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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:36
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From gear.ign.com:
quote:
Zen Touch
A touch pad and 24 hours of battery life on an HDD player? Only from Creative.
June 01, 2004 - Anyone looking for a hard drive (HDD) audio player should wait a couple months. There are plenty of able-bodied players out there, but the new breed is on the way. We will see new players from iRiver and Rio in the near future, as well as some new mystery models. However, Creative got a jump on the competition and announced its newest jukebox today.
Those of you who've followed Creative's evolution will recognize that the Zen Touch is a major departure for the company. The Zen, Zen NX, and Zen Xtra are all base don the same chassis and share many of the same features. The Xtra's huge LCD was a notable improvement, but it still sort of felt like you were holding a Zen. The Zen Touch has a completely new look with some extremely interesting features.
I usually start with design, but this time I am kicking things off with the player's most striking characteristic: battery life. Creative claims an absolutely massive 24 hours of playback from one charge. Even with the normal disclaimers -- namely, that battery life varies and that companies routinely lie about battery life -- this is a promising claim. The current record holder is the Dell DJ, which I have run over 17 hours from a single charge. Additionally, Creative is not a bad offender regarding battery life. In fact, I have always found Nomads to hit the promise. Creative was the first company to install a user-replaceable battery, another important innovation. The combination of replacement and insane longevity is damn sweet. (Incidentally, this is triple the life of the iPod.)
As you can see, the Zen Touch gets a total redesign. Gone is the flat face with side-mounted controls. Play and menu controls have been moved to the front of the Touch, with three running down the edge of each side and one in the middle. The aesthetic is plainly influenced by one of Creative's main competitors.
New for the Touch is the Touch Pad Control for fast browsing and scrolling. You move your finger up and down on the narrow touch sensitive strip on the front of the pad. Fairly straightforward since we've seen touch pads on that other MP3 player.
The LCD is identical to the Xtra's, measuring 106 x 104 pixels with a blue backlight.
Like its predecessors, the Touch will be slightly larger and heavier than the Rio Karma, Apple iPod, or iRiver H120. It measures 4.12" x 2.7" x .866" and weighs in at 7.05 ounces with the battery. Compared to the Zen Xtra, the Touch is a bit narrower and shorter, but just as thick. Creative is obviously hoping that the strong points of the player, e.g. sound quality, value, and battery life, will be enough to persuade potential customers.
One of Creative's trademarks has always been sound quality. The Touch features the same 97dB SNR as its forebears, so you can rest assured that your MP3s (or WAVs) will sound as good as they can.
Curiously, Creative stuck with a 20GB drive for the Touch. 20GB is a nice chunk of space, but it's less than I would expect from Creative, who typically offers the largest capacities. If the company follows its history it will stealthily release 40GB and 60GB versions a few weeks after launch.
Some of the features that haven't changed are the USB 2.0 interface, on-the-fly playlist generation, cueing during playback, MP3 and WAV support, and upgradeable firmware.
The only red flag popped up when I read that an FM tuner, FM recording, ands voice recording will be available through the optional inline remote. Creative's last optional remote was a wildly overpriced disaster. Let's hope they learned a lesson.
Creative will launch the Touch for $269.99. Like good Hold 'Em players, this is extraordinarily aggressive.
So how will the Touch stack up against the new Karma? The new iRiver? A possible new iPod? I have no idea. I can tell you that the Touch seems to have everything going for it. More as soon as I get mine. |
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12-06-2004 07:47
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