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Creative goes wireless with new Zens
TWO NEW CREATIVE ZEN players just became bonafide after weeks of speculation, rumours, water-cooler chat and leaked details of this that and the other.
They arrive in the form of the 8GB Zen X-Fi, 16 and 32GB models with wireless LAN built-in to the latter two and all based around their Xtreme Fidelity X-Fi audio technology.
Creative is still not listening to The INQ even in light of a recent review of its current model, as the Zen triplets arrive with the same old MP3, WMA and unprotected Itunes audio formats from before – still no lossless codecs onboard.
Although they try to make up for this by basing these new models around the X-Fi Crystalizer, a proprietary audio system developed at their advanced technology centre. This aims to restore the peaks and troughs that’s lost when music is encoded. Not exactly bridging the gap from lossless, but perhaps making somewhat of a headway and an effort at last
"We’re very excited to achieve this breakthrough of adding our X-Fi audio technology to a Zen player, setting the highest standard in audio quality for portable music players," said says Craig McHugh, president and COO of Creative.
"Some of the top recording artists in the music industry are very outspoken about the poor quality of digital music. We addressed this issue by inventing X-Fi technology, which restores the quality of music that is lost during the digital ripping process. Now for the first time ever we’ve been able to implement this technology in a Zen.”
Most of the features and abilities are just as before with the previous Zen, along with almost the same physical dimensions and the bulkiest of bulky builds with the SD card slot. This time around though they’ve built-in a speaker, which wasn’t present before. Just in case you didn’t want to be socially frowned upon by blasting music out, Creative has thrown in a set of their premium EP-830 in-ear earphones.
The 802.11b/g Wi-Fi is primarily there of course for streaming to the device and getting content onboard in the first place wirelessly. They’ve also enabled instant messaging, over services such as Yahoo messenger and Windows Live messenger using an onscreen T9 keyboard of sorts. What’s missing here is Bluetooth, as it’s their premium mp3 player with a wire-free flavour we would have thought they’d have finally included it – if for their own headphones alone.
Prices for the new Zen X-Fi shipping in August are £109.99 for the 8GB, £139.99 for the 16GB X-FI with Wireless LAN and £199.99 for 32GB. This is compared to 8GB Zen player for £92.28, £159.99 for the 16 and £249.99 for 32GB.
Back to the drawing board Creative, give us a call when you've listened to your users and critics. As it needs an internet browser, lossless codec’s, Bluetooth and to be flash enabled to be truly competitive – here endeth the sermon. µ
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Great honest review - it's just not yet equivalent to an iPod touch.. Also the screen is only 320 x 240 pixels compared to the iPod touch's 480 x 320 - though the X-Fi is half the weight.
No manufacturer has yet built my ideal MP3 player. Bluetooth headset makes sense, but wireless is a pointless addition to the RF smog already wrecking our wireless networks (how hard to use a usb cable?). Don't want an iPod, because iTunes is bonkers. I do like iPod's ability to recognise albums as folders -- I won't spend hours tagging individual songs. Most decent MP3 players are pitched at slightly under iPod prices which we know are a rip off -- I want 8gb or so for under £50/$100 (I know it can be done because Argos recently offered Sony 8gb models half price at £60). I'd prefer a model with a slot for SD cards which are so cheap and small enough you could carry dozens. I want a decent screen, not necessarily colour as this wastes power and MP3 screens are too small to display pictures anyway. I don't want expensive proprietary batteries (with iPod you can't even fit a replacement yourself). I don't mind the extra bulk or shorter battery life of AA cells as rechargables are cheap and regular AAs can be bought anywhere. Curiously, the closest I've found to these ideals is a phone, the Ericssony W200i. Though not a great phone, it's been offered at between £19 and £29 on PAYG -- which suggests just how little an MP3 player alone could cost. At present I use stick models (Matsui brand but also sold by other makers) -- good sound, good battery life from AAA cell. Single line display, drag and drop but unable to recognise folders (though with only 256mb it's easy enough to navigate). They cost about £1 used at flea market/boot sale and until the serious manufacturers wake up I will continue to carry several of them at a time.
Could someone list some of them? Are any of them free?
flac - Completely Free as in liberty and price ape - Free as in price wma lossless - Free if you own Windows XP or Vista Dolby TrueHD & MLP - Not Free at all DTS Master Audio - Not Free at all
Lossless codecs I use are FLAC and APE. My whole CD collection is ripped to FLAC. You can get FLAC plugins for Media Player but Winamp and Media Jukebox have it out of the box.
The zen x-fi looks like a nice update from the zen. It now has x-fi, wi-fi & better earphones. The design also looks more classy. reat news too, there's a contest to get free zen x-fi at http://creative.com/products/mp3/zenxfi/ just submitted a few entries :X