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"  Excuse us if we&amp;#039;re a little aggravated by Amazon. Here we are with a sneak preview of the latest Creative media player, the ridiculously light, smart-looking Zen, which boasts up to 16GB of flash memory. Our photo unit doesn&amp;#039;t have the final firmware, so its capabilities are somewhat limited, but we were more than willing to post a hands-on review at 8 pm Eastern, the minute the embargo officially lifts. And then Amazon does what it seems to love doing these days, and shamelessly posts a &amp;quot;Coming Soon&amp;quot; listing for the Zen. Amazon, we&amp;#039;re officially putting you on notice: This is a dirty way to do business. Sour grapes aside, here are our impressions of the simply-named Zen, first with video and then the full breakdown:  No &amp;quot;M&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Wide&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Micro&amp;quot; this time. As the Creative rep who handed the player over explained, the flash-based Zen is exactly what the Zen brand was always supposed to represent: a lightweight (2.1 ounces) format-friendly media player that sounds and plays as good as it looks. And we should point out that Creative has had its hits and misses in terms of design, but the Zen is by far their best-looking product. Even the interface, both the hardware and the menu system, feels tighter and more intuitive than past models. It also doesn&amp;#039;t feel cheap, with the industry-standard glossy piano black finish up front and a matte plastic rear face. Video The 2.5-in. screen is as big as the current video iPod, with enough format-support to outpace the iPod as a well-rounded video player. Although our model, which doesn&amp;#039;t have the final firmware, can only play WMV files, the Zen will be compatible with MJPEG, MPEG4-SP, and DivX and XviD. We were able to transfer WMV files and play them, but DivX files are what will make this player truly geek-friendly. According to Creative, the Zen actually transcodes video files into WMV, displaying then at 320 x 240 resolution. Its listed battery life for video is up to four hours, which Creative swears is possible, providing you turn it on, start a movie and keep your hands to yourself for the duration. And that&amp;#039;s also providing the movie is four hours long. If you&amp;#039;ve always dreamed of watching Apocalyse Now Redux on a 2.5-in. screen, congratulations. Music As a music player, the Zen is at least as loud\u2014and sharp\u2014as any iPod. It supposedly pulls off 18 hours of audio, and in slightly good news for iTunes users, it also plays AAC songs. So DRM-free songs bought through the iTunes store and CDs ripped with iTunes are fair game, but standard iTunes-purchased songs are still off limits. Again, the interface seems tighter than in past Zens, with a Shortcut button that you can set to play a random &amp;quot;Album of the Day,&amp;quot; cycle through viewing options, or start recording an audio file (through the integrated microphone). And while non-iPods have featured things like FM tuners and onboard recording in the past, it bears repeating that Creative is still packing its players with these extras, even if most of us aren&amp;#039;t using them. And it&amp;#039;s pretty cool that the Zen can sync with Microsoft Outlook, to keep your calendar and to-do lists updated. In theory, at least. Memory Next week, Apple will very likely steal much of this player&amp;#039;s thunder with a major iPod announcement. For now, the Zen&amp;#039;s 16GB option is impressive, all but singing a dirge for hard-drive-based players. And even past next week, the Zen will probably have one feature to hang over the iPod\u2014it accepts SD cards, making it instantly expandable, and moreso down the line, as flash memory continues to gain capacity and drop in price. Creative says the Zen can handle up to 32GB in SD memory, which would be cost-prohibitive in the near term, but could become relevant at some point. We loaded an 8GB SDHC card into the Zen, but whether the player isn&amp;#039;t compatible with SDHC (Creative hasn&amp;#039;t given us a solid answer on that) or the firmware simply isn&amp;#039;t willing, the Zen can read the card&amp;#039;s contents, but that&amp;#039;s about it. Still, being able to play movies from SD cards makes this a much more useful video player, especially for long plane rides, where laptops die after a couple of hours. Considering how many SD cards some of use have lying around, a quick bout of nerdy file management could provide a library of backup movies, and a player that&amp;#039;s expandable not just one massive, 8GB card at a time, but in small, swappable doses. In fact, one of the cases Creative showed us has two pouches for additional SD cards. They&amp;#039;re already the floppy disks of today, so it&amp;#039;s about time we started treating SD cards as the ubiquitous, slightly disposable storage they are. Bottom Line You&amp;#039;d be an absolute idiot to buy the Zen before Apple&amp;#039;s Sept. 5 announcement (new Nanos, anyone?). And we&amp;#039;d love to see the 16GB&amp;#039;s $300 price tag come down (the $200 8GB and $150 4GB versions, for example, are much better priced). But this is a serious iPod challenger, possibly the strongest yet from Creative. It&amp;#039;s a flat-out better video player, and although nothing beats Apple&amp;#039;s click-wheel and touchscreen interface, the Zen is still a powerful little audio player. For some users, Apple&amp;#039;s resistance to DivX is a dealbreaker, and a reason to stick with Creative. But Creative&amp;#039;s smartest choice was to go with the SD slot. If Apple doesn&amp;#039;t follow suit next week, we might have an actual fight on our hands. \u2014Erik Sofge EARLIER: Creative&amp;#039;s Zen Stone vs. iPod Shuffle (with Video) PLUS: Mini MP3 Player Comparison Test   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a2064/4221075/>