It was very frustrating looking at the new "Creative Zen X-Fi" mp3 player. Firstly, it looks almost exactly the same as the "Creative Zen", which was still ok since there seemed to be an improvement from the flimsy plastic of Zen to the more metallic solid Zen X-Fi. The most frustrating about the new Zen is that it has X-Fi technology (omg!) and is priced at S$399 for 32gb. I mean... I spent $500+ for the Creative Zen a few months ago, and they came out with a Creative Zen with X-Fi for S$399?!?I am sure many of us do feel the pain... !@#$...
Before I keep ranting on about the world is unfair ( I wan trade in my Zen!!!), let's focus on the gem of the Creative Zen X-Fi. The main selling point is of course, the X-Fi technology. X-Fi is a technology by Creative which "restore portions of the sound which were lost during compression". I have never savour the quality of X-Fi technology, but based on reviews of some X-Fi products, th
e sound is breathtaking."The reasonably priced Creative Xmod does a remarkable job of making audio sound brighter, deeper, and more vibrant." by Cnet
You can try the X-Fi Crystalizer Demo to get a taste of X-Fi technology. Honesetly, the difference is unbeliveable. Based on review from nothingbutcreative, "X-Fi feature (in Creative Zen X-Fi) does provide a rather dramatic improvement to your music!"
"With the X-Fi Crystalizer ON, your music immediately becomes more rich and crisp. And if you like music with bass, the crystalizer really increase the intensity of the bass, which would make you really happy. However, when the X-Fi Crystalizer is set to MAX, the bass for certain songs became to overpowering and the vocals also became very sharp. Therefore, to enjoy the most out of the X-Fi, setting it to ON mode is sufficient."
(thanks to nothingbutcreative for the awesome and indepth review! Its a great site!)Not to mention that Creative Zen X-Fi comes with an external speaker, SD card slot, and Wi-Fi capability. Sadly, no web browsing for you. It can only be used for transferring music or to chat via MSN or Yahoo Messenger. (that's what the 9 buttons are for!)
Will this Creative Zen X-Fi be an iPod killer? No. This is because Creative Zen X-Fi is more of a middle-end product as compared to the higher-end iTouch. It seriously loses out on extra applications and features such as a simple stop-watch or even a text reader.
However, Creative does have the potential to produce an iPod killer. Someone commented that Apple really have to buy X-Fi technology from Creative as it can be a real threat. I totally agree to that. X-Fi can be a true killer feature for Creative with its emphasis on sound quality more than anything. However, we have yet to see Creative developing technology such as touch screen or even trying to produce a high-end product. Just look at some of the upcoming mp3 players such as the Creative Mozaic or the Zen Krystal, and we know that they are pretty low-end. That is one frustrating thing about Creative, where they keep producing products that are very similar. Examples are the Zen Stone and Zen Stone plus, or Zen Vision and Zen Vision W. I would rather wait for a mp3 player with cooler feature than seeing a variety of mp3 players with almost the same function.
Of course, considering Creative difficulty in terms of profit, I don't really blame them. I will still support Creative for some time to come. Go Creative!!
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