Creative debuts 'bold' ZEN Mozaic player with speaker

Creative Technology on Thursday introduced the Creative ZEN Mozaic portable media player. The "boldly designed" player is available in black, pink, and silver colors for what the company says is a "statement that reflects the user's sense of fashion and individual style." It features a built-in speaker like the ZEN Wav, 1.8-inch LCD color screen, FM radio with 32 presets, and a microphone for voice recording. The compact Mozaic also runs unusually long with up to 32 hours of audio playback on a single charge of the battery.

The player is bundled with a new "Creative Centrale" application that organizes and "intelligently tags" music, photos and video as well as creates playlists and transcodes video to the proprietary video format. The player itself supports audio formats such as MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM 10 and Audible (Format 4) as well as JPEG for photos.

Due in August at its flagship stories in Singapore, the player will be priced at S$99 for a 2GB model (1,000 songs) and S$129 for a 4GB model (2,000 songs); the company says it expects to ship 8GB and 16GB models in black in late August. Creative typically releases its players in the US but hasn't set any international release dates.

The company also announced the Creative TravelSound ZEN Mozaic speaker system for docking and charging the player via USB or adapter; the system, which comes with a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery for longer playback and a built-in FM radio antenna, will cost S$79. A stylized carabiner case to hold the player will be S$24.00, while a functional armband and skin with clip for a hands-free workout will be available for S$29. A Silicone skin pack (3 color choices in a single value pack) will be S$24.

Filed under: gadgets
Other story tags: Creative, media players, ZEN