Holy CRAP: Creative's response to the M6 is kickass!

The Creative ZEN (nice name)

Holy crap, this player looks damn good! Meizu might be in for some real hard competition from Creative in the future with this thing! It's going to be in 4, 8, and 16 gigabyte capacities, AND has an SD card slot for even more! It has just about everything the M6 has, and an awesome flash based interface that's easy to use... and also, what I'm looking forward to aside from 16GB... TACTILE BUTTONS. I prefer this so that I may use it in a pocket and know just how far I'm adjusting the volume, and know I won't accidentally hit enter when trying to do so because I'd feel it.

Only thing that makes me wait for the M6SE to see if it's still slightly better is a few things like, right now, it doesn't say it supports FLAC or OGG formats, only has a 5 band EQ, and no text support from the specs, but it seems to do everything else great, and looks kickass while doing it. The shell design is even kickass, and just how I wish the M6 was, with nice rounded edges. Makes it look sexy! :D *sweatdrop*

But yeah, this thing hasn't quite come out yet, and they might add support for these extras, and adjust the EQ later on, plus Creative does have a good rep with keeping up with support for older players, and is based here in the US, so no language barriers for us english only speakers over here.

Discuss!

Actually they are based in Singapore. Here is an interesting announcement from them:

Creative Technology Proceeds With Voluntary Delisting From NASDAQ With Filing of Form 25 With The U.S. Securities And Exchange CommissionSINGAPORE - Aug 22, 2007 - Creative Technology Ltd. (NASDAQ: CREAF) today announced that the Company has filed Form 25 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the voluntary removal of its listing on the NASDAQ Global Market ("NASDAQ"). As the Company has previously announced, August 31, 2007 will be the last day of trading for Creative Technology Ltd. Ordinary Shares on NASDAQ. After August 31, Creative's sole stock exchange listing will be on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (“SGX-ST”). The delisting from NASDAQ will not affect the status of Creative's shares on the SGX-ST.

Nah the M6 is still better, and the price for the ZEN would probably be 2-3x the cost of a Meizu M6 when it comes out.

OH... whoops... well, they DO have tech support and a main office that is based here. Just like Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America, so there is a lot better support for those not living in China or that don't speak Chinese.

The prices for the Zen are a bit higher than the M6, though I can say the ZEN is probably manufactured better, being that they have been around a long time, have the money to throw around, and have the processes down as of years ago. They can buy all the latest machinery needed to make things top quality. Meizu is still doing fairly well in that area, though this thing with the menu button isn't too good. Anyway, the estimated launch prices (almost always higher than real launch prices) are on terms with what the M6 was at launch, and will probably go down to compete with the M6. Meizu doesn't have a 16GB player yet, so we can't say what the prices will be for that, though I hope $300 isn't the ZEN's real launch price.

Also, interesting fact about the market there.. that kinda sucks, though after how our market has been, I don't blame them for it. -1000 points in 1 week is bullshit, even if it's slowly going back up.

16gb with sd slot? :O
prices????

Nice!!
It is bigger... ;(

maybe too heavy to wear around neck
and more rpciey methinks
but png and more reliable = good

Note the requirements are WinXP and Vista. Linux and Mac OSX are not mentioned.
The lack of Flac and Ogg support for me are the real show stoppers.

Where's the people yelling clone? As far as I know, Meizu M6 was the first pocket sized DAP with horizontal layout and controls to the right of screen.

That's exactly why I named the thread Creative's response to the M6, not to the iPod or any other DAP. It's obvious where the the idea for the layout must have come from.

I'm there, too, about Flac and Ogg... Also, the 5 and not 10 band EQ in this day and age where a small time company from China has to be about the only ones I know of to even add that... comon, what the hell? It's all about sound quality and fully adjusting your EQ is something of a must nowadays.

Creative used a horizontal layout with controls on the right (obviously to cater to the vast majority who are right handed) on the original Zen Vision and the subsequent wide-screen Zen Vision W.

They also were the first AFAIK, to use the touch strip on the Zen Vision M in 2005.

The Zen Visions aren't exactly pocket sized.

So...
ZenMe.com?

Glad to see a quality company make a PMP with a design I actually like.

I'll definitely buy one when they come out - that'll replace my broken POS M6

Calendar and ToDo list ... hm tasty. But no ogg and flac, no deal.

my next DAP is definately going to be the iaudio7. has touch thingy, and the sound, well its the renowned quality of COWON systems.

The new Creative Zen is now official on Creative US site !



Really nice !

I hope Meizu will come up with something much more glamorous than this thing. I don't give a damn about SD slot but 16,7 millions of colors and aac support could be nice.
What happened to 25 fps video by the way? Damn lip-sync!...

It's got a nice UI, good screen, cool SD card slot, lots of language support, and photo zoom. It's also got alarm, which is quite useful. Nice player, wouldn't mind one at all =D

Aargh! Why do people feel compelled to show 2 minutes worth of video getting the darned thing out of the box? I want to see the player work, not a shot of cardboard and plastic from every possible angle. It would be better too, if the music was gone that way viewers could actually listen to the PLAYER!

Overall, very nice player. I still love my Meizu though.

Hey, I love boxes. Don't diss it XD