codec support: AAC, MP3, WMA and WMA DRM, MPEG 4, WMV, DivX video and JPEG photos
Screen: 2.5in, 16.7m-colour screen
FM Tuner
Microphone
Battery life: Five hours' video playback or 25 hours' music listening.
Price: £100 for the 4GB model; £140 for the 8GB version. The 16GB player's price has yet to be set.

creative_zen_1.jpg


creative_zen_2.jpg


The 16GB version has been reviewed at Popular Mechanics here.

The offical Creative Zen site is here.

This seems like a beauty of a player and the fact that it supports divx is a big plus point in my books. Although, anyone would be silly to buy until hearing what Apple have to say on 5th September.
 
No interest in this whatsoever!? :eek:

Am I the only one excited by this... :confused:
 
I agree, looks like it could be great. Like the idea of SD expansion too.
 
No interest in this whatsoever!? :eek:

Am I the only one excited by this... :confused:

lol..no mate!..this player seems awesome...i was going to get the clix 2 8gb this month..but might hold off...now that i have seen this...whats most appealing is the divx support..i just hope it takes higher resolution sizes and that you do not have to convert them to a specific size..and that its drag and drop

but like you said..yeah i will wait for Apple and see what they got in store...

the 16gb is apparently gonaa retail bout $300 dollars..thats roughly £150..v.good price for that size!..although i think we UK'ers are gonaa get charged a lil more than that as per usual
 
Haven't called into the forum for a while but glad that I did now, my iRivers just gone belly-up and was considering what to replace it with (was thinking of a Cowon) but now I've seen this think I will hold off, this looks like a beaut!

Cheers!

Wonderloaf
 
Hmm, this looks interesting. I've been looking for a new player to replace my sansa m230 which is, frankly, too small for me at only 512mb now i've discovered the delights of audiobooks!!

The million dollar question (for me, anyway). Is it compatible with "napster to go?"

Anybody know?
 
Interesting! I might just sell my Zen Vision: M now to get this, or to save up towards getting one of these...

Love the name, when I first saw it on Engadget, I was asking myself what the hell it was called 'cos all it said was Zen.
 
Definitely gonna get one of these! :thumbsup:

Does anyone know a UK release date yet?
 
Interesting! I might just sell my Zen Vision: M now to get this, or to save up towards getting one of these...

I was wondering the same, but the screen size looks exactly the same as the ZVM - does anyone know if it is any different?
 
Definitely gonna get one of these! :thumbsup:

Does anyone know a UK release date yet?
From the places on preorder the date varies from mid to end of September. The play.com prices look tempting, especially for the 8GB version.

Amazon
4GB for £99.99
8GB for £139.99
16GB for £189.99

Play.com
4GB for £89.99
8GB for £119.99

eBuyer
4GB for £98.41
8GB for £1758.90 :eek:
 
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Looks lovely. Definatly tempted by the 16GB version. Also the SDHC slot is brilliant IMO, as you can get 32GB cards (ok they are expensive, but in a year or so they'll be a lot cheaper). So in effect, you could get a 48GB flash based player.

Glad their starting to come out with higher capacity flash based players now aswell, simply because I don't fancy going for a hard drive player again (my zen micro photo is dead because of the microdrive).

One thing though - does it support MPEG4 and DivX nativly without transcoding the videos? Because a few places have said it does, but amazon says it doesn't, and you have to transcode MPEG4 and DivX files for them to play.
 
I think it looks fantastic though I'd probably only ever use it for music. I'm amazed at how cheap the flash based players are coming down to now.

I'm really waiting to see if Sony can bring out a new flash player without SonicStage but retaining the nice shape and performance characteristics (esp. battery life) of the old Walkman MP3 players.

That will be what I want if/when my Archos XS202s goes (and no sign of it being even near the end of its life at the moment!)
 
One thing though - does it support MPEG4 and DivX nativly without transcoding the videos? Because a few places have said it does, but amazon says it doesn't, and you have to transcode MPEG4 and DivX files for them to play.

Thats what i want to know..i hope it does...otherwise if you have to transcode then i'm goin to be so dissapointed
 
DivX and XVid should work fine aslong as the audio isn't 5.1, if it is just downsample the audio with VirtualDub.

I own the Zen Vision: M and love playing XVids :)
 
One thing though - does it support MPEG4 and DivX nativly without transcoding the videos? Because a few places have said it does, but amazon says it doesn't, and you have to transcode MPEG4 and DivX files for them to play.

Not sure about Mpeg4, but native divx support is included. I imagine it works the same way that the Zen Vision M does, for me I just drag and drop divx/xvid content onto the player and it works without transcoding.
 
TrustedReviews have quite a postive preview write-up here.

Thanks for the review.

One of the things I really like is the SD card capacity increase function - very clever!

Also like the fact that it comes with a cover and an armband clip for the gym...wish more players would do this as standard!
 
I'm selling my Zen Vision:M!

Esp. with the iPod Touch supposedly coming out!

EDIT: Oh crap... iPod doesn't support Xvid.... Mmm... maybe I will sell this, and get the new Nano and the normal Zen?
 
Review seems pretty good, will definitely pick one of these up. I too really liked the SD expansion idea as well, comes in very handy. So I'm going to pickup the 8gb version as soon as I can. This is exactly what I've been after, some it's come at the right time.
 
There does seem to be a wide choice of cool new flash players, obviously there is the Zen, the Archos 105 and Apple's expected announcement tomorrow. It's a good time to be shopping for a new player at the moment!
 
Okay, been reading the Creative website and some reviews and there's a couple of things that would probably make this the perfect PMP for me.....drag and drop transfer and gapless playback.

Anyone know if the Zen has these? :lease:
 

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