NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! not Dr Who's new enemy...Amy Declinehouse.

nice dap though

Why not show the online capabilities?
Its pretty much the same in screen size, which really sucks, but it looks quite impressive

Looks decent, though if you take away the X-Fi and the online features its pretty much the same capability wise as the regular Zen.

Wonder if supports any more video formats, the Zen supported wmv9 and Divx/Xvid mpeg4. Maybe it supports h.264?

How is this any different from a re-branded Creative ZEN with WiFi and XiFi?

Woohoo! A whole new line of mp3 players to go caput on people!

I think it's pretty lame that the 8gb doesn't include wifi (effectively making it an 8gb zen) and yet it's going to cost 20 bucks more. Based on that I'd bet that they will phase out the old zen.

Maybe this is something they always wanted to do but could do at a bargain price a year ago.

*couldn't do*

Edit

its great that creative is still making new players, but they gotta spend more time on the thing. it looks like they just threw in a few stuff to the zen. seems like they are doing the same thing apple is doing with the iphone and 3G one.
i think creative should have changed the design a bit, like add in a slide out qwerty keypad w/ directional buttons or something that would make the wifi messaging better and eliminate the buttons on top so there would be more room for a bigger screen. then add

play/pause,next, shortcut key, ect. on the sides to access the player when its in your pocket. but i do like how creative made the quality of the player better, or atleast it looks like from the video.

sorry the rest got cut off.

I just hope Creative wakes up and adds SD integration. There's really no excuse for not having it, and they've got to be aware of the demand.

Horrible video. ABI needs to get their review for the many people just itching to get one. I'm mainly concerned with video playback compared to the D2 (I hope ABI dicusses this). Battery life seems about half of the D2, but I don't know about the features. D2 still seems to beat this. :/

This is uglier and thicker than the previous Zen (the majority of Creative devices look ugly). Does this player HISS with sensitive in-ear earphones like the previous Zen?

@Jay

I owned a Zen for about two weeks and traded up to a D2. Video playback of the original Zen is better than the D2 and also less of a headache to transcode for. That should indicate that the Zen XFI is also better. It's just cleaner and shows digital artifacts less. The D2's very finicky about everything. Also the overall pixel density is greater on the Zen. I chose to abandon the Zen for SD integration, it's inherent failure rate, and it's overall inferior audio playback and options

Nothing to say about the MP3 player but I hope the first commenter realizes that that isn't Amy Winehouse but Adele.

i think the new back looks to be of better quality. the speaker doesnt seem to bad for an intergrated speaker but it does little to show the power of XiFi. they should have had dual speakers with a full firefox web browswer with either slide out qwerty or touch screen with smaller dedicated buttons like the Archos. bluetooth sync for bluetooth enabled cars with possibly 6+ speaker systems would have made it much more enjoyable on the go.

has anyone found out if they have intergrated SD slot yet?

oh and i forgot to add HD Radio

Am I the only one to still think Creative's best product is the vision m? I've had it for two and a half years now; I have been downloading videos since then and never found one not compatible with the darn thing. These new zens have insignificant video support and the music codec support is unchanged but for AAC.

If creative was still the same company which brought us the Vision M, there would be no such thing as codec support. Their players would have been "universal" by now for both music and video... Music lovers don't give a penny for internet access, wifi synching, chatting... these things should come second, after all this is an mp3 player.

This new zen looks better than the previous, but it doesn't appeal to me at all but for the X-FI which should be revolutionary. In any case, I'm not buying this player. Maybe in the next year they'll come out with something with better codec support all around, x-fi, maybe internet, fm recording... who knows?

If the reviews check out and Creative have added SD integration, sign me up for a 32GB model. Having said that, the microsite says "enjoy content...stored and played back on your SD card", leading me to think that the SD card will be played back from separately to the main library.

We'll see though I suppose.

ABI please get your review out soon! Video preview as well! :D

Still no SD integration and no A/V line out on a 32gb player? What's up with that?

Creative, just give the thing the same capabilities as the ZVM plus SD integration, and you're good.

'Friend on July 11, 2008 9:20 PM

How is this any different from a re-branded Creative ZEN with WiFi and XiFi?"

Its different because um... it has WiFi and XiFi.. and SD card..

I ordered mine from amazon! Previous one was a e280 sansa that was lost by someone else. Sansa's firmware was pretty crappy. I'm kinda worry that this one may have firmware issues too after reading all these negative reviews from other creative products.

the firmware on most creative player are much better than what they had on the sansa e series. creative was the one who created the ui that most other players use now days.