A huge array of features packaged in one tiny design.

This is the new Creative ZEN™ at a glance. Decked out in an all-black suit, the Creative ZEN is smaller than your average credit card and sits snugly right in your palm. With an attractive 11.3mm thickness, this sleek player weighs a mere 65g, allowing you to carry it around easily.

It is also one of the lightest players around that is able to boast a capacity of up to 16GB while supporting different popular media formats. What’s more, you can add as much capacity as you want with its SD memory expansion slot. With its patented ZEN user interface which offers more information to be viewed on the screen, navigating through mass content is simply a breeze. You can even accessorize this pint-sized dynamo with optional accessories such as the ZEN Leather Case or the ZEN Skin Pack.

Celebrate the arrival of the latest revolution on the portable player scene. Welcome the Creative ZEN.

Mini whiz
A media player that is smaller than a credit card, the Creative ZEN packs a mean wallop with its exciting range of features.

Color wonder
Get magically lost in the brilliant 2.5″ screen with 16.7 million TFT color support which displays sharp and richly saturated pictures.

Wide audio support
Listen to your music in multiple supported formats. With support for MP3, WMA as well as non-protected AAC (.m4a) from iTunes® Plus, sync your player to enjoy all your favorite hits today. Learn more on the quick transfer of AAC music using the Creative Media Explorer.

Expandable memory slot
Increase the size of your portable media library with an external SD/SDHC card. Enjoy that much more videos, music and photos today! Click here for the list of supported SD/SDHC memory cards.

Intuitive interface
The patented ZEN user interface offers a fresh new look for a more stunning visual experience. You can even create and customize your very own wallpaper on your Creative ZEN player.

Rock to radio
Switch to the integrated FM radio when you need to catch the latest on the music scene. Take your pick from the 32 preset stations.

Get ZENcast
Enjoy the ultimate collection of free video and audio podcast channels on www.zencast.com. Manage all your favorite subscriptions with ZENcast Organizer and experience the best of the free-to-share formats available.

Toshiba’s new SD-P2700 features an 8.9″ widescreen TFT LCD display and is designed to make the viewing experience more flexible with a swivel screen. The SD-P2700 takes full advantage of the DVD format in both video and audio and comes equipped with technology features like Super ColorStream Pro progressive scan output and DVD Audio compatibility. The SD-P2700 incorporates the Toshiba exclusive Digital Direct LCD Drive that minimizes conversion artifacts by streaming the video signal directly from the MPEG decoder to the LCD screen driver in the digital domain, thus bypassing the D/A-A/D conversions that may deteriorate quality. This, coupled with a 1024 x 600 resolution screen, produces the finest picture quality in a portable DVD player.

Additionally, the SD-P2700 hosts a full complement of audio and video connections for quick and easy playback through virtually any existing home theater system. These include Super ColorStream Pro Progressive Scan Component Video Outputs, a standard S-Video connector, and a digital audio output. In addition, the mini A/V connectors also act as input jacks, enabling users to connect portable video products, such as a camcorder, to view the images on the 8.9-inch high-resolution LCD screen. With a redesigned, lightweight 3.5-hour “quick charge” (charges in 3 hours) Lithium Ion rechargeable battery pack, the Toshiba SD-P2700 is a portable theater that permits users to enjoy high-quality audio and video entertainment anytime, and almost anywhere.

The SD-P2700 also features SD & MMC Memory Card Slots, a JPEG viewer and zoom modes and Bass-Reflex speakers with an output of 1.5 Watts per channel. A DC adapter car cord is also included.

Perfect for everyone in the family, Toshiba’s portable DVD players are ideal for the daily commute, a long trip in the car with the kids or as a DVD player in the home. The unit’s swivel screen, as well as the 2 headphone jacks, makes the player perfect for a shared A/V experience.

Its most distinctive characteristic is the adjustable “free play” 7-inch wide-screen LCD panel, a feature previously found only on the company’s more expensive models. The screen swivels up and down 180 degrees, slides forward and back, and can be laid almost flat, adjusting to whatever viewing angle you find comfy.

At 1.75 pounds with the lithium battery pack and measuring 7.5 by 6.5 by 1.2 inches, the LS50 is not much larger or heavier than an airport-bought paperback. The cosmetics seem a bit Klingon, but we like the concentric circles milled into the DVD cover flap and the matching function buttons, which add a certain elegance. Even though the DVD flap is thin plastic, it seems firmly attached and able to withstand rough treatment from the young ‘uns.

If we had a design gripe, it was that we had a hard time telling apart the identically shaped function keys–and the small label font didn’t help. Also, the volume buttons are awkward to reach when the screen is in anything but normal position.

This DVD player is incredibly slim and light. We initially wanted to use our light-weight laptop for a road trip, but so glad we got this instead. What a difference, you hardly felt the weight at all!

The image and sound on this player is simply amazing, and one of the coolest features is the swivel screen. It is adjustable to different vewing angles, and even lie flat(almost) on the body itself if you have a really tight space.

The battery lasts pretty well if it is fully charged. Though there was a mail-in rebate for the car/plane power adapter and carrying case, it would be nice if they are included in the first place, kinda troublesome since I have no idea when they will arrive, and the adapter would be very helpful for longer trips.

Since this is my first portable DVD player, I can’t make comparisons, but I think it is very well-made, solid build, has an excellent playback quality, definitely a great buy.

In addition to DVD video discs, the DVD-LS50 is compatible with DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, video and audio CDs, MP3, WMA, and CD-R/-RW discs. It also supports HighMAT (High-Performance Media Access Technology), a technology codeveloped by Panasonic and Microsoft that improves the method of storing, arranging, and playing back digital photo, music, and video collections on recordable discs, such as DVD and CD recordable media.
With the high-speed, 5-step Smooth Motion Scan feature, you’ll get crystal-clear forward and reverse scan at 100 times normal speed at its highest setting. The Cinema Mode function lessens glare, providing colors that are more cinemalike, and picture resolution that is gentler to the eyes. It also improves the visibility of details in dark scenes by automatically adjusting picture contrast, and helps to suppress color smearing as well. The Dialogue Enhancer feature increases the center-channel volume relative to other channels, making movie dialogue easier to hear and understand.

The gadget oracle has been telling us the time of the portable media player is upon us, but still they don’t seem to be leaping off the shelves, which is hardly surprising as the early efforts were a little half hearted. Now Archos have stepped up the game with their AV700 PMP, a device that seems to have learnt the lessons form the early units, so we took the chance to check if the AV700 is really worth investing your hard cash in.
The Archos AV700 is a real contradiction, it is both big and beautiful, normally we’d pile into a gadget for being too large but the AV700 which measures 209 x 107 x 19 mm and weighs a whopping 590 grams looks stunning and feels great to hold. It’s like a solid slab of tech styled in sleek silver and sporting that all important 7″ screen which displays 262k colours and has a resolution of 480 x 234 pixels. The package also contains the all important TV Pod, this provides all the I/O ports you need and is essential for connecting the 700 up to record a line signal and also to connect to a TV or Plasma for sharing on a big screen. We’ll get to covering the AV700′s video quality later in the review but to get things going we needed to record some media.

This has been the Achilles heel of previous players by many manufacturers, they often harked back to the dark ages of VHS with no timer function or way of controlling the tuner to change channels. Archos have at least corrected this enabling both timed recordings and also given the TV Pod an infa red sender enabling it to control your set-top box. We chose to connect the Archos to our Sony Freeview box and placed the infa red eye over the IR port on the DTT unit, after selecting the brand (Sony) the process started and the AV700 set about tuning our box?

Video out is another matter entirely, however, as the vast majority of TVs will be able to accept the dock’s Composite video out – although to bring this functionality on the road, the sizeable and AC-powered dock will have to come, too. A nifty feature, however, is the inclusion of an wired infrared extender that attaches to the receiver of a cable box, satellite receiver or VCR to allow users to control these by means of the Infrared remote control also bundled with the AV700, thus reducing the number of remote controls in play.

Relying on MPEG-4 for recorded video, the quality produced by the AV700 is more than adequate for viewing on its 7-inch display of the AV700, with the ability to schedule up to 20 shows for recording ahead of time a nice bonus. Compatibility with Yahoo! TV is also present, but requires far too much fiddling as it among other things involves saving a HTML page and copying it to the device manually; an amateurish concept at best.

Holding the metal-encased Archos AV700 is like holding a handheld video game, with its D-pad controller on the left side of the screen and hodgepodge of buttons on the right. The D-pad navigates you through menus–and games, natch–while the buttons control playback and activate various menus. All told, it’s a pretty simple control system, though it’s nowhere near as easy to work with as the touch-screen interface on the Archos PMA430. The interface here, complete with your choice of attractive colors and backgrounds, consists of an icon-driven main menu and context-sensitive action menus that appear in the lower-right corner. These are accessed and navigated using scroll-up, scroll-down, and select buttons that reside under your right thumb. A pair of speakers flank the LCD, while tiny LEDs indicate power, drive activity, charge status, and TV-out mode (when enabled).

The Archos AV700′s connectivity ports are clumped together along the top of the device. The power ports, as well as the headphone, A/V, and dock ports, are fairly self-explanatory, but you might be confused by USB A and USB B. The latter provides a standard USB 2.0 connection to your PC, while the former serves as a host port–one that can accept connections from mass-storage devices, such as digital cameras. An included adapter cable is required to make these connections and keep you from accidentally plugging the wrong cable into the wrong port.

The new Archos PMA400 is a 30GB multimedia player (music, photos, videos), an audio and video recorder, a PDA, a wireless Web browser, and a game machine. In fact, it’s everything but a cell phone and camera. At $750 street, the Linux-based PMA400 costs as much as a notebook computer. But it does just about everything you’d want a multimedia computer to do, and you can slip it into a jacket pocket.

The solid 10-ounce device is dominated by a 3.6-inch color touch screen. In addition to the usual rocker controls, you can use a stylus or fingernail to navigate on-screen. Handwriting recognition is built in for the PDA, Web browser, e-mail client, and other functions that require text input.

Poor audio performance is a deal breaker for us, so we loaded the PMA400 with our suite of listening selections and test tones. We were delighted by the warm, unconstrained sound of the player, which seemed to have power to spare and plenty of response in the lower registers. We knew, however, that a dose of even-order harmonic distortion could make the music sound artificially warm and pleasant, and we hoped that this wasn’t the case. We needn’t have worried. When we ran our frequency response, harmonic distortion, and bass response tests, the PMA400 racked up the best results we’ve yet seen. The player had essentially no measurable background noise, a flat frequency response (except for being a couple of decibels down between 20 and 30 Hz), and insignificant amounts of harmonic distortion at any frequency, even with the tone controls cranked all the way up.

The only aspect of the audio performance that we found even slightly objectionable was the occasional random tick, probably as the player was accessing its hard disk. The PMA400 has power to spare, easily sustaining 107-dB to 110-dB levels in the provided earbuds and hitting a 118 dB peak. This player can damage your hearing, but if you keep the volume level reasonable, you’ll be rewarded with all the transient power you need for deeply satisfying reproduction throughout the rest of the range.

The audio-recording features are the most comprehensive that we’ve seen so far in a portable multimedia device, with excellent quality. The PMA400 can record WAV or MP3 files, the latter at three different quality levels (up to 48 KHz / 192 Kbps). You can record from line, internal microphone, or external mic. Large on-screen VU meters are responsive, and a slider adjusts recording level. With the handwriting input, you can even label your recordings as you make them.