By Edvarcl Heng
20/07/2004
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/musicplay/0,39050463,39020241p,00.htm

Flinging down 20GB on the table, Creative is certainly set on toppling the Apple stranglehold on the MP3 player market, if not at least to grab a slightly increased take of the pie. With a similar anodized aluminum casing and a virgin white faceplate, the Zen Touch certainly resembles a long, lost iPod sibling, though we think a happy reunion with its pseudo sibling is definitely not on the cards.

Design

	Feel me up: The touch scroll

On first glance, our eyebrows were certainly raised by the vertical groove smack in the middle of the Zen Touch. Touted as a revolutionary user interface, we had initial misgivings that the touch scroll would turn out to be just an over-glorified touchpad.

With both the top and bottom portions of the touch scroll devoted to speed browsing, it literally left little space for our thumb to maneuver, which inevitably led to some major frustrations when we could not achieve pin-point selection of the tracks we wanted. It would have been easier if the touch scroll was lengthened or better yet--a circular version not unlike the iPod's click wheel.

Though we would be the first to admit that there is a steep learning curve involved in mastering the touch scroll, it does have its redeeming side for users willing to spend time to experiment. Included in the settings are three levels of sensitivity settings to cater for different fingers. For those who can't quite tap without getting a double-click in response, there is a thoughtful OK button placed at the top of the touch scroll which acts as the ENTER button.

	Press OK for okay

Even though opinion was divided on the usability of the touch scroll among the CNETAsia team, it ultimately turned out to be more of a case of familiarity than anything else. After a week of living with the Zen Touch, we could maneuver our way pretty smoothly throughout the menu.

Overall, the Zen Touch has a very solid feel to it that speaks of excellent build quality. The array of buttons on both sides of the touch scroll good tactile feedback, though in an age of increasing better displays, Creative could have included an OLED screen instead of the passé blue backlit LCD display.

Features
Without turning over to the PC for help, the Zen Touch offers instant playlist creation on-the-fly, which we thought was an especially esteemed feature since with over 5,000 songs in our device, it was possible to set different lists for entirely different occasions.

Other than eight preset equalizer settings that range from acoustic to jazz, the Zen Touch also includes a four-band user-defined equalizer setting which tends be a neglected feature in many other MP3 players. However, for audio tweakers like us, four bands were a little stingy. A standard five-band one, comparable to those on home stereos would have served our purposes better.

	What? FM tuner and microphone for an additional S$99?

The device confines support to only MP3, WMA and WAV files, which is a pity since the Zen Touch comes with a 97dB signal-to-noise ratio, which could had been better put to use in articulating the FLAC and OGG format tunes. Besides this insufficiency, it is disappointing that Creative expects us to fork out an extra S$99 for added FM and recording functions via an optional wired remote control. For a sizable 203g worth of MP3 player that is only slightly larger than an iPod, surely the FM tuner could have at least been built into the device?

Searching for a particular track is not a major hassle with the Zen Touch. Classifying the songs by title, artist, albums and even genres, hunting for our favorite tracks is not a problem at all, though if Creative were to add in keyword search, we would be the first in line to grab a unit.

Software-wise, Creative has bundled in its excellent MediaSource program which did a decent job of ripping CDs, playlist creation as well as syncing with the Zen Touch. However, our gripe is the fact that though the Zen Touch has an external hard-drive function, we could not find the necessary drivers from the Creative Web site to allow other computers to recognize the Zen Touch as a hard drive. Unless users plan to carry along the software CD everywhere, this is a big point to quibble with.

Performance
With the manufacturer proclaiming a battery life of 24 hours, the Zen Touch impressed big time during our first time trials with its playback longevity. The mean timing? A grand total of 25 hours and 12 minutes which is definitely enough to keep the music going from dusk to dawn.

Battery life (in minutes)

Creative Zen Touch (20GB) 1512 iPod (20GB; fourth generation) 780 Muzio JM-200 (256MB) 683 See full comparsion here

On sonic delivery, the Zen Touch has an audiophile slant that did justice to a variety of tracks from pounding rock to whimsical bluegrass. Bass and treble did not turn out either too rough or strained, and the 20mW output certainly had the oomph to power the included Creative earphones; though as usual, the more discerning might decide to ditch them and purchase their own.

From desktop to player, we hit a mean transfer speed of 4.59Mbps through the USB 2.0 connection. Be prepared to brew a couple of cups of java if you intend to fill up the entire player at one go.