AfterDawn: News

Creative launches new touchscreen ZEN X-Fi2

Creative has launched their first touchscreen media device today, with the Zen X-Fi2, a replacement to their excellent ZEN X-Fi.

The "X-Fi" stands for the audio engine used by Creative, which purportedly reduces noise and will restore details lost in the compression process of audio tracks and videos. It will also "simulate an audio experience from a pair of high-end stereo speakers."



The device has a 3-inch TFT LCD screen, and a microSD slot for memory expansion. The device will come bundled with EP-630 in-ear earphones.

Another notable feature is the player can read lossless audio formats such as FLAC as well as iTunes+ and more mainstream formats such as MP3 and WMA.

The player also includes FM radio, RSS feed support, and video out.

Prices start at $130 for the 8GB model, going up to $180 for the 16GB model and the 32GB model for $230 USD. No word on release date as of yet.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 2 Sep 2009 23:36

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• 8 comments

• dragnandy

  with that price and feature list, this looks like a good player. seems interesting

  3.9.2009 00:21 #1

• KillerBug

  "Prices start at $130 for the 8GB model, going up to $180 for the 16GB model and the 32GB model for $230 USD"
  
  So they charge $50 for 8GB of flash and $100 for 24GB? What a rip-off...then again, FLAC support is a great feature.

  3.9.2009 04:04 #2

• Blackjax

  That not bad really, it just depends on what size sd card you can use. I have an older zen and its still going strong. Love the fact I can change out sd cards so my library can have some variety to it, besides sd cards are pretty cheap now.

  3.9.2009 05:07 #3

• Mez

  A few months ago I bought my wife a 16 G Savsa View for 65 USDs. It will take up to a 32g chip to augment its memory. The screen is the most brilliant I have ever seen and the battery will last 32 hrs for audio and 8 for video. It plays ALL the major formats including ogg. Our family has all the major brands but everyone wants to borrow the View. It is the nicest player I have ever seen. See why Sansa is kicking Apple's ass. You all ought to shop around a little more.
  
  Blackjax, why not just swap out the music? I have a little 4 g nano and swap out more than half every month. I have about 50g of play lists and I just swap some of them out when the music starts to get stale. I got to charge it anyway, I could swap out all the music in the time it takes to charge it. I use Media Monkey to sync. All I need to do is check or uncheck playlists before I sync and MM does the rest. The only effort is, you must OK the deletes on your player but you can select OK to delete them all. If not you can uncheck any tune you want to keep even though it was on a playlist you want to remove.

  3.9.2009 10:26 #4

• Blackjax

  Oh I could I just go in spurts when I listen to the player. I also have a "few" sd cards lying around doing nothing. I also don't have that large of a collection, nowhere near 50gb anyway! :)

  4.9.2009 00:30 #5

• Unfocused

  It might finally be time to upgrade from my Zen Micro that I bought all the way back in 2004. It is still running strong though, for as old as it is.

  4.9.2009 18:58 #6

• haran97

  is the zen x-fi 2 coming to Canada

  5.9.2009 21:03 #7

• Mez

  Keep it unfocused, they don't make them like they used to when the charged 4 times what they do now. I have a Nano, same vintage and size. I did get a 8g Sansa View for 20 USDs. That was too good a deal to pass up. I loaded someones 120 g ipod and you really couldn't find anything. There were close to 1,000 artists so you have great trouble finding anything. It actually 'lost' stuff. You sycned an album on and you couldn't find it. Unless you want to have a large on the go movie library, the huge ipods are worthless. I don't think the itunes database can handle over 100 g of music well.

  12.11.2010 09:03 #8