The Creative Zen also includes an Audio setting section which allows you to customize the device to your personal audio settings like; Play mode, EQ and Bass boost. A smart feature has been added, such as Smart Volume and Restrict Volume, handy for those of us that really blast the music to high as once you have been listening to music/videos for whatever length of time you can be temped to turn the music higher and higher thorough-out the day which is bad for your hearing.

The Off Memorizer function worked brilliantly on the ZEN, remembering what album and track I was listening to when I shut the player down, instantly re-playing when I turn the player back on, a handy feature to include in a digital media device.

Using the Microphone function was outstanding to say the least and that’s because Creative have included a really high quality microphone, not know the specs but while testing it out this little microphone even detected my breathing noise for not really close up to my face, its that good. The playback quality was brilliant, allowing me to make out all the different tones to peoples voices.

The Battery life on the ZEN is a superb 25 hours of Audio playback which I put to the test and got as long as no skipping or display times was customized and kept navigation down to a minimum. 

The Creative ZEN displays JPEG file formats only and can be viewed in three different ways; Individually, Slide show and rotate photos. As shown above all the images are of an outstanding quality, truly vibrant colours that are displayed crystal clearly using the entire 16.7 million photo viewer.

A truly amazing LCD screen that you an just flick through your selected images or enjoy a slide show of all your treasured photos while listening to your music at the same time. You can also set the time between each slide up to 15 seconds for everyone’s enjoyment. Rotating the images work fantastically, with only the slightest amount of lag between rotates but once you have rotated your image it stays.

What really court my eye while browsing through the photo Submenu section was the wallpaper setting, this feature allows you the set any image as your background image that changes the whole look of your device. This feature allows you to enjoy your treasured image while playing your music so that you don’t have to browse to your photo folder to look at a certain image. You can also delete and rate your folders and images with-in the submenu without having to plug your device into your USB to remove certain folders you don’t want anymore on the player.

Another mayor element the Creative ZEN has over the Nano is the FM Radio that can store up to 32 presets. This can be done by either performing an Auto scan or a Manual scan which made it extremely easy to find all my favourite channels, even naming the station was brilliant as the player displays a keyboard for you to enter additional characters or symbols. The FM tuner is the best quality I’ve heard in a digital media player, as long as your headphone wire is hanging loosely the radio station is heard crystal clear and that’s not all, even when I moved the device around I still didn’t lose any reception at all.

Under the System mode is where you can really customize the device to meet your individual needs, such as; Audio setting, Display settings, Clock settings and Player settings. A couple of settings within the submenu that where a real highlight for me was the Configure menu that allows you to add or remove certain items for the menu list to access them more conveniently, changing the order of the menu layout as well. And changing the theme, yes the ZEN comes with six different themes for you to switch between when you fancy a bit of a change for your device to suit your mood of the day or what not, a really fantastic touch from Creative.

Also within this submenu is where you can assign the Shortcut button to what ever menu shortcut you desire, I left the ZEN assigned to “Album of the day”  that chooses a random album out of your files to play instantly, reducing the need to look at the player while travelling but you can shortcut to whatever you like. 

The Creative ZEN Supports WMV or, MJPEG and MPEG4-SP format’s and display’s them at a 320x240 resolution. To play your video/movie file you must first convert your files for the ZEN to recognize them, as anything over the stated resolution, the device will display that the file is not supported by the player. But Creative have made this a simple tack using there Media Explore software.

Creative’s Media Explore allows you to set what quality you would like the file to be formatted to, the higher the quality, the bigger the file. I went for the best quality format as shown above to really test the 16.7 million LCD colour screen to really capture what the ZEN is capable of.

The software automatically detects if the device is plugged into a USB port and transfers the files directly to the player after the conversion has taken place. The file which was converted was around 349 MB (366,342,144 bytes) in size and took roughly about 55 minutes to convert completely, quite a long conversion but as I wanted the best quality possible coming under an hour is quite a good time.  The only thing I could complain about, is that was only 100 mb more in its original full size screen divx file, don’t get me wrong, the creative can play divx, but it has to be converted to screen size… Creative really should get the licence so divx files can be dragged and dropped onto the device.

When watching my first video on the ZEN all I could say to myself was “wow” the picture was outstandingly superb and has to be the best video compatible device I’ve seen to date. The brilliant 16.7 million colour range really produced the best movie quality I’ve captured on a 2.5-inch screen. Not only was the picture vibrant, crisp and sharp but also the fast moving scenes of the movie responded fantastically, making it very smooth and clear right the way thorough. The squares and blurriness that I was expecting didn’t appear nor did any lag in the picture while I was fast forwarding and rewinding through the movie or when big explosions happened, thorough-out the movie time the colours stayed true and exceeded my expectations.

You see the last picture of hiro, I took that with the camera lens pressed up and touching the zen screen to show how good the screen is on this player..

The Creative ZEN produced the 5 hours of video playback time and the Memorizer function worked fantastically, remembering the exact place where I stopped the video playback ready to re-play the video when I wanted to.

Creative have supplied what I would describe as a substandard set of headphones. Quite long in length that rest against the side of your face, with extra foam padding for a bit more comfort when wearing and I must add that this headset needed that extra padding, as they are pretty larger in the speaker area. I did find when wearing these headphones a bit on the discomfort side when taking them in and out of my ears, if left in for a few hours the ache would start and I would therefore have to adjust them.

The sound quality that the ZEN produced was superb though and I could really make out the differences between the EQ modes when switching through the modes. To really test the ranges of the ZEN I loaded up a whole verity of music, such as; Bob Marley, Madonna, Genesis, up the latest sounds of Keane and The killers, followed through to the thumping tunes of Prodigy.

The ZEN went from strength to strength, the sound was rich and clean through-out the tests and the acoustics was fantastic to say the least. Once I had set up the EQ mode to suit my needs and added the bass boost to certain songs the sound stayed true and smooth with no farting or hissing present at all. While listening to a live concert album on the ZEN, the highs and lows of the recording was transmitted with ease on the ZEN, allowing me to hear all of the drums and guitars being played with brilliant quality.

While listening to video playback, it was much the same audio quality. Every aspect of the movie was streamlined into my ears just like from my TV, the voices where clear and strong. And that’s not all, the high ranges of sound like explosions and stuff sounded deep, with the right amount of bass to them that was really a pleasure. As with all media players, I would advisable to upgrade the standard headset to get the most out of your device.

Next Page – Conclusion

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