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Creative quotes a battery life of 25 hours for audio playback, although this is when using MP3 files encoded at 128kbps. I genuinely wish that companies would quote battery times for playing back MP3s encoded at 192kbps, because no one should be ripping music at a lower bit rate than that. Even if you knock off a bit of time for playing back decent quality encodes, you're still looking at a very respectable battery life for a device this small. Video is obviously more demanding, with Creative quoting five hours of video playback on a single charge, although there was no information as to what format of video was used for that measurement, or what bit rate it was encoded at.

Looking around the Zen, you'll find all the connectivity on the right hand edge. It's good to see that Creative has employed a standard mini-USB port for charging and connectivity duties. This means that you'll be able to use any mini-USB cable with the Zen, rather than having to drag a proprietary cable around with you - this is particularly useful when you want to connect your player to your home and work PCs.

Also on the right edge is the 3.5mm headphone jack and the power switch - the latter is slid one way to power the device on or off, and slid the other way to lock the buttons to avoid inadvertent presses when the Zen is in your pocket.

The Zen will be available in capacities of 4, 8 and 16GB, with the latter being one of the largest flash memory based devices available. But in reality, the capacity of any Zen is virtually limitless. Located on the top edge of the player is an SD card slot, allowing the end user to augment the built-in storage. It's impressive that Creative has managed to squeeze in a full size SD card slot into such a small player, rather than a micro-SD card slot. The upshot of this is that the cards are cheaper and also come in larger capacities. You can pickup a 2GB SD card for around £10 online right now, which will give you a handy, yet very cheap capacity boost. Of course the slot is SDHC compatible, so you'll be able to use the larger 4GB cards which sell for around £25, providing a serious increase in storage for your Zen.

The SD card slot also makes the Zen an ideal companion for your digital camera, allowing you to whip out the memory card and view your images on the Zen's screen. Photographs do look particularly good on the Zen with it's True Colour display and high contrast glossy finish, although a lot of compact digital cameras have superb screens of their own these days.

Creative has always been a company to squeeze as much as possible into its players, so it's no surprise to see an FM tuner built into the Zen. The tuner supports up to 32 station presets, so you'll be able to skip to all your favourite radio stations at the touch of a button. As with all built-in tuners, your headphones act as the antenna.

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