Creative’s Zen X-Fi certainly has the spec-sheet to take on Apple’s PMP range, but until now we weren’t sure it followed through with the usability. Jenn over at Pocketables has been playing with what must be one of the first out of the shipping crates, and while she likes the PMP it does seem to fall short of Creative’s “the sound of perfection” marketing hyperbole.
Creative have quietly revealed new color options for their ZEN iPod-rival. Set to be released in eye-catching pink and red versions, the PMP is otherwise identical to existing ZEN models. That means you get the same 2.5-inch, 320 x 240, 16m color TFT display, choice of 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB flash storage and SD/SDHC expansion slot.
This little gem launched today, and I assume the 32GB is flash storage, every site I saw this thing at referred to the storage as “memory” and the capacity is a rounded out flash size like 8, 16, 32, 64, instead of HDD sizes like 200, 250, and 400GB. Anyways, it’s a Creative Zen model, and it comes in black, and it can store about 8k songs.
So first, the Zen Stone came out from Creative, and the fact that it wasn’t an Apple product, combined with the fact that it was the same size, with similar functionality as the Shuffle, and it was slightly cheaper, well that was enough to help the original model sell a good number of units. Well now it appears Creative is besting Apple’s Shuffle in more areas than price.
In fact they are fixing one of the few flaws of the shuffle, the lack of a screen for navigational purposes. Then they are upping the storage to iPod Nano levels with 4GB for the Zen Stone Plus.
At their IFA 2007 Press Conference Creative pretty much said “iPod who?” as all eyes were on their credit-card sized ZEN PMP. The tiny device – which measures just 55 x 83 x 12mm – is easily Creative’s best mobile device to date, with a 2.5-inch, 16.7-million-colours screen, a choice of 4, 8 or 16GB of internal memory (expandable via an SD/SDHC slot) and support for MP3, AAC (unprotected), WMA, WMV, MPEG-4, DivX and XviD files.
Creative won’t give up on media player market yet and is adding a new Zen to their player portfolio. The Zen Wav, a new player that is believes to be competiting with iPod Nano. The Zen Wav has similarity in navigation feature with its sibling Zen Neeon using a joystick and two buttons in front of the player.
Apple has been quite successful with its iPod shuffle. The screenless iPod is targeted to lower budget iPod users and provide super portability of an audio player. Creative will not sit tight and let Apple roam around the industry with every product line up they have.
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