Thursday, August 30, 2007
Creative's New Zen Vision: Back in Black
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 02:12 PM
"A huge array of features packaged in one tiny design. This is the new Creative ZEN™ at a glance. Decked out in an all-black suit, the Creative ZEN is smaller than your average credit card and sits snugly right in your palm. With an attractive 11.3mm thickness, this sleek player weighs a mere 65g, allowing you to carry it around easily. It is also one of the lightest players around that is able to boast a capacity of up to 16GB while supporting different popular media formats. What's more, you can add as much capacity as you want with its SD memory expansion slot. With its patented ZEN user interface which offers more information to be viewed on the screen, navigating through mass content is simply a breeze. You can even accessorize this pint-sized dynamo with optional accessories such as the ZEN Leather Case or the ZEN Skin Pack. Celebrate the arrival of the latest revolution on the portable player scene. Welcome the Creative ZEN. "
[click image above for high-res photo]
I've always liked Creative products, especially once they hit upon their Zen line. I remained a big fan of my Zen Vision:M, and in some ways I prefer it to my Zune. This new Zen Vision from Creative looks quite impressive - small, thin, light, Flash-memory based, and expandable via SD cards (you could have 24 GB of storage right off the bat with an 8 GB SD card). The 320 x 240 resolution isn't super impressive, but on a 2.5" screen that's not bad at all - I'm more excited to see them supporting 16.7 million colours. Photos and movies would look excellent on this thing - much better than all those other devices that are stuck at 65K colours (yeah, I'm looking at your Zune). Round that out with WMV, Divx, Xvid, and MPEP4 codec support, and you have a nice device. What's up with the only colour being black though? Come on Creative, I know you can do better than that.
Pricing wise, these look quite good - the 4GB model is $149 USD, the 8GB model is $199, and the 16GB model is $299 [Affiliate]. I'm definitely tempted...what about you?
[click image above for high-res photo]
I've always liked Creative products, especially once they hit upon their Zen line. I remained a big fan of my Zen Vision:M, and in some ways I prefer it to my Zune. This new Zen Vision from Creative looks quite impressive - small, thin, light, Flash-memory based, and expandable via SD cards (you could have 24 GB of storage right off the bat with an 8 GB SD card). The 320 x 240 resolution isn't super impressive, but on a 2.5" screen that's not bad at all - I'm more excited to see them supporting 16.7 million colours. Photos and movies would look excellent on this thing - much better than all those other devices that are stuck at 65K colours (yeah, I'm looking at your Zune). Round that out with WMV, Divx, Xvid, and MPEP4 codec support, and you have a nice device. What's up with the only colour being black though? Come on Creative, I know you can do better than that.
Pricing wise, these look quite good - the 4GB model is $149 USD, the 8GB model is $199, and the 16GB model is $299 [Affiliate]. I'm definitely tempted...what about you?
