The Zen of Creative-ity

I know you Apple fanboys are out there and get furious when anyone doubts your god(s). But while you sit, bobbing to your tunes, absorbed within your iPod bubble, Creative would like to stroll on by and brandish their weapon of choice, the Zen.

One of my first DAPs was the Creative Zen from a few years back. The soap'ish looking thing with a blue glowing touch interface, if you can remember. Me, being the kind of person I am and taking pleasure in not following the iPod herd that runs rampant through the streets was overly impressed with the functionality, personality and performance of the Creative line. Now we move on to the next generation...

I'm going to start off by stating the obvious, this piece of hardware is just damn SEXY. From the glossy black finish to the 2.5" display, oh and did I mention it's 11.3 mm thick? That's right. The size is comparable to your credit card, and knocks the iPod out with it's features. From MPEG-4, WMV9, MJPG and DivX, any movie is a pleasure to watch on the 16.7 million colour TFT display, that is if you find pleasure in watching flicks on the go.

That ladies and gentlemen just scratches the surface. Don't forget it does play music. The Zen supports WAV, WMA, MP3, Audible 2,3,4 and AAC file types. Anyone out there with an iTunes subscription? Don't worry, your songs are transferable to the Zen so you can enjoy all your downloaded favorites, including podcasts without the DRM hassle. Included also is an FM tuner which Creative and many other companies have been steadily implementing into their products, it's not like it's that hard right Apple? On top of all these audio features, the Zen hides a microphone which I have found great for on the go memos and boring lectures.

The Zen is Creative's flagship in phasing out the hard drive based systems and moving solely towards flash-based players and with such, they offer up healthy potions of 4GB/8GB/16GB players. But the fun doesn't stop there. If you have photos or movies, even music you want to easily transfer over, just use the storage slot. The Zen has a compartment for accepting SD, MicroSD and SDHC cards, so that you can pop them right from your computer or camera straight to your ZEN. So don't fear if you feel that 16GB isn't enough for you.

The user interface is a pleasure to use, and although it has a basic tactile button setup, it makes the player simple to navigate through allowing for easy access to all that media you're going to feed it. With a 25 hour battery life for music and 5 hours of video, you're going to be enjoying the simplicity of it when you just want access to your goodies.

Availability is unknown specifically for Canada yet, but it will be available in Singapore mid-September. Canadian prices will be $149.99 for the 4GB and $199 for the 8GB (16GB not available at present time).