MP3 Gaze

Mmm. A Creative Zen. They’re the tastiest.

What is it with Creative? Why do all their products boast huge memories and NO battery life?

You get six hours of video-watching out of the ZEN Vision:M. That’s barely enough to get through Speed, Species and Bad Boys. What do you do then? How do you watch Boomerang or Golden Child? It’s crass irresponsibility on the part of Creative.

As far as I can tell, the Vision:M is virtually identical to the Vision:W only the Vision:M is higher than it is wide and the Vision:W is wider than it is high.

This has won awards. Awards people are stupid.

It’s the boom or bust machine!

Watch things in widescreen - hurray! The screen’s only 10cm wide - we’ll live.

Store 60GB of stuff - hurray! Watch four hours of it before the battery gives out - boo!

I hope that picture of a panda’s a sort of cover for the screen. You’ll need something to look at after you realise that giving the batteries a rub doesn’t do anything to prolong their mayfly-esque lifespan.

Too many Es. Too many Es!

“Be bold, be brave, and show everyone who you are! The all new ZEN Neeon 2 gives you infinite freedom to confidently express your individuality. Personalize your player with exciting new Stik-On™ themes, and a matching backplate color.”

Creative tell you that you’ve got infinite freedom and then immediately afterwards tell you the constraints of this ‘infinite freedom’: You can stick stuff on the front of your ZEN Neeon 2.

Not just anything, mind. You can’t choose from a broad palette of potential stick-on themes. You can use the Creative-approved ‘Stik-On’ brand and NO OTHER.

This is particularly bad news for me, because literally the only way I can express my individuality is through stick-on themes. I have no other outlet. No-one will recognise me ever again. Creative have rendered me a faceless drone with their draconian stick-on theme regime.

This is a quite monumentally dull MP3 player. Not that memory sticks with headphones plugged into them are particularly exciting, but even in the world of MP3 players, this is dull.

Average memory (256MB, 512MB or 1GB), average to quite poor battery life (17 hours), dull name.

I can’t find the physical dimensions, so let’s say that it’s four feet long to liven things up a bit. It doubles up as a robust suitcase.

“Small is the new beautiful,” say Creative. Great news for gnats, flies and other previously hideous insects. Bad news for the Sistine Chapel.

And yet, “your music and your life now fit perfectly in the ZEN V Plus”. Your music AND your life. This ZEN V Plus has some seriously Tardis-like properties. So as well as containing a load of music, I can also walk in the Peak District, ski in the Alps and bask on the beach in Karnataka all the while remaining inside the ZEN V Plus’s minuscule 7cm form. Incredible.

But wait a minute. The specifications say that even at its largest (8GB), the ZEN V Plus can only hold about 133 hours of MP3s. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t cover all my music. If my music doesn’t fit in the ZEN V Plus, could Creative conceivably be misleading me about its potential to contain my life?