In honor of the Apple event being held today, I’ve picked a daily deal that is not an iPod. The Creative Zen 8GB portable media player is a pretty sleek little device with a very impressive lineup of media features.It has been covered in the past by fellow Gadling blogger Tynan.
Naturally, it plays music in MP3 and WMA format, as well as music downloaded from subscription services. The player also supports video, in one of the widest range of formats available; MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, MJPEG and WMV9. If none of those abbreviations mean much, don’t worry; it essentially means that the player will display almost any kind of video file you throw at it including protected files from video rental services like Amazon Unbox.
The Zen 8GB also displays your photos, it has an FM radio, a clock/alarm function, an organizer with Microsoft Outlook synchronization and you can use it as a portable 8GB hard drive for storing your important files.
At $99 it is one of the cheapest multipurpose media players on the market, and the price at Amazon.com is about $30 cheaper than most other vendors. Amazon will even ship it for free.
Included in the package is the player, a USB cable, headphones and an installation CD. The 8GB of internal storage is enough for about 2000 songs, but you can expand this with a cheap SD card.