Creative Zen Portable Media Center review

Once you're experienced with the interface, you'll realise the player's depth. For example, when you're listening to a song, you'll see a Now Playing page with graphically pleasing ID3 tag info and larger-than-life album art. Pressing the left or right controller buttons will take you to additional screens with options such as play-mode selection, an equaliser, user ratings and even an option to buy CDs (which takes you to a purchase page when you sync up with your PC).

One of the Zen PMC's coolest features is Auto Sync, which allows the player to sync automatically with WMP10. The device utilises Microsoft's driverless MTP device standard and shows up in WMP10; based on user-defined auto playlist settings, the Zen can transfer up to 20GB (pretranscoded size will be much higher) of content via USB 2.0. These settings can include top-rated music, favourite photos, TV programmes acquired within a certain time frame, and so on. You can also manually transfer content. Additionally, the Zen PMC is compatible with the next-gen Windows DRM (formerly known as Janus), which will allow music and video subscribers to download and play licenced content on the device for as long as the subscription is valid.

The settings page includes Equalizer, with seven presets that can be monitored in real time; Display; Effects, for sound and animated screen effects; International, Restore Original Settings; and Information, which has a breakdown of all the content on the unit.

Performance
The Creative Zen Portable Media Center, along with other PMC models, runs on standardised hardware specs, including a 400MHz Intel XScale processor, 64MB of RAM, 2MB of ROM, USB 2.0, and a screen resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The size of the screen and the hard drive may vary, depending on the manufacturer and model.

Depending on the quality of the file, video files look sharp and vibrant on the 97mm (3.8-inch) screen. Occasionally -- and depending on the original file's aspect ratio -- video can look squeezed. The device's audio quality takes a step down from that of its audio-only counterparts (such as the Creative Zen Touch) with a 90dB signal-to-noise ratio, but it's still impressive to the ears, especially when you're watching a movie.

The Zen PMC's animated screen effects, such as text and graphics morphing and sliding, are a nice touch and give the interface a responsive feel. We noticed an occasional delay while forwarding or rewinding through and between songs. This is not a concern, though, as the 400MHz processor is speedy enough in most cases. As far as powering up the system, this is an instant-on experience, and it resumes from where you left off.

At 7 hours, 45 minutes, the Zen's battery life exceeded the rated 7 hours for video only; we were also able to squeeze a bit less than the rated 22 hours out of the Zen PMC for audio. Most users will play back a combination of video, audio and photos, so expect a realistic battery life of somewhere between 10 and 15 hours. These are impressive numbers indeed, more so because you can throw a spare battery into the mix for about £40 (price has not been finalised). The Zen PMC has a modest transfer rate of 2.5MB per second using Windows Explorer drag and drop and 2MB per second using WMP10, both over USB 2.0.

Edited by John Morris
Additional editing by Nick Hide