Product review: Creative Zen Mozaic

I have to confess that when the latest version of Creative's line of portable MP3 players – the neatly packaged 2GB Zen Mozaic – landed on my desk for review it faced a tough task to win me over.

After all with the market dominated by a very well-known competitor and several other brands available, I wasn't really looking for a replacement.

First of all, it's tiny. Not so small that you would forget it was in your pocket on laundry day, but nonetheless very small indeed. But that doesn't stop it from featuring a 1.8-inch colour TFT display and a built-in speaker.

The latter is one of those things you don't think you need until you have it and it is surprisingly handy. It engages automatically as soon as you disconnect the headset with a song playing and deactivates when you plug it back in.

The clever engineers at Creative have included a built-in voice recorder and microphone to capture those revolutionary brainstorming ideas you think of while stuck in Dubai traffic, but for some reason forget as soon as you step into the office. Nice!

Add to this a very capable radio tuner (headset required for this one), calendar and an alarm clock as standard features, and it becomes clear the stylish-looking little Zen is more of a bijou multimedia device than just a standard MP3 player.

It stores and displays photos and movie clips. Battery life is estimated at 32 hours, though I managed to squeeze a lot more out of a single charge.

The buttons are a little small for chubbier fingers, but apart from that I couldn't find too much to dislike about this little marvel. Even the standard headphones impressed me as there was virtually no distortion at higher volumes.

The bundled software interface is a bit clunky but gets easier with practice. It's worth noting that the software can be installed only on Windows-based PCs, which will be a deal-breaker for some.

Overall I am very impressed with Creative's new little star but the lack of Apple Mac support prevents me giving it a higher rating.

SCORE: 3/5

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