Creative's Zen Wav caught on video
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 4th 2007 9:45AM
posted Jun 4th 2007 9:45AM
We know, no one was expecting the minuscule integrated speakers within Creative's Zen Wav to be anything more than a mild joke, but just in case you wanted to hear this thing with your own two ears before plunking down the cash to pick one up (or point and laugh), TechEBlog's got you covered. In this brief hands-on look, Creative's Zen Wav is videotaped in a cradle pumping out a sample jam that admittedly highlights treble, but at least it's at least somewhat listenable. Of course, judging the audio quality based on a handheld camcorder is a far cry from scientific evaluation, but click on through anyway for a quick listen and look at the Wav in action. 
Creative tends to crank out the ugliest, most design-challenge music players on Earth.
I agree that the Zen Wav is hardly aesthetically pleasing, but come on, what about the Vision: M? I thought that wasn't a bad design at all.
Well it is a little ugly. But why does Engadget seem to bash everything that isn't iPod? The speakers may not be great, although recorded sound quality online isn't the greatest judge, but atleast IT HAS SPEAKERS!!!! I love the fact that I can sit this on my desk and just listen. I love to bring my MP3 player to work, but don't have any speakers at my desk, and other people use the desk when I am not there so I can't just buy speakers and leave them, and this is a great option.
Yes, let's judge the sound quality based on a recorded clip from a digital camera. That's an intelligent thing to do....
This is also old news
Built-in speakers are a good thing. Don't think music so much as podcasts and games. Filmspotting doesn't require high fidelity to enjoy listening to and I've played many a game of Ms. Pac Man on my iPod without sound either because I didn't have headphones with me, or it seemed inconvenient to get them out, and then wished it had a speaker.
Back in the 70's, a hand held transistor radio with a speaker on it was cool. I know - I was there. Just think of this as some retro-love. You can relive what it was like to live in a world without the Internet.
I believe that is for the Asian market only.
Sure, the ZEN Wav looks ugly, but the last few players that Creative released were smashing. Why? This player was only for Singaporeans, aka a domestic product. So of course they'd put less effort into it. They're not going to give their goody-goody American consumers this trashy player, but delight them with Zen V Plus players with the colours of the Target logo and that pink-and-white Breast Cancer one.
I don't understand why lack of speakers could ever be considered a good thing. And how is sound "retro"? Integrated speakers, as long as they don't double the weight of a pocket size device, are always good.
You people seem to not realize this isnt suppose to be the average mp3 player, but a recorder with mp3 capabilities.
ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS DON'T BASH IT TILL YOU SEE IT.