It's a darn good thing the SD slot is becoming a staple feature of these players. Now to see the rest of the lineup...

Nice.. looks a little like the Meizu M6. Having the SD slot and a 16 GB option is really sweet.. Questions remaining are : what is the resolution of the screen? Is it USB Mass Storage Class or do I need (shudder) Creative's drivers?

If you haven't picked up a copy of "Microphone Photos" I strongly suggest you do.

Looks interesting, if a tad bulky. The killer features for me would be the ability to transfer tracks to and from the SD card and the ability to timeshift the radio. If it could do those two things, I'd definitely consider it over the upcoming Nano.

Gizmodo, this news was provided to you by epiZENter.net. Please update your links to reflect this.

Thanks,

Michael
epiZENter.net

September 5th comes, Jobs rolls out an iPhone/iPod without the phone.... and Creative goes "shit!"... Jobs goes "boom!" and the world moves on...

Why do these companies even bother?

Wow looks great. I might have to abandon the ol' 3G iPod when it kicks the bucket.

I'd like to see a follow up article of what formats of video this will support. I don't want to purchase and find that I can't watch a lot of the content that is available online. I'd rather not have to convert everything I watch to an acceptable format. Maybe I'm asking too much???

It's nice to see a solid state player with a decent sized display.

this is THE player I have been waiting for. 16GB flash player that also plays video. I still need to see the battery specs, but so far it is looking like the next player I will be purchasing. The SD port is just icing on the cake.

woahhhhh 32 hours of video!!! hell. thats awesome.

tronim, if its like the previous zen: vision units, it will support avi, wmv, divx, xvid, and mp4 at the very least. most things i download off the net go right onto my vision W without need of conversion. some anime releases (anything by dattebayo) needs to be run through a program like iriverter (which is free and fast) to get it out of whatever audio codec they choose to use.

Does it have the #1 feature that I want? That is the ability to scroll within a sound file - ie. seek to any spot. I like to listen to audio books on my player and in my car so they get out-of-synch. Can I "scroll" to the 45:00 spot that I stopped listening to before?

If you know of other players beside the iPods that have this feature, please let me know!!!

@XtremeCamera: Is that you in that picture? 'Cuz if it is...you're, like, the oldest fanboy ever. It'd be funny if it weren't so disturbing.

Full specs have now been listed at epizenter.net (the linked site above) and amazon too. The player supports AAC files! has 25 hours of battery life, and plays back WMV videos. Unfortunately no divx/xvid support as I originally hoped for. That's the only thing I'm disappointed with.

Thanks,

Michael

Does it have a scroll/seek within a music file like the iPod? The only real reason I like the iPods is the ability to seek to any spot within a music file (very useful for audio books when you are 45 minutes into the file!)

I really want one of these now. It wouldn't replace my brick sized Zen Vision W for long trips since the screen is smaller, but this would be good for my shorter commute.

Sadly, it has good looks, good features, great sound, a good price but, because it's from Creative, it has crap advertising.

The I-pod didn't get where it is now by occasionally putting ads on subway cars and sticking a full page ad in PC World. Apple spent millions upon millions saturating the TV airwaves with I-pod and I-tune ads.

Maybe Creative to take a break from line refreshes and spend the funds on consumer awareness.

(sorry Giz, you guys don't count as mainstream advertising)

W@omg-ponies:

The big prob is money. Advertising costs a lot and frankly it's a risk Creative can't afford to take. Despite all these great palyers they're losing money every single quarter. I'd probably take the risk if I ran the company but it could bankrupt the company if unsuccessful.

Just want to update that I added the final specs to my post. The player does support Xvid and Divx natively!

16gb built in + new 16gb sd card = 32gb flash based mp3 player! (and an empty bank account, but who cares, 32gbs of flash storage!)

@theimmc:
If I'm not mistaken, all of the Zen players have used MTP (the protocol Windows Media Player uses), and I believe WinXP supports "mounting" MTP devices as folders. I also believe some Mac and Linux players support MTP as well (though I just switch my Sansa to UMS mode)

@ssjmichael: Creative is a major computer manufacturer and, arguably, 6 years ago was similarly situated as Apple was.

Remember, six years ago this month, Apple saw 2/3 of its share price disappear in a week. Moreover, at the time when the I-pod was released, Creative had a robust competitor in the form of the Zen Xtra (it was slightly bigger and weighed about 3 oz. more.).

Everything about the Zen was better than the first I-pod: better sound, battery life, more storage, a lower price, Windows compatibility, and on-the-fly playlists. But Creative didn't spend a dime to advertise it.

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear, how do you even know it fell?

@omg-ponies:
It's iPod, not I-pod

Assuming this has everything the CZV:M has as well as appropriate updates, this is my next player. Very nice.

This will be a awesome companion to my Zen Vision W. Like mentioned above, the pocketability (or in Gizmodo's case, pants-ability) of this device will be killer. Really looking forward to this one.

@theelk801: Thank you, Apple Brand Spelling Nazi.

I'll stick with "I-pod", if it's all the same to you.

OMG-PONIES, creative is not a computer manufacturer. Moreover, the zen xtra came out around October 2003. The first iPod came out October 2001. Its hard to pin down Creative's release date history (that would be a nice resource, michael), but the xtra was not the player they had when the first ipod was released. I think it may have been one of their large cd player styled players, but it was not the xtra.

@ssjmichael: go back and look again, it does have xvid and divx. unless apple unveils the iphone w/o the phone next month this is at the top of my list :D

I don't get it... The Archos 160GB unit will have a street price of 379$. How is Creative going to compete with that? 16GB? That's pathetic.

