Small Creative Zen V + Ipod audio video contender

BACK in the warm summer of 2006 we heard that Creative labs finished the design and tweaking of its upcoming Zen refresh MP3 players.

It got the drives with Oled display this time, much brighter and much nicer, smaller at the same time and with a significantly better battery life.

The first impression when you unpack the small device is that it is freaking small. It might not be the thinnest on market but it sure is the smallest one. It measures 43.5 x 67.5 x 15.9mm and weighs incredibly only 43.5 grams. It comes in a few colours options, the 4 GB and 8 GB version comes in a black casing with blue buttons, the 2 GB comes in black or white but with green keys while the 1 GB has orange buttons and comes in white or black.

The real beauty of the device is the Scratch resistant OLED screen we use it for a few days and you can still not see any scratches, but it this can take time. The screen is 1.5 inches and has a beautiful contrast, it really looks great, much better than any Mp3 displays that I've seen so far. It support 128x128 pixels resolution and believe it or not you can even watch small movies on the screen and get yourself into the mood and enjoy.

The box includes a player, Creative earphones, wrist band with the Creative logo on, Line in cable, installation CD, a very thick manual, a quick start guide and a carrying case made from some irritating material that doesn't feel good to the touch. The navigation is totally redesigned, you have fewer keys and a joystick that has a multiple functions. The left hand side has an on / off button that is at the same time a lock button.

The right hand side has volume up and down + and - key and a record button. You can start recording a conversation of anything you want with a press of a button and you can use it for interviews if you need it, or for some confessions. It will record for hours as the space is not the issue, at least till you run the battery down or run out of space if you've filled up the drive.

The top of the player hides a mini USB 2.0 connector, headphones out and a line in. USB is used for charging the player and of course for data organization and transfer. The big issue is that the line in uses a small jack that is included in the package but it wont be easy to find if you want to record something at your friends home and you don't have the cable as it is not a standard connector. We can think of why Creative used a smaller one, it is simply a size issue but still we would have liked to have seen a standard jack. Microphone is on the top but you can just see the hole that leads to it but it works flawless as we recorded some conferences with it and the quality was good. You can change the quality settings in the software depending on your requirements.

The front of player is dominated with the 262144 colour 1.5 inch display, enough to show you a small video or some picture and more than enough to show you the player operating system. Below the display Creative decided to use a one touch navigation system with the joystick for its player. It is a five way joystick that will help you access all the menus.

The player supports MP3/WMA/WMA DRM/WAV/ and Audible audio formats and AVI Videos and JPEG pictures. The player also has an FM tuner that worked just fine in Austria. It takes less then a minute to scan the radio channels and the quality is good. You can listen to radio for hours and after scanning in my home I found ten stations, maybe there are more but that was just enough. You can also name the stations for easier identification.

The player worked for 16.5 hours straight till we drained the battery. We listened to MP3s, WMA files and was using the user interface from time to time and we even watched some videos during that time. Even the specification claims up to 15 hours but I guess it goes even more. You have to thank the flash memory for it as it doesn't need as much power as a hard drive, such as the one in the Zen Micro Photo. The device has integrated lithium ion battery and you can not change it, just recharge it. The player also has an equalizer with eight predefined presets and one user defined setting.

We connected the device to transfer some music on it. It takes about four minutes to copy eight CD's ripped to MP3 with total size of 618 MB and 121 songs in total. We think it is a decent transfer rate as you would need roughly seven minutes per GB or twenty eight minutes to pack the whole 4GB with music. We tested the 4GB but you never have the whole space available. Second time we copied 1 GB with total 175 files sorted in 13 folders in less than eight minutes which proves our theory.

The cool thing about the software that comes on CD and the device itself is that if you try to upload a picture, movie or file which is not supported it will warn you that it wont play. In date mode you can copy just about anything. If you go to a friends place you will be able to transfer music or data as the device will act as a flash drive.

The Zen V Plus software can rip an audio CD for you, convert a video, help you to find and buy music and it will act as a data flash drive, will synchronise with outlook to make your life easier and will help you transfer and manage music, photos and videos. It's a cool little thingy that completly integrates in windows explorer. It has wizards to guide you, but you can also go to music folder and paste the songs if you like.

The video player is the unique feature of this one. The screen is small but some videos are watchable. I tried a music video of Shakira and although it was small, I have to say that I got to see her tiny hips that don't lie, at least so she claims. People in the tram were impressed and watched my video so I guess it is big enough to get someone's attention. It won't play a normal AVI without conversion and it takes a few minutes to convert a 5 minute AVI video file. We tried with Real Media but it didn't want to convert it, you will have to stick with AVI's.

The pictures are small but you can make some sense out of them. You can even zoom them in and we like the fact that its fast to browse them. Zen V Plus is a real multitasking machine as you can listen to the music and browse the photos at the same time, and the music won't be interrupted while the pictures will swap smoothly.

You can allocate from 128 MB to 2 GB of space to act as a flash drive, depending on your needs. THere were only a fre things we didn't like, you can not resize or zoom the video, or rotate it to fit this tiny screen. The biggest complaint is that the blue plastic used to shield the joystick and the volume keys really looks cheap. The player itself looks stylish and slick but the buttons could be made from a few cents more expensive plastic, it would give it a better look.

And just for the fun of it here is the size comparition with old Zen NOman 2C player with amazing 64 MB of memory.

In Short
I have to say that the device is much faster than the Zen Micro photo and we enjoyed working with it. The CPU that Creative use for this one is amazingly fast, it will let you browse the pictures while listening to music. We admire the 16.5 hours working time and this is more than enough.

I used the device on my way to a various meeting points in the Vienna underground and you simply forget about when you last charged it. It will go on for days with a few hours a day use.

The buttons could be made of better plastic and we dislike that the audio in is a smaller 2.5 mm than the standard small headphones which are 3.5 mm, but that is a spacing issue.

We like the fact that it is easy to use and that the navigation is easy. The sound quality is much better than the Zen Micro Photo or MSI P610 1 GB player and I don't believe I've ever heard such good sound out of a small player, which includes all the older Ipods. When you pause the music there is not any flickering noise. Overall we are happy with it, the cheapest one with 1 GB sells for €99, a 2 GB unit sells for €125 while the 4GB version goes for €170.00. In this case more is better but it is up to your budget. It is available and will make a nice pre Yule sale. ?

Read also

Zen Photo gives Ipod Nano run for its money
Creative Labs showcases iPod-buster
Creative begins volume shipping of Zen music, video players