A visit to Creative’s booth at CES 2008

Having talked about the new Creative inPerson video conferencing product this morning, I thought I’d continue the Creative Technology coverage. The truth is - I didn’t really come across anything that truly stood out at Creative this year. Yes, they had some headphones, media players, and sound cards out but let’s face it - it was a rather boring booth altogether. Most of the ruckus was around two things - Creative Booth Babes and the fragging that Fatal1ty was performing on various gamers in the crowd. So without further ado, here are some pictures that I snapped at the booth. Enjoy!

You can barely see them in the above picture but the Creative Aurvana Live! Headphones are truly on display above. There are actually two of them - one on the left and one on the right (and it doesn’t help that the headphones are rather pitch black to begin with!). Here’s what you basically need to know about the Aurvana Live! headphones:

Lightweight and ergonomically designed
Soft leatherette earpads and adjustable padded headband
40 mm neodymium magnet driver with ultra-thin bio-cellulose diaphragm
Optimally contoured earcups minimize internal sound distortion (and have high gloss finish)
Comes with microfiber travel pouch
Frequency Response: 10Hz - 30kHz
Cord length: 1.2 m - oxygen free copper cable
210 gram weight
MSRP of $149.99

Next to this lovely Creative Booth Babe is the Aurvana X-Fi Headphone. Features and specs to the Aurvana X-Fi include the following:

Employs X-Fi technology
X-Fi Crystalizer technology restores details and vibrancy to compressed music and movies - highs and lows are enhanced
X-Fi CMSS-3D technology expands stereo MP3s and digital movies into virtual surround sound over the headphones. Voices are centered and ambient sounds are moved all around you
Noise cancellation technology reduces background and environment noise by up to 90 percent. Use these headphones to block out noise when you sleep!
40 mm neodymium drivers
Frequency response: 20Hz - 20kHz
Noise reduction level: 20dB
Weighs 245 grams
Includes travel case
MSRP of $299.99.

Above is a picture of the Creative ZEN Stone MP3 player and I have to admit - these pictures really do no justice to the ZEN Stone (and the ZEN Stone Plus). Seriously now - if you want a tiny MP3 player, the ZEN Stone is pretty hard to beat in terms of size. But perhaps what I’m most impressed with is the suggested retail price of the ZEN Stone. At $50 bucks, the 2GB ZEN Stone seems like a bargain to me. Features include the following:

Built-in speaker
Available in four contemporary colors
Plug and play capabilities
20 hours of continuous audio playback
Ergonomically designed controls
Dedicated random button for shuffle playback
Drag and drop features when connected to your PC
Available in 1GB / 2GB sizes
Supports MP3, WMA, Audible 2 and 3
Rechargeable Li-Ion Polymer battery
Measures 53.7 x 35.6 x 16 mm
MSRP of $49.99 for 2GB

Now if you like the look of the ZEN Stone AND you’re willing to spend a little bit more, then you should definitely give the ZEN Stone Plus a look over. For five bucks more (at the time of this writing), you get a 2GB player that adds an FM tuner, a display, a built-in stopwatch, countdown timer, clock, and voice recorder. That’s right - all that for $54.99! Here’s the full feature list:

Available in 2GB or 4GB models
32 FM station presets
Built-in stopwatch, countdown timer, and clock
Available in five colors
Measures 2.19″ x 1.39″ x 0.5″ and weighs 0.74 oz
9.5 hour battery life for 2GB and 12 hour battery life for 4GB
Rechargeable Li-ion Polymer battery
Supports MP3, WMA, and Audible
Single color OLED display (64 x 64 resolution)
FM Radio
Voice recorder

Moving up the food chain, we’ve got the Creative ZEN Portable Media Player. The big news here - the ZEN is now available in 16GB and 32 GB storage capacities yet still retains the near credit card size form factor. This means you can now choose storage sizes from 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB.

Features include:

2.5 color screen with support for 16.7 million colors (320 x 2240 resolution)
Supports unprotected AAC format, MP3, WMA
Compatible with music subscription services such as Napster and Rhapsody
Supports audio books
Supports JPEG
Supports MJPEG, WMV9, and (with transcoding - MPEG1 and 2, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4 and 5 and XviD)
Built in SD slot
FM Radio
30 hours of music playback
5 hours of video playback
Syncs with and views Microsoft Outlook® Contacts, Calendar & Tasks
Album art support
Voice recorder
Clock and alarm function
Customizable main menu
Works as external hard drive
8 EQ settings
Measures 3.26″ x 2.16″ x 0.44″ and weighs 2.1 oz