At this year’s San Diego Comic Con I conducted many, many interviews and I recorded each one using a Creative Zen. On top of that, several of the folks I interviewed were intrigued by what i was recording them with, which sparked a couple of queries as to why I wasn’t using an iPod. In all areas, sound, video, extras, price and accessories, the Zen beats all other mp3 players hands-down. Let’s run down the specs and this terrific little device.
Audio
The Zen supports unprotected AAC files as well as MP3 and WAV. And it’s a piece of cake to drag and drop these files directly onto your device. The Zen also supports your downloads from the iTunes store and is compatible with Napster and Rhapsody. If you’re into audio books, your Audible.com files will work just fine on the Zen as well.
Video
One of the many things I love about the Zen is the display screen. It’s 2.5″ and has a color pallet of 16.7 million colors, so videos are outstanding. The screen is also perfectly viewable even out in broad daylight. I’ve found that the best video format is xvid encoded AVI at 320×240, 768 bitrate and 25 frames per second. At that size the video look amazing on the Zen. Again, just drag and drop them to the device, no proprietary restrictions.
Photos
As you can image, with that kind of screen resolution, photos look very sharp. you can easily organize photo albums and making the photos fill the screen is a snap. This is probably the feature I use the least on the Zen, but it is still pretty nifty.
SD Card
Another gold star for the Creative Zen is the inclusion of an SD Card Slot. Essentially, you could go with the lowest priced model (the 2GB) and still have a massive storage capacity simply by adding any side SD Card. The only draw back is that while there is an import function, the contents of the main Zen and the SD Card remain isolated from each other. Also, when connected to your computer you can’t view the Zen drive and SD Card at the same time. My rule of thumb has been to use the main drive for music and photos and the SD Card for videos. Works rather nicely.
Microphone
This feature is the highlight of the Zen for me and is what I’ve used the most. The recording capabilities exceeded my expectations. The recordings are saved in WAV mono format, but the sound quality is exceptionally nice. While not quite podcast quality, your favorite audio editor won’t have to work hard at sprucing the sound up. And, while very tiny, the external microphone is great at minimize background noise. I was very impressed at how well the Zen recorded my interviews and transcribing from the saved files was a breeze.
FM Radio
The FM Radio is another great add-on. Using the headphone cable as an antenna, FM stations come in very strong. You get an abundance of presets, so no problems tagging all your favorite stations. This is another feature I underuse.
The Rest
The battery will run up to 30 hours of music and 5 hours of video on a full charge, so very good for road trips. The whole device is the size of about six or seven credit cards stacked. There are many accessories available, my favorite being the clear plastic case with keychain. The clear case adds lots of protection with very little size increase. There are some that are put off buy the buttons being actual buttons, but I like the tactile sense much more than a touchpad. I suppose the big negative would be that the Zen only comes in black, but that matters not to me. For the price, features and sound and video quality, I don’t think you can beat the Zen. Get one for yourself and consider it also as a gift this upcoming holiday season.