Creative had their own nicely-sized booth on the show floor at CES and had their latest Android-based products on hand to show. The Ziio is a 7-inch tablet powered by Creative’s own custom chipset that allows them to handle high definition video and high quality audio of all sorts. I got a quick hands on with the thing, and I wasn’t the most impressed set of eyes there.
Things felt a bit sluggish when navigating the UI, and I’m not sure if it’s because the tablet wasn’t at its full brightness capacity, but picture quality while navigating the OS or watching a video couldn’t compare to other tablet offerings on display. Creative also showed off their easy-to-use headset management tool which allows you to easily switch between different bluetooth headsets – nothing that can’t be handled in Android natively without a few more presses of the screen. Other cool bits include a front-facing camera, and the ability to upgrade it to Android 2.2 down the line.
They also had the Zen Touch 2, a smaller PMP device which I likened to my old 30GB Creative Zen Vision: M. Creative left this one untouched, for the most part: the only customization I could see were in the icons for various standard Android apps and their music control widget. Check out the videos above (ZiiO) and below (Zen Touch 2) for a closer look. PS: I was able to later confirm that the Zen Touch 2 comes in at anywhere between $180-$199, depending on where you ship.