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Written by Milos Jevtic
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Friday, 10 April 2009 |
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Page 1 of 3  Since portable multimedia players market is getting slightly overcrowded, and potential users are getting pickier and more demanding, Creative have created new Zen player with addition of few very important letters in its name: X-Fi. Thanks to these tree letters phenomenal sound quality is expected. Users with subtle sense of hearing should expect nothing less than perfect sound coming from this media player. Of course these are just assumptions that can be drawn from player’s name, and our job is to test all its features and present them to you with simple and honest conclusion.
Creative Zen X-Fi came in surprisingly small plastic box, in which we found everything that should be there, but we expected something more from top-quality model. In the box we found USB cable that is shorter than 10cm and longer one would be better solution. Of course you can always buy another longer USB cable but that is not the point. Beside USB cable, box contained also: player itself, CD with additional software, manual and earphones. Creative this time included in the package in-ear type of earphones with under the cryptic name: EP-830. Quality of these earphones surprised us totally but about those a little bit later.
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Player has identical dimensions as its predecessor except it is slightly “fatter”. This difference can be noticed only when both players are placed one besides other. Device looks like it belong to some exclusive product lineup. At first sight, it seems like it’s built of some metal alloy but as soon as you take it into your hands its top-class plastics surface becomes obvious. Don’t take this as feature as a big problem: on contrary. If it was made of metal it would be too heavy. Because of high-quality plastic that is used, this player looks sophisticated, it’s not too heavy and it seems that it has robust construction.
2.5 inch display on Zen X-Fi has respectable 320x240 resolution that supports phenomenal pallet of 16.7 million colors. On right portion of front panel are placed 13 buttons that resemble calculator buttons. These buttons are very precise with distinctive “click”. Four buttons with pictograms have predefined functions. Other nine buttons look the same and can be configured. Predefined functions of those 9 buttons are very well picked so there will be almost no need to redefine them. Controls may look confusing because of menu design, but this isn’t the case.
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On the back side is only one button: on/off –lock/unlock. We expected to find there a speaker but it found its place besides USB connector on right side along side with activity LED, SD slot for memory cards and microphone.
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MultiMedia 
