The Creative Zen

image courtesy of Creative Technology

Not too long ago, maybe about a month or two ago, Creative Technology released a new mp3 player called the Zen. This little player is about the size of a credit card and is light and quite sleek looking. When I first set my eyes on it, I already loved the look and so I did some research on the specs and read as many reviews as I could get my hands on and when my mum got one, I played with it extensively and really liked it tons. The audio on the Zen is also really good even on the average earphones that come bundled with the player.

Sadly, some of the reviews by reputable gadget websites were obviously Apple biased. One or two of them actually said the Zen's GUI was confusing which is definitely nonsense. My mum is in her 60s and not the most technology savvy person in the world and she had no problem making sense of the GUI. I didn't even need to help her with it and she was zipping though it like Woody Wood Pecker.


SE k750i - Dohby Ghaut MRT Station, 2007, Creative Zen Ad Banner

Okay, rant over. =) Let's get to the player. The reason why I'm talking about the player now is because while clearing out the photos on my SE k750i phone, I came across a photo I took sometime back and I thought I'll put it up in the blog because I think Creative fans might enjoy seeing it if they should chance upon it and also because I hope to get my hands on an 8gig Zen by the end of this week.


SE k750i - my banged up Creative Zen Neeon

My current player is a really banged up Creative Neeon. It's banged up only because it's been through tons of heavy duty usage... heh heh... I'm not always that careful with my gadgets. =) My Neeon is a 5gig player and I don't have it filled so an 8gig Zen would be more than sufficient for my needs. While my Neeon is still chugging along, I've come to the conclusion that I would like an upgrade because my Neeon is a hard drive player and would sometimes crash when I shake it too much while chasing after the bus or the train. The Zen, however, is a flash drive player and so chances of it crashing while I chase after buses. trains or bees in the bonnet aren't really that likely. =)

Moreover, a bonus is that the screen on this beautiful gadget is 16 million colours and video playback looks quite awesome. It is not likely that I'll be carrying too much video around on it though because I also own a Zen Vision 30gig and a Zen Vision W 60gig. As to why I own both... it's a long story and not that interesting anyway. =) But on the off-chance that I would like to carry some video, I could always put it on a SD card and pop it into the build-in SD card slot in the Zen. Yup, the Zen comes with a SD card slot, hence, unlimited expandability in a sense. You're only limited by the size of the SD cards that are available or that you're willing to buy.

Creative's latest warehouse sale is from the 16th-18th Nov which is the end of this week. I'm quite tempted to go even though I'm quite adverse to crowds, especially crowds of bargain hunters, but there are several Creative products I kind of like and if I get lucky, I could get a 16gig Zen at a very good price... well, will see. =)