It's well known that Creative has been leading the PC audio-processing card department and feature their top of the line audio processing cards under the "X-Fi" brand. Along with audio processing chips, Creative dived into the MP3 Player's market and has a brand "Zen". Our review for today is on the X-Fi branded Zen MP3 player. The two brands merged to develop this MP3 Player, which hopefully should deliver the best audio experience ever. The "Zen X-Fi" seems to be very promising, but again, you cannot just go by brand names. Let's find out what this MP3 player has to offer. Bundle

Creative Zen X-Fi (8 GB) Creative EP-830 In-ear Earphones USB Cable Software CD & Manual <__PAGETITLE__Intro and Bundle __/PAGETITLE__> Specification

<__PAGETITLE__Specifications__/PAGETITLE__> Build & Design

The Zen X-Fi is a decent looking player. It has a glossy look on the face making it quite a fingerprint magnet but the chrome border around the edge of the face gives the player a classy look. The 2.5-inch screen sits to the left, while to the right there is a cluster of buttons. There is a 3-by-3-button set with a back button and an options button above the set. Below the set of buttons are a shortcut button and a play/pause button. The 3-by-3-set of buttons actually resemble an alphanumeric keypad of a phone and reminded me of the Sony Ericsson K810i keypad.

While the buttons above and below the set are at the same level as the face, the 3-by-3-set of buttons are raised from the face and are much easier to punch. The 3-by-3 set of buttons have been designed more in relation with the added function of the 16 GB & 32 GB models i.e. IM chatting over Wi-Fi connectivity. The sides of the Zen X-Fi are almost clear of buttons. On the right there are two connectors, a 3.5mm stereo jack and a miniUSB port. <__PAGETITLE__Build and Design__/PAGETITLE__> There is also the Reset button for those times that the player hangs, which didn't happen the entire period I used the player and an LED that indicates if the player is turned ON or connected to a PC.

At the top there is a SD card slot to add more memory to the device and a MIC to record any audio you wish to. The bottom of the player sees a thin outlet of a speaker. At the back of the player is the power switch, which also doubles as a hold switch.

The bottom and sides of the player are made of quality plastic with a matt finish making the player sit very comfortably in your palm of your hand. The whole plastic build doesn't make the player very sturdy but keeps its weight at 70 grams, which is pretty light. I liked the whole feel of the player and the sensible design of the buttons, which are unfortunately more apt for the larger capacities because of the features they carry. <__PAGETITLE__cont...__/PAGETITLE__> Interface

The Zen X-Fi has a simple and good-looking interface. It isn't bubbly or animated like cell phone menus but still looks nice. Besides the looks I didn't like the interface all that much because it was a bit sluggish and it wasn't because there was music playing in the background. This is very surprising considering the fact that the Zen, which we reviewed previously, has a more-or-less similar interface and was very quick. The Menu is divided into Photos, Music, X-Fi, Videos, FM Radio, Microphone, Extras, Memory Card, and System. With the number of buttons it does get a bit confusing navigating through the player. The Music over the standard organization (Album, Artist, Songs, Genre) has an added DJ. Here you can pick stuff that you recently played or recently added to the player. There is also a rating system so you can choose a particular rating and have all songs under that rating played. Then there are these surprising options - Album of the Day and Random Play All. The extras includes a basic organizer, where one can view the calendar or even sync tasks and contacts from the Creative Sync Manager software. Under settings there is lot offered in the Audio settings. There is an Equalizer with presets and the custom, and then there is Smart Volume, Bass Boost, Speaker and Restrict Volume. While I suggest restrict volume to be turned OFF, Bass Boost should be turned ON at all times. I shall speak more about it in the performance section. <__PAGETITLE__Interface__/PAGETITLE__> Performance

There will be a lot of expectations from the Creative Zen X-Fi. Especially with Creative's touted audio-processor X-Fi installed within it should really deliver on the audio front. Unfortunately, the Zen X-Fi has already let us down with its sluggish interface. However, the earphones bundled are the latest EP-830, which is very welcome after seeing what the EP-630 could achieve from even a standard player. Audio The Zen X-Fi hasn't done justice to the X-Fi branding that it has, which is very surprising. The X-Fi chip is specifically installed to deliver good highs and mids. It can be turned ON or OFF through the X-Fi Menu option. There is X-Fi Crystalizer and X-Fi Expand. Turning ON either of the two disables the Equalizer. The Crystalizer option distinguishes the highs and the mids perfectly while the Expand is like a surround sound option, which does a neat job. On the other hand the Crystalizer is acceptable only with it being turned ON. Setting it to max would sooner or later give you a headache because of the sharp highs and especially with the EP-830 being in-ear it hurts. In the process of delivering pure highs and mids, Creative has left bass in no-mans-land. The bass almost feels missing and that's the reason why I mentioned earlier that it's best to have the Bass Boost ON at all times. I preferred setting the Crystalizer OFF and the Expand ON. Smart Volume turned ON helped in keeping frequencies disciplined. This was a good enough setting i.e. with X-Fi turned ON. If you wish to stay away from the X-Fi settings you can go back to the Equalizer presets or customize it to your taste but keep in mind the clarity that you can receive with X-Fi turned ON is lost. Overall it was not the experience I expecting from the Zen X-Fi. The EP-830 has gotten a tad better over the EP-630 and it's very nice. I tried it with other players and phones and found that it was quite good. Video Now the specifications of the Zen claim that it can mostly play DivX and XviD files. But during testing, I found that it supports only 320 x 240 pixels, anything above that and it won't play it. So considering that most movie rips are encoded at higher resolutions, none of the ones I dragged-n-dropped could be played on the Zen without any transcoding. There is the Creative Sync Software that comes bundled in the package. I wouldn't suggest to install that as I had trouble with the software and ended up un-installing it. I preferred using the stand-alone video converter available on the creative site. This stuck to its duty to converting but wasn't producing good results. The conversion quality was not up to the mark even with best quality settings. The video lost its quality and was pixilated. The volume was also lost. Battery The battery of the Zen X-Fi states that it can last for 5 hours of video and 25 hours of audio. The player did provide a decent battery life with a mix-n-match of both video and audio playback. I managed to get around an hour & half of video with around 4-5 hours of audio playback and yet there was more juice to last another couple of hours easily. With the player being plugged now and again to transfer media it kept getting a little charge. The battery is pretty good. <__PAGETITLE__Performance__/PAGETITLE__> Conclusion The Creative Zen X-Fi 8 GB sells for around Rs.13,500 with a 1-year warranty. My suggestion is go for the standard Creative Zen and upgrade the earphones to Creative's EP-630. The Zen is a decent player and we found only the bundled earphones to be poor. Also after all of this you will still have saved 3-4 thousand. Then there are the iPods that come to the rescue. The Nano 8GB makes for a lower budget option and the iPod Touch for around 15K is also a good deal. It has a much better screen and will provide the additional features that are seen only in the 16 & 32 GB versions of the X-Fi. Unfortunately for Creative the Zen X-Fi has not worked its Zen. Source : EXL PR <__PAGETITLE__Conclusion__/PAGETITLE__>