At perhaps double the size of a credit card, and half the size of a CD case, Creative's latest Zen Xtra MP3/WMA player may be some way from being the smallest musical playback device on the market. Yet it's not that kind of size that's the key selling point here.

Instead, the focus is on the mammoth amount of storage it contains in such a comparably small box. 30GB, for the record, is enough to hold roughly 8,000 musical tracks, which is surely ample for even the most devout musical collector.

With quantity, though, comes a requirement for organisation, and Creative's device fairs quite nicely here. Through a decent enough sized backlit screen, the Zen Xtra comes loaded with a menu system that easily allows you to isolate tracks by artist, genre, playlist or album, and scrolling between them is simple thanks to the wheel-like controller mounted on the right edge of the unit.

To select an option is a simple matter of pressing the wheel. Further sub-options allow you to search for artists and tracks alphabetically, or by the search term of your choice. A mini-Google, if you will. Once you find your track, you can then preview it, add it to a playlist or call up details of it.

You can also delete songs through the on-screen menu, but that's far easier using the software that Creative provides. Thankfully, given its amount of storage, the Zen Xtra encompasses USB 2.0 technology, so when hooking up to a PC to add and remove tracks, the transfer is swift.

Most of the work is handled by Nomad Explorer, which works in a simple drag-and-drop way, not dissimilar to Windows Explorer. You can add individual songs or full albums, and the software will break them down by genre, artist, album and individual tracks for you.

Most of the time this works just fine, but occasionally the organisational work it does needs a little rearranging just to get things right. Also bundled is Creative's own MediaSource software, which happily takes care of ripping music.

Back to the hardware, though. It also encompasses Creative's EAX environmental audio technology, allowing you to tailor musical output to everything from a concert hall through to your bathroom. Further options let you alter the speed of playback, the spatialisation of the output, and allow you to simply customise everything to your particular requirements.

These options are easy to work through and are genuinely effective. Incidentally, the 'back' button on the left edge of the unit is a godsend, particularly when you've accidentally selected the wrong menu option and don't want to scroll right the way through to the start again.

The included Li-Ion battery gives over ten hours playback off a full charge (although transferring files drains it a little quicker), and the Zen Xtra is suitably light and easy to carry around. The headphones hurt our lugholes, mind. Aesthetically it's clearly aware it's up against Apple's seemingly all-conquering iPod, and so is smartly finished and sleek in appearance.

In short, it's a device that's hard to fault in isolation. Perhaps the price may put people off, but there's little doubting this is a high quality piece of hardware that produces excellent audio output. Thrust into an ever-more-competitive MP3 player market, it may struggle to find a strong foothold of its own, especially given the strength of Apple's baby; that would be a genuine pity.

Verdict
This is an excellent, compact, capable but pricey MP3 solution with immense storage capabilities. User-friendly from top to bottom, the only notable caveat is the competitiveness of the rest of the MP3 market.

Company: Creative

Contact: 01189 344322

Tags: ipod windows explorer apple itunes multimedia music and audio zune disc jockey