Thread: Creative Zen X-Fi Portable Multimedia Player

Creative, to its credit has many good portable multimedia players and this one's no exception. Resembling the previous Zen, the newly incarnated Zen features an add-on by the name ofX-Fi and the navigation pad this time is different. In simple words,X-Fi technology intelligently moves a conventional left right earphone stereo source away from your ears, virtually expands it for an audio experience with a realistic depth offield.You'li feel as if you were listening to your music from a pair of high end speakers.

Coming back to the player, the Zen X-Fi looks good.The back of the player is made of grainy silver plastic that lends a premium look to it.The power/hold button is located on the same side as well.The front of the player is shiny black and the only gripe we have with this is that it easily attracts finger smudges. The 2.5in screen is clean and crisp.The front of the player features all the buttons like Play/Pause, Forward, Back,and Menu. However, we were not impressed with the changes made to the navigation pad from the previous version of Zen. The navigation pad is in the form of nine rounded buttons, arranged in three-by-three grid. At first this can be quite confusing for a person who is just handling the playerforthe first time.

Like current generation music players, this one connects to the PC via the USB cable bundled along.The player can also be charged via USB. Zen X-Fi can play music, videos, pictures and radio.Vidoes on the vibrant 320x240 pixel screen are crisp and enjoyable.The player supports DivX, MJPEG, MPEG-4, WMV and XviD video formats. However, before dumping them on the player, you need to encode them using the included Creative Centrale software. On the image viewing front,JPEG file format images are directly playable. In case you need to view BMp,TIFF,GIF or PNG file format, you need to first convert the same with the software.



The player reviewed here comes in 8GB storage capacity, however except in India, Creative offers the player in 16GB and 32GB as well and that too with Wi-Fi capability. Probably Creative thinks that wireless connectivity is still low in India or wanted to keep the cost of the player down.That aside, the Zen X-Fi also features a SD card slot that can accept high capacity cards up to 16GB. This means the storage can be expanded to 24GB totally. The player also features a speaker that can entertain people around you,in case you do not want to use the earphones. However, the sound quality from the speaker is decent.

The player does best what it's intended to do. It plays music and at great quality. This can be credited to the X-Fi Crystaliser and the bundled EP-830 earphones. These earphones are also available separately.The earphones do justice to the X-Fi technology that Creative has equipped the player with. Kudos to Creative for sensible thinking to include a good earphone as otherwise it would have been a waste of X-Fi technology with any ordinary cheap earphone. The Zen X-Fi delivers good music and displays videos equally well exceptfor the fiddly navigation pad.