Let’s be Zen... that seems to be Creative’s motto, as the manufacturer from Singapore keeps expanding its range. After the Zen Micro, the Zen Vision M or even the Zen V, it is high time the Creative Zen turn its attention to taking some of the market share away from the mightily mini Nano…

The Creative Zen is already available in 4 or 8 GB and the 16 GB model is scheduled to be released a little later on. It was created to face off against the iPod Nano. This seems clear with the inclusion of a bunch of bonus features and even in their similar sizes. We are going to see if the Creative Zen is good enough to take back some of the iPod Nano’s prized market share.

Audio Quality

The Creative Zen’s audio quality is pretty good overall. The device performs well even with different audio frequencies and it can play all qualities of music. However, we noted that sometimes the Bass is a little too strong. Sometimes it drowns out other audio frequencies a little when played with the basic audio configuration. It’s for this reason that we recommend you use the equaliser.. Problem solved!

It’s all a bit fuzzy…

The strange thing about the Zen is that even when you’re not playing music you can hear a faint buzzing from your headphones. Why you’d have your headphones on while not listening to music is strange in itself, but it’s irritating nonetheless. This is even more noticeable when you are using in-ear headphones. The problem is less noticeable when actually listening to music.

The volume, even at its highest setting, is a little lower than we expected. At full power the sound doesn’t drown out background noise, unless of course you are using noise cancelling headphones. Thus the Headphones you choose can make all the difference with the Zen.

A disappointing battery life

The battery life on the Zen lasts for around 16 hours for audio playback and around 4 hours for Video Playback. This is only an upsetting feature of the Zen when we remember the promises made by the Manufacturer before its release. Creative had announced a battery life of around 25 hours for audio playback and four hours for video playback. The video playback estimate is spot on but we lose out on nearly ten hours of audio playback and for no apparent reason.

A Couple of things to point out…

It should be said that our test was carried out under standard playback conditions (the screen brightness was set at 50% and the sound at two thirds of the maximum).

The device is charged via USB. However check out the picture to the left... The lead is so short that users who want to plug it into a USB port on the back of their PC’s will need an extension Not a huge problem really but certainly an inconvenience.