IFA 2009: Creative Unveils Second Gen X-Fi

Creative was fairly low key at IFA this week, but it did have one surprise lined up...

The company gave a public debut to the 'Zen X-Fi2', a follow-up to the original Zen X-Fi and Creative's first entry into the touchscreen market (excluding the Plaszma which won't be shipped under the Creative brand).

Unfortunately however it seems the company is giving its best work to third parties because I couldn't get along with what was admittedly a pre-production build of the X-Fi2. The player features a 3in resistive touchscreen, but while the UI was finger friendly the display's sluggish response times were not. This is a shame since the X-Fi2 has some decent specs including a choice of 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities plus a microSD expansion slot, an FM tuner and mic. There is also an RSS reader, but with no WiFi the need to sync it with a PC makes it rather pointless.

US RRPs for the three capacities will be $129.99, $179.99 and $229.99 respectively which does make the X-Fi2 competitively priced, but Creative really needs to sort out that screen if it hopes to compete with the likes of the iPod touch and even the Plaszma...