We don't know how many of you were patiently waiting for the Zen Wav to hit our fair shores, but it looks like the tiny black DAP has finally made it out of Asia. Other than the tinny built-in speakers, there's not a lot you haven't seen from Creative before: 4GB of flash, 1.5-inch screen, line-in, smug sense of non-conformity, and an FM tuner. All yours at Wal-Mart for $99.

[Via EpiZENter]

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.

If DAP choice is your thing then Creative's certainly got the bases covered. Now you can officially add the Zen Wav to the Zen Stone, Vision W, Vision, Vision:M, Neeon 2, Neeon, V Plus, V, MicroPhoto, Nano Plus, and Touch to the list of Creative Zen devices. Oh, and we haven't even mentioned the 6 other MuVo DAPs from their portable audio/video portfolio -- that's 19 now, in case you're counting. The all aluminum, all the time Zen Wav features a 1.5-inch, 65k color TFT LCD, mic with line-in dubbing, FM tuner, and a pair of itty bitty speakers which should support the built-in alarm clock well enough. Otherwise, they'll likely prove them selves to be just loud enough to annoy. And despite the name, it plays back MP3, WMA, and transcoded AVI in addition to WAV files. While the WAV does appear on the Creative Singapore website, it was launched without a press release and just that janky pic you see to the right. We'll take that as a measure of its potential to dominate the MP3 player market. 2GB of flash will cost you about $121 in Singapore-only for now.

[Via GererationMP3]

Take a healthy dose of Samsung's YP-K5, sprinkle in some LG chocolate, and bake-in the latest Korean design trends for a pair of new DAPs from Safa. The SS220 is a bit of a mystery. In addition to featuring touch-based controls and a built-in speaker, we know it's capable of splashing a range of unspecified video, photo, and text formats up onto its tiny 1.5-inch screen. It also packs in an FM tuner just in case the few reticent GBs of audio dumped to flash can't slake your jones. We know a bit more about the other player -- the SS200 -- a 71 x 48 x 12-mm wafer with a 2-inch, 260k color, 220 x 176 pixel display. The SS200 is capable of 6/8-hours of video/audio playback with support for MP3, WMA, and WAV media formats. No ship date or pricing unfortunately, hell, we can't even say for sure which of the two is pictured above. Let's just be thankful for the scraps they've thrown, mkay?

What do you get when you cross an iPod Shuffle with Nokia's 7280 fashion phone? (Hint: it's not Transcend's T.Sonic 310, but good guess.) Why, Apacer's upcoming Audio Steno AU522 DAP, of course. This fairly-stylish little number comes in capacities ranging from 256MB to 2GB, supports MP3, WMA, and WAV files, and includes a memory card slot for boosting storage by another gig. A built-in USB connector allows you to use the AU522 as a flash drive or reader for all those MMCmicro cards you have lying around, and you can also record directly from the FM tuner and share your music with a friend thanks to dual headphone jacks. The two-color, 128 x 64 OLED screen is another nice touch, though it probably contributes to the player's mere eight hours of battery life. No word so far on either pricing or availability, but if you really have a desire to snatch one of these up, we're confident that you'll be able to make it happen.

[Via MP3 Player Guide]

This 8.9-millimeter thin Sharp-made eyesore goes by the name MP-B300. It ekes-out up to 1GB of on-board memory with the possibility for more via miniSD expansion. Yeah, the included FM-transmitter is kinda cool, allowing the player to pump tunes over your car's stereo system without any irritating accessories, and it does playback MP3 and PlaysForSure WMA in addition to boasting the ability to record directly off the integrated FM tuner. Still, at roughly the same price as that thinner, not-to-be-named player with color screen, well, we just gotta wonder why Sharp, why?

[Via Akihabara News]

Talk about a convergence device-- not only does NTI Comodo's new NP-950 digital audio player perform the obligatory playback and recording functions, it can even act as a VoIP "handset" or broadcast tunes DJ-style over the Internet when docked in its USB cradle. Being marketed as the "Universal MP3 Player" in conjunction with OpenCast, this model is available in 512MB or 1GB flavors and supports MP3, WMA, ASF, and WAV audio tracks, WMV and AMV video files or JPEG/BMP/GIF photos on its 1.5-inch LCD, as well as English, Korean, Japanese, or Chinese eBooks. We're not really sure exactly who's being targeted with this unit -- whose price and release date are unknown -- since you can't store all that much content on it, and the chat/broadcast features seem more gimmicky than useful.

Cowon's gotten some rather mixed reviews in the past for their line of iAudio DAPs, but the outlook seems mostly positive for the upcoming hard drive-based iAudio6, with Anything But iPod finding very few flaws in the diminutive player's design, features, or performance. Especially impressive is the 1.3-inch OLED screen, which gets high marks for both color depth and clarity -- ABi calls it "simply brilliant" -- and makes watching XviD-encoded movies almost bearable on such a small display. The iAudio6, which we first spotted at CES, can handle up to 4GB of MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, or WAV-encoded tracks on its .85-inch drive, but it's the drive that leads to one of the few knocks on this model, which is a noticeable lag time between operations. Other nice features include USB host capability for device-to-device file transfer with other UMS-enabled hardware, software that automatically tags certain tunes with the corresponding lyrics, line-in and voice recording, and surprisingly powerful output that can drive even large headphones. If you don't mind a bit of a delay when recording or changing tracks, or a bit of eye strain when watching your flicks, then the iAudio6 sounds like it'll make for a solid purchase whenever it becomes available Stateside.

[Thanks, James]

So apparently the viliv P1 personal media player is doing so well in the US, that the company has already announced plans to release their new model, the P2, Stateside as well. The P2 takes all the P1's multi-codec goodness (MPEG-1/2/4, H.264, DivX, WMV 7/8/9, XviD, MP3, WMA, OGG, AC-3, and WAV), subtracts the iPod resemblance, and adds a 60GB option as well as an optional GPS receiver. Powered by a 400MHz AMD processor, the P2 runs on Windows CE 5.0 and sports a large 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 widescreen LCD, and also can also act as a USB 2.0 host device. Expect to see these for sale sometime in the middle of August, although pricing has yet to be announced.