Creative Technology, a leading producer of digital media players and other multimedia equipment, this week unveiled its new Zen credit card-sized digital media player which combines rather large screen with tiny sizes and long battery life. The novelty may successfully compete against Apple’s iPod nano as well as full-sized iPod.

“The Creative Zen immediately gets your attention because it has the same size screen as our award-winning Creative Zen Vision:M, but it’s so much smaller, lighter and thinner. With the vibrant 2.5” screen, you can now have a great video watching or photo viewing experience with a very compact player,” said Craig McHugh, president of Creative Labs.

The new credit card-sized Zen is of the size of a typical plastic card, but is still equipped with 2.5” colour screen. The new media player can playback music for 25 hours, video for 5 hours and can also display photos from a Secure Digital card. The new Zen comes with built-in FM radio tuner as well as 4GB, 8GB or 16GB of flash memory. Credit card-sized Creative Zen supports a wide selection of video formats, including WMV9, MJPEG, MPEG4-SP, compatible DivX 4/5 and XviD.

Considering relatively small sizes, Creative credit card-sized Zen can compete against high-end Apple nano offerings, but it has better screen and an FM radio tuner. At the same time, it is much sleeker than Apple’s full-sized iPod and while it cannot offer 80GB of storage, it can provide longer battery operation.

Credit card-sized Creative Zen will be available next month in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB models, priced at $149.99, $199.99 and $299.99 respectively. A variety of accessories will be available for the Creative Zen when it hits retail and online stores.