Some will say that Zen have learned a few tricks from the awesome product that is the Apple Ipod, but the Creative Zen Touch 24 has only borrowed a few items and a splash of style from the Apple marketeers adding that to their own capable product offering.

The Zen Touch 24 features its 2 main selling points in the name firstly the user interface is much improved on the Zen range which for those who already own a creative product was not a task crying out to be done but creative have implemented a touch pad approach not dissimilar to the ipod's wheel. The touch pad allows you to drag a finger to navigate menus or shuttle through a track, this is a quick way to access the now familiar and excellent Zen menu system.

Secondly the "24" refers to the battery life of the Zen Touch 24 which is a claimed 24hrs continuous replay from a single charge of the battery, previously this kind of performance had only been associated with the USB / Flash type MP3 players who's capacity has stayed south of the 1 Gigabyte mark. The Touch 24 however is launching with a 20gb hard disk and it can only be a matter of time before Toshibas recently announced 60gb 1.8" hard disk finds its way into Creative colours.

Some more nuts and bolts details, the Creative Zen Touch 24 will support MP3, Windows Media™ Audio (WMA) and WAV files and can be connected via USB 2.0 or 1.1 to the host PC, synchronisation of files is now even easier with a one button "sync" from the player itself providing the Creative software in on your PC.  The Display is a blue backlit 160 x 104 pixel LCD which is used for all navigation and status information, the front panel consists of the usual play / pause, skip and menu buttons plus the touch pad, the volume control are housed on the side of the unit next to a glowing (blue) power button which is recessed to stop you powering up / down the unit by accident.

There is an optional cabled remote control which will work with the Zen Touch 24, but in order to keep the unit down to its expected selling price of around £200 the package ships with just the unit, headphones, carry case, power adaptor and USB lead.

In addition to the usual MP3 player features creative have also added an FM tuner, the ability to use the Touch 24 as a USB mass storage device and given it support from a number of music download services including windows media player 9 services.

The combination of extra features much improved styling and a price tag of £179.99 may just be enough to unsettle the Ipod from its lofty perch, especially if the 60gb version is waiting in the wings!

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