Performance
Creative has implemented an attractive and colourful animated
navigation system into the Zen, though browsing a large library of
artists is a little sluggish. A dedicated button brings up context
menus within each of the player's function screens, allowing menu
customisation and quick access to useful options. While this only takes
a day or so to get used to, technophobes or MP3 player newbies might be a little uncomfortable.
After the 11-second boot up sequence, we got to some music. New Skin, an Incubus classic from the era when they were a decent band, was the first track to prove the Zen's superiority as an audio player. The song's driven guitars, slap bass, china crash cymbals, turntables and a steel Djembe, each were reproduced perfectly and were separated in the way the album's producer intended.
Next up was Windowlicker by Aphex Twin, a complex and surreal mix of electronica and dance. Each carefully constructed layer of this audible representation of drug-induced psychosis was clearly delivered, with no unfair weight to either bass nor treble. The Zen produces a clean and powerful sound regardