Beautiful wide-screen display; durable design; intuitive interface; holds up to 60GB; supports wide array of video formats; plays FM radio; supports TiVo To Go and limited movie downloads; syncs with Outlook; removable battery; CompactFlash slot is nice for photographers; good value for a wide-screen PVP.

The W features a 480 x 272 pixel 262,000 color widescreen display that measures 4.3″ diagonally. This hits the sweet spot where video becomes truly watchable and enjoyable, particularly widescreen movies. The display itself is gorgeous: bright, super color saturated, great contrast and sharpness. Turn it on and look at one of the pre-loaded photos or watch a movie and the screen itself captivates you. When a display looks fantastic indoors, it’s rarely outdoor viewable, but the Zen W is indeed watchable outdoors in all but very bright, direct sunlight. When watching videos there’s no ghosting and the picture is extremely sharp. Colors are accurate and brightness more than adequate. The widescreen aspect ratio is perfect for movies and should the movie not fill the screen, you can use the menu button to zoom or stretch the movie to take up maximum real estate. The Zen automatically bookmarks your position in a video before you exit (a must!)

The player supports a wide variety of formats included WMW, Xvid, TivoToGo (using Tivo’s desktop converter), MPEG 1/2/4, MGPEG and DivX 4 and 5. In our tests it handled DivX6 as well and we rarely found an AVI file that it couldn’t play natively. Should you have videos that require conversion, the included Creative desktop software will do it for you, and we only found 2 files out of nearly 100 that the software couldn’t convert (then we resorted to SUPER, a powerful free converter/encoder). Amazon’s Unbox movies are compatible with the W as well, and you’ll use Amazon’s desktop software to transfer movies to the player. Creative doesn’t specify a maximum suggested bitrate for encoding files, so we tested a variety of files at various bitrates. 650kbps is plenty good enough for a sharp picture on the built-in screen, and we hooked the Zen up to a 46″ plasma TV using the included cables and the quality was expectedly pleasing (better than broadcast TV but obviously not at good as HD).

Specifications:

Specs:

Display: 262K color transflective TFT color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 4.3 “. Resolution: 480 x 272.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1650 mA. Claimed 13 hours continuous music playback, 4.5 hours continuous video playback.

Storage: 30 and 60 models. Hold approximately 15,000 songs or 240 hours video (120 hours of video for the 30 gig).

Size: 30 gig: 5.27″ 2.95″ 0.86″. Weight: 9.73 ounces. 60 gig: 5.27″ 2.95″ 1.04″, 10.48 ounces.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Has recorder application and records in ADPCM at 16kHz mono. Supports MP3 and WMA (up to 320 kbps) including protected PlaysForSure files, WAV and Audible. 8 EQ settings. Good quality stereo earbuds included, 5-7 watts per channel.
Sound specs: Frequency response: 20Hz - 20kHz, signal to noise: 90 dB, channel separation 65 dB, harmonic distortion: <0.1%.

Video: Plays MPEG1/2/4-SP, XviD, TivoToGo, DivX 4 and 5, AVI, MJPEG and WMV9 files. In our tests it played DivX 6 as well. Handles up to 1,000 kbps videos well. Video (supports NTSC and PAL) and audio out with included RCA cables.

Image support: Natively handles JPEG and the desktop software can convert TIFF, BMP and GIF files then copy them to the Zen.

Wireless Networking: None.

Software: Desktop software: Creative MediaSource Player and Organizer, ZenCast software, Zen Media Explorer (mounts the device as a drive for file management).

Expansion: 1 CF slot compatible with type I and II cards and the microdrive. Can take other card formats with adapter.