Ever since 2001, MP3 player manufacturers have been struggling to create the ultimate "iPod killer", but none have yet succeeded. Over 12 months ago, Creative released its first attempt in the Zen X-Fi — which was a little flawed but mostly excellent.
Until Creative can get its "Mii" concept player off the ground — taking the Google Android idea from mobile phones and applying it to MP3 players — the new X-Fi2 is the company's last means of defence against the Californians.
Design
The Zen X-Fi2 is undeniably from the stable that brought us the original X-Fi, but this time it features a larger 3-inch screen in 400x240 resolution. This makes it a little longer and beggars the iPod Touch in size with dimensions of 102x57x11.6mm. It's only a little bit heavier than the original at 75g.
Like the iPod Touch it importantly features Creative's first touchscreen, and a single home button. Unfortunately, it differs from the Apple device in several important ways which hamper its general usability.
Sadly, it lacks dedicated volume controls, and as our video above attests it's very difficult to manage the on-screen control. It's like trying to push a boiled egg around with a Range Rover. This is due to the quite-insensitive "resistive" screen technology the player uses, as well as the unnecessarily skinny volume bar. Plus, it takes three taps to access the volume at any time, which is just too much. But this isn't the only issue, the screen's lack of sensitivity means it can take three or four presses to get it to recognise a single tap or "flick". We miss the dedicated play buttons on the original X-Fi.
Features
The X-Fi2 corrects one of the largest omissions from the original Zen X-Fi because it can now play lossless files in the form of FLAC. FLAC is seen by the audiophile community as the ultimate lossless format because it not only takes up about half the space of a CD but it's also non-proprietary. The player offers a number of other playable formats including MP3, WMA, WAV, Audible4, AAC4, WMV9, MPEG4-SP3, DivX3 4/5 and XviD3. To help with the viewing of video files, the X-Fi2 also offers an AV out (maximum 640x480 resolution) if you purchase the optional cable for AU$24.50.
The feature count of the X-Fi2 is slightly down on the original model, but you still get an MP3 player with video plus FM radio and voice recorder. The X-Fi loses the abilities to transfer photos from an SD card and to communicate with a wireless network. While the "chat" facility of the Zen X-Fi was simply laughable, its ability to read DLNA content from a home server made it a useful streaming device, and much easier to use than the iPod Touch in this way.
The Creative player attempts to make up for its lack of connectivity by supplying an RSS reader, which unfortunately is almost useless as you need to use a PC loaded with Creative Centrale to transfer RSS feeds onto the device — and the ability to add storage via a microSD card. You could theoretically use an SD card adapter to transfer content to the microSD as well.
Performance
Whether you're listening to an MP3 or a FLAC file sound quality is very good. It's every bit as detailed and the expanded X-Fi options give the user some added flexibility when it comes to sound quality. The supplied EP-630 in-ear earphones are quite good for a budget set of headphones. Treble is a little reticent, and given the preponderance of bass the headphones' overall balance is warmer than grandma's Snuggie. With another set, such as the Creative Aurvana Air, the balance is restored and you can get CD-player performance for not much money. We appreciated the fact we could listen to some recent iTunes purchases as the player supports the new default iTunes Plus format.
We like the addition of the "microSD" icon which lets you access further storage and transfer songs to the flash drive within the player.
The radio on the X-Fi2 is much improved on the previous version, and the player was quick to pick up available stations and hold on to them. You're also able to "swipe" forwards and back through preset channels which is a refreshing change from pressing squishy hard buttons.
Apart from the troublesome touch interface, there's also some occasional menu weirdness. For example, when we realised we had doubled up one album, we tried deleting duplicate tracks within a folder. It let us attempt it, but it didn't take, and then random names from other folders appeared as tracks in the same folder. After trying unsuccessfully to use Windows Media Player, we attempted to delete single files from the Windows finder instead — where both sets still appeared in the folder, which meant in some cases we deleted both files. If Creative Centrale was still available on the Creative website at the time of testing we would have used that instead, but in our previous experience it's even worse than Windows Media Player.
Conclusion
It's a pity that controlling this X-Fi2 is so troublesome because in all other ways the X-Fi2 is a definite step up from the previous version. FLAC support is much welcomed, and sound quality is every bit the equal of competitive players. While we'll never get a dedicated volume button we hope that Creative can simplify the volume bar situation — perhaps by having a big fat control visible on every page? Unfortunately for Creative, the reinvigorated Apple Nano leaves the Zen X-Fi2 in the dust.
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