Creative Zen Mozaic MP3 player

The Artistic Zen vary has achieved effectively for itself, delivering what is taken into account amongst many to be probably the greatest sound choices from an MP3 participant. The Zen Mozaic is a twist on Artistic’s vary, designed to make a design assertion and transfer away from the conventional featureless plastic/metallic gamers with some type of round management (naming no names, you realize who you might be…). However is that this courageous transfer a step in the proper course? We take a better look.

Measuring 79.5 x 40 x 12.8mm, this participant is thicker than many rivals, however nonetheless sufficiently small to slide in a pocket; it is usually gentle sufficient so that you can barely discover it’s there. The mainstay of the “mosaic” design are the buttons, with attention-grabbing colourways reflecting inspiration out of your rest room. Sure, that is the place music gamers and Topps Tiles come collectively.

While it seems fairly good, the general impact is reasonably plastic and flimsy. The buttons have just a bit an excessive amount of motion to offer the standard really feel you would possibly count on, which is a disgrace, as a result of it in any other case seems fairly good. We discovered that slipping the participant into one of many rubber accent covers overcame this drawback, however added to the general dimension.

These tiled buttons provide you with your controls: 4 directional buttons for menu navigation, or quantity management, or to skip by means of tracks. An enter button lets you choose your highlighted possibility while you additionally get a again button to leap again by means of menus and a devoted menu button to open up extra choices, like a menu from the menu. Confused? Sure, there are a variety of choices and you’ll spend a while opening and shutting numerous menus till you discover what you might be on the lookout for. This isn’t helped by a generally vague button urgent motion – we discovered the up arrow was significantly unresponsive. You additionally get a play/pause button, so after getting discovered what you need, you’ll have to really press this, reasonably than the enter button.

The entrance homes the 1.8in LCD color display, that’s large enough to do most stuff you need, largely navigate the menus. While it’s full color, it once more lacks that high quality look that the iPod does so effectively, and doesn’t evaluate towards comparable spec gadgets such because the Sansa Fuze. Issues are slightly blocky and it’s troublesome to get enthusiastic about it.

You do get a very good stage of menu customisation although, so in the event you by no means wish to have images or movies, you may merely take away these choices, ditto all of the extras, just like the organiser. On account of having a poor display, picture viewing is just not a variety of enjoyable and the identical might be stated for video playback, which is jerky, blocky and tiny.

It’s in these extras that issues begin to get slightly loopy, shifting away from the music participant that the Zen Mozaic needs to be. You get a voice recorder and you’ll allocate a portion of the reminiscence to behave as a file retailer, saving the necessity for a separate USB stick. A pleasant thought, however will anybody really use it? The FM radio is a commendable inclusion nevertheless, and has an auto-tune with 32 presets accessible, which labored rather well.

There’s one other button lurking on the entrance that we haven’t talked about but. The inclusion of a speaker on the rear of the system warrants, it appears, a devoted button on the entrance. This lets you activate or off the speaker for these back-of-the-bus moments. The speaker, it needs to be stated, is definitely superb for one so small. You’ll additionally discover that in case your headphones get pulled out, then the speaker will activate, which might result in some humorous unintentional music sharing incidents…

Nevertheless, all these irritations are firmly pushed to at least one aspect by the sound high quality which is, as soon as once more, fairly good when paired up with some good high quality headphones. The provided headphones go away rather a lot to be desired being each uncomfortable and missing the type of bass supply this participant provides you with. To regulate your music there’s a primary equaliser (which we left turned off) and the conventional bass increase.

File assist will probably be criticised by some, however MP3, WMA, WAV, and Audible will cater for the overwhelming majority. Pictures must be JPEGs and video Movement JPEG, though you actually shouldn’t trouble, the provided software program handles transcoding. You possibly can count on round 30 hours of music playback from a single cost.

Our fast take

For people who like equipment fret not as Artistic have created a microcosm across the Mozaic, from the silicone pores and skin covers, to the carabiner slip case, to the sports activities armband. You can too slot it into the TravelSound audio system, which have their very own inner battery and sound fairly good for his or her dimension.

The quirky design, while daring, will deter some. The display is nothing to get enthusiastic about both, however the vary of additional capabilities would possibly attraction to some. What you do get, nevertheless, is a really succesful participant which represents good worth for cash. We examined the 4GB model, however 2, 8 and 16GB variations are additionally accessible in black, silver and pink colors, hinting on the goal market.

While we favored the sound efficiency, the vague keys and fiddly menus finally hamper this MP3 participant.