@XtremeCamera: The iPods will still be ~20% more than the similar spec'd competition and be all proprietary about it. I hate how virtually DAP/PMP post turns into "LOL IPODS SUCK" fests but seriously, iPods suck. Deal with it.

@FrankenPC: You can't compare flash to HDD.

@zip22: The clamshell model was the Nomad, which really pioneered digital mp3 players.

As far as the nitpicks go, Creative is a component manufacturer (which is what I meant to type).

Before the Xtra was the Jukebox Zen, released at the beginning of 2002 at half the price of the I-pod and with 20GB of storage. It had a rectangular form factor with a jog dial at the top right and had an aluminum case.

The size difference came from Apple having an exclusive contract with Toshiba which had a 1.7" drive, as opposed to the 2.5" drives used by the other manufacturers. Drive size, though, played a major part in the price differential and accounted for a large part of the cost.

There were other trade-offs. Whereas the I-pod was Mac only at first (which coupled with the price tag limited the initial uptake), the Zen's glaring flaw was that it used USB 1.1. Apple originally didn't want the I-pod on the PC because it saw the I-pod as a means to get people to switch to Mac. However, once several software hacks were in the wild, Apple relented.

Additionally, The software on the Zen sucked, but Apple's wasn't much better at first (it was rebranded MusicMatch - which I hate)

After having all my hard drive based portable players die on me, I will never buy one again. It's all flash players for me from now on. And 16GB should be just fine for my portable uses.

before creative introduced the jukebox zen, apple had introduced the second generation ipod that also offered 20GB. the jukebox zen was not half the price of the ipod. everything i can find points to $350 for the jukebox zen and $500 for the ipod of the same capacity.

in addition, you can find 2 pictures of the original ipod and the competing creative player at the time here and it is extremely obvious why the ipod got a lot of attention.
[images.search.yahoo.com]

Shit, and to think I almost jumped the gun and bought another player. Glad I waited. Chalk me down for the 16GB edition when it hits.

@zip22: FWIW, I still have my Zen Jukebox and I didn't spend $350 on it.

Like I said, Apple paid a lot of money for marketing. Creative did none. That makes all the difference. If you want to talk about design, then please mention that in the 2G, people complained about the departure of the mechanical wheel. Additionally, the playlist-on-the-fly feature didn't surface in the I-pod until well after the Zen appeared.

When the "I-pod Battery Lasts Only 18 Months" drama happened, the Xtra had been released, featuring a user-replaceable battery. Additionally, every test showed the Zen series to have a better signal:noise ratio than the I-pod.

My point is that a product that is not marketed is worthless. Creative had not only the best opportunity to kill the I-pod, it had every opportunity but Creative blew it at every turn.

As far as resources are concerned, I'm not buying it. Apple's resources were piss-poor and not better than Creative's, if that. Creative had better everything in their player, but abandoned the player market at the beginning, choosing instead to keep every resource trained on the niche high-end sound card market.

I ordinarily don't like evaluating business judgment in hind-sight because it's not fair, but the writing was on the wall. The future of the music industry was digital downloads as Napster and Morpheus proved. Creative should have known it, as they had had the Nomad out for some time.

Moreover, every review of a Zen had the same complaint: the software is garbage. While Creative shipped a great product with crapware, Apple got rid of MusicMatch as soon as possible and made its own software. I-tunes isn't without problems, but most versions have been improvements over previous versions. And every version is better than Creative's software.

Just as home CD players led to portable discmen, the transition to portable mp3 technology was just as obvious, as demonstrated by Archos' first player, a plug-ugly monstrosity that was little more than a 3.5" hard drive attached to 8 rechargeable AA batteries, weighing more than a pound.

Archos showed that all an mp3 player is is a drive, a battery, a headphone jack, and a processor. With plunging drive prices, people had the ability to store large amounts of music in mp3 format (or WMA). The portable player was the next Walkman, something that Creative gave to Apple by half-assing the marketing.

Of course, Creative isn't all to blame. Sony sat out of the mp3 market completely at first, trying to keep another of its failed formats - the MiniDisc - alive. When Sony did try for an mp3 player, it tried to foist its own music format on everyone while also half-assing the marketing.

You seem to keep scattering different ideas around after I disprove previous claims. You're initial comment with regards to advertising is fine, but you surrounded it with misinformation. You keep changing what you're talking about - I was never discussing the design of the second generation ipod and its pros or cons, I just pointed out that when the ipod was released, it did compare very favorably to Creative's monstrous competition.

Back to the topic at hand, I'm not so sure even advertising would help Creative much at this point. Microsoft was able to overtake much of their hard drive sales pretty quickly with a bit of advertising, a lot of online buzz, and simple brand recognition. I don't think you would see an improvement overnight, and Creative doesn't really have time to wait to build up their identity with the general public.

If Microsoft can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Zune marketing and not take any significant marketshare from Apple, then clearly the difference is not marketing. Creative will never make any major gains in this market- they need to learn how to make money as a niche player, and stop acting like an Apple competitor. There's no shame in that, there will always be a small percentage of people who want to be "different", and there's money to be made selling things to them. I imagine Archos makes a reasonable amount of money, and I also imagine Steve Jobs doesn't lose one second of sleep over anything Archos does.

please allow direct file access to the directories for dragging in media without all the syncing crap. (like the zen nano plus) looks like it does have a usb standard jack -