Ever since the iPod mini and the successive Nano player arrived in the market, many manufacturers were determined to defeat this digital audio device - either by emulating its abilities, or by bringing innovativeness to their own products, or both. Touted as "iPod killers", these players did create a fierce competition for Apple's flagship product, but none of them managed to overthrow Apple from its throne. These were the thoughts that ran through my mind when the Creative Zen made its way into the test labs. It looked pretty neat on paper, but is it "the" media player that will end the iPod reign, I thought? Let us find out

Bundle - Creative ZEN - Ear-phone - USB 2.0 cable - Quick Start Leaflets - Installation CD

<__PAGETITLE__About__/PAGETITLE__> Specifications Sheet

<__PAGETITLE__Specifications Sheet__/PAGETITLE__> Design and Construction The Creative Zen comes in just one (although elegant) color, Black. The player is pretty catchy in appearance. The Zen is also popularly known as the "Credit Card" player because its footprint exactly matches that of a standard-sized credit card.

Even though it does not match the super-slimness of the iPod Nano, it's pretty thin. In fact, I liked the ergonomics of this player better than many others. It'll be quite comfortable to take this player with you for a jog.

Front: Almost 70-percent of its front is covered by the sufficiently large LCD screen. Its screen is just half inches larger than the iPod Nano (it's comparable to the iPod Classic screen size). The screen portrays text and video pretty clearly. The colors are also displayed quite vividly. It's sufficiently bright too. The 5-way navigation keys and 4 other function keys are located next to the screen. The front is covered by a transparent plastic surface (found on many devices these days) which is prone to fingerprints.

Bottom: The bottom right corner has the reset hole, in order to restart the player in an event the Operating System hangs.

Right side: Here lies the mini-USB port, the on-off/hold switch, and a standard 3.5mm ear-phone jack.

Top: The top comprises of the SD card slot and the microphone grille located next to it.

The card slot can be used to bump-up the storage capacity of the player or to view existing media on the card. A host of SD and SDHC cards are supported by the player (the highest till date being 8 GB). microSD and miniSD cards can also be used in conjunction with their respective adapters.

<__PAGETITLE__Design and Construction__/PAGETITLE__> Back: The back of the player sports a circular groove with the model name written over it and the internal capacity printed below.

The overall construction of the Creative Zen is sturdy. The player could sustain a couple of drops before it succumbs to the abuse. The buttons aren't exactly feather-touch types, but they're pretty tactile to navigate around with. I somewhat missed the touch-scrolling mechanism which let me zoom through a long list of songs, but I did manage to make less accidental maneuvers with traditional buttons than I did with the touch-based solutions. Like the iPod Nano, I somewhat missed a dedicated set of volume buttons on this one too. But thankfully, the shortcut menu lets you change volume in just 2 clicks, irrespective of wherever you are (in the User Interface, I mean). <__PAGETITLE__Design and Construction (Contd.)__/PAGETITLE__> User Interface The Creative Zen uses a patented User Interface; which claims to offer users with a visually stunning experience. And stunning it was! The UI is very catchy in appearance and snappy in its operation. It's quite simple to use; I got the hang of it within a few minutes. It handles the media pretty well. For e.g. high-resolution photos don't take time to load under the full-screen mode. Songs are categorized neatly. It supports displaying album art (if available). It also includes a basic organizer where one can view the calendar or even sync tasks and contacts from the Creative Sync Manager software. With respect to sound shaping, it has 8 preset equalization settings and an option for a custom setting too. Now the specifications of the Zen claim that it can mostly play DivX and XviD files. But during my testing, I found that it does support those formats only if they are encoded up to a certain resolution. And since most of the movie rips that we get are encoded at a higher resolution, they couldn't be played on the Zen directly without any transcoding. Thus, you'll need to convert most of your video files before using them with this player (this is the case with most portable media players in the market). <__PAGETITLE__UI__/PAGETITLE__> Bundled Software Unlike Apple's compulsion to use the iTunes software to transfer media, the Creative Zen supports the usual drag-n-drop method as well as via its own media management software. Called the "Zen Media Explorer", this nifty application integrates itself into Windows Explorer.

It has a streamlined interface. It can be used to add and browse through media, create play-lists, synchronize Microsoft Outlook's organizer data on to the player, Rip Audio CDs, and to convert and optimize any video to be played through the Zen player. The video converter is pretty simple to use as well. It took almost 40 minutes to convert a 350 MB video file into Zen's native WMV format under the best video quality mode. Thus, if one calculates, it will take well over an hour to convert a normal 700 MB DVD movie rip. It might take a little less time to convert under standard quality mode. But still, I found the conversion time to be a bit too long. <__PAGETITLE__Bundled Software__/PAGETITLE__> Performance Audio The audio quality was close to good; I believe that the bundled ear-phones were at fault.

This is surprising for a company that manufactures one of the better sounding ear-phones around, the EP 630. When I used the Zen with different sets of ear-phones, I did manage to get a better output. I can say that by using better quality ear-phones, one can easily get an audio quality comparable to the iPod Nano, if not better. Bottom line: It could have been better, if the stock ear-phones were replaced with good quality ones. Video The video quality was good too. The videos played pretty smoothly and with good clarity. I can thus comfortably state that this device can be used to watch videos, TV shows, or even movies on it. Comparatively speaking, I'm inclined to say that the iPod Nano's video quality was a wee bit better. My analysis is that although Zen's WMV video format is better than iPod's MP4 format, the Zen has a QVGA resolution in a bigger 2.5 inch display. While the Nano packs the same QVGA resolution in a smaller 2.0 inch display - thus giving out slightly better quality. Data Transfers: The Creative Zen acts as a USB Mass Storage Device. And with the SD card slot, it can even perform the duties of an SD card reader.

Data transfers are handled via the speedy, popular USB 2.0 interface. In my tests, I was able to copy 1.70 GB of video files in 5 and a half minutes. With respect to smaller audio files worth 536 MB, they got copied in a little over 3 minutes. Thus, I can conclude that overall, the Creative Zen's data transfer speeds were pretty good. Comparing it to the Nano, the speeds were a little bit better. <__PAGETITLE__Performance: Audio, Video__/PAGETITLE__> Battery Life I was pretty impressed with the battery life of this player as well. In my testing period, I watched almost 2 hours worth videos on it and listened to music for almost 4 hours, still the battery wasn't ready to give up! Conclusion The Creative Zen is selling for a street price of Rs. 8000 for the 4 GB version. The 8 GB version costs 11,000 bucks. It's definitely not a value-for-money item, but on the other hand, it's not overpriced as well. Comparatively speaking, the iPod Nano 4 GB sells for around Rs. 6500, but the Creative Zen has many advantages over the Nano. Sure it's a bit more expensive than the Nano, but all these advantages are worth the extra 1500 bucks. The Creative Zen is a very capable portable media player. Audiophiles should discard the bundled ear-phones and invest in a pair of good ones. Otherwise I'd definitely give it a thumbs up! Test Unit sourced from: Pink & White Consulting <__PAGETITLE__Battery, Conclusion__/PAGETITLE__>