Once Creative’s Vision M digital media player was the envy of all, and the rest of the music player lineup was impressive enough to rival even the most prolific rivals. However, things have been quiet lately. Only the low-end Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus have broken the eerie silence in recent months, and in the meantime the Vision M has been quietly phased out. With Creative now lacking a mid-range hard drive player to rival the iPod Classic and a line in dire need of an update, can the new Flash-based Zen begin to reclaim lost ground?
When Riyad played with a back for the first time at IFA in early September he was quite impressed and I have to say that initial impressions are positive in that regard too. The design is unpretentious but chic – unlike the cheap looking Stone and the mighty gorgeous Vision W – with a polished black plastic front and a beautifully finished matte black back. It’s not as thin as the iPod nano at a relatively chubby 12mm, or quite as colorful – it only comes in black, but in a fun way that’s not a handicap. It actually feels a little more comfortable – and less soapy in the hand.
But despite its small dimensions, the Zen looks extremely well equipped on closer inspection. Its 2.5-inch screen is not only larger than the Nano’s 2-inch screen, it’s also the same size as the larger, hard drive-based iPod Classic. And it’s also a very nice screen. At a full 16.7 million colors – which, as Riyad pointed out in his preview, is impressive for a PC LCD panel, let alone one in a tiny media player like this; Video looks sharp, clean and vibrant, and 30fps playback capability means fast action is smooth and viewable.
The Zen also seems to have pretty good video format support: it plays DivX 4 and 5 and XviD formats natively, plus WMV9, MJPEG and MPEG4-SP formats. But before you get too excited, this isn’t as good as it sounds. The Zen isn’t DivX Certified and won’t downscale videos at a higher resolution than the screen, meaning you can’t just drag an old file onto it – you’ll still have to re-encode most downloaded videos to 320×240 first. This becomes a relatively easy task thanks to the Zen’s excellent management and browsing software, which integrates with the Windows Explorer tree and allows you to convert, sync and transfer music and videos without launching a separate application need, but it’s still an unnecessary hassle. However, it does not differ from the Nano in this respect.
The Zen outperforms the iPod nano in other ways, too. Firstly, it is available in larger capacities. I was sent the 4GB version to review, but it’s also available in 8GB and 16GB capacities – the Nano stops at 8GB where the much larger Touch takes over – and there’s an SD card expansion slot too , so you could theoretically take the storage and add up to an impressive 12GB, which is on par with some lower-capacity HDD-based players.
Other reasons to buy the Zen before the Nano include an FM tuner, the ability to charge and transfer files with a standard USB-to-mini-USB cable rather than a proprietary one, and the fact that you can charge for file transfer are not tied to iTunes and device management. You can use the included Creative Media Explorer or Windows Media Player if you want to listen to DRM tracks; or any other music management software you might want to mention if you had the sense to just buy CDs and rip them yourself. You can also just drag and drop files onto the player if you want – it will even warn you if the files you’re trying to copy aren’t supported by the Zen.
Battery life is also slightly better than the Nano at 25 hours for audio and five hours for video. Note, however, that you only get the former if you play 128kbps MP3s continuously without skipping tracks or other navigation. There’s no search function, though, which is one of the few advantages the Nano has over the Zen.
Once you have your music and video on the Zen, navigating the attractive looking menu system is very easy. The four-way directional pad isn’t as pleasant to use as the Nano’s click wheel, and the rest of the buttons aren’t immediately intuitive either, as they contain fairly ambiguous symbols. Before long, however, you’ll be flipping from screen to screen and creating playlists on the fly without even thinking about it. An excellent feature shared by this and other creative players is index navigation: right-click on the device’s directional pad and you can then navigate by the first letter. This makes it a breeze to navigate through long lists quickly. Another nice touch is the album-of-the-day feature, which selects and plays a random selection of tracks from a random album with the click of a button. It’s an excellent idea and feature to have in your pocket, allowing for quick subject changes without having to look at the screen.
How does the Zen fare in terms of audio quality? It’s not a good start, with disappointingly limited file format support. Despite the fact that the player supports AAC without DRM in addition to the usual WMA and MP3 formats, there is no support for lossless codecs or OGG Vorbis.
The lack of audiophile options is a disappointment, not just from a features perspective, but because the Zen is good enough in terms of performance to take full advantage of the increased quality. To test it out, I hooked up my high-end Grado SR325i reference headphones – if these can’t reveal a source’s weaknesses, it won’t do anything – and found the Zen to be a very capable player.
The first thing to point out is that it doesn’t have the loudest volume in the world. It’s fine if you’re listening with noise-isolating in-ear headphones, but some people just can’t handle putting things in their ears, and it doesn’t get larger headphones to the same levels as, say, the Trekstor I tested Vibez player a few months back.
However, this was soon forgotten once I started listening to a few sample tracks. Creative players have always been pretty good sounding machines and the Zen continues that tradition. In back-to-back tests against the Trekstor Vibez, which I currently use as my reference player, I found the Zen just as good, but in a different way. When listening to a piece of dinner jazz by Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl, the zen doesn’t quite have the same openness as the vibez. But the rest of the sound spectrum is cleaner and a little mellower, with plucked double-bass notes in the background that are more pleasing to the ear.
That strength comes through when you hear something less civilized. Biffy Clyro’s “Puzzle” is a current favorite of mine, and the Ayrshire formation’s unorthodox guitar rock gets to the zen with an energy, power, and punch that many other players lack. Its dynamics and clean, tight bass are simply excellent and even a class ahead of the excellent Trekstor Vibez.
Next I fed the Zen a few tracks from a new band I discovered. Sowena plays an intriguing mix of acoustic guitars and reggae beats, and her well-produced and recorded music is the perfect test of Zen skill. It excelled here, making the music ring out with cheerful abandon.
Finally, I fed the Zen with my usual selection of challenging classical works, from Mozart’s “Requiem” to the dramatic prelude to Mahler’s “5. Symphony”. And here it coped just as well, dispatching complex choral refrains and the tremendous dynamics of orchestral hits with realism, impact and subtlety.
So all in all, a pretty impressive feat. It’s a little disappointing that you can’t delete video files with higher resolutions than the player’s screen, and I’d also have liked to see support for lossless codecs, but the player’s big, clean sound makes up for that and then some. If you’re looking for an alternative to the iPod nano, that alone should put the Zen at the top of your shortlist and make it worthy of the recommended award.
“‘Verdict”‘
Creative has come up trumps with its new Flash-based mini media player. As a direct competitor to the iPod nano, it beats it on most fronts, with the one exception being that its physical controls aren’t quite as pleasant to use. It’s available in a larger capacity range, has a larger screen and, most importantly, isn’t tied to iTunes or a proprietary cable for syncing and charging. It also comes at around the same price, the 4GB version selling for just under £100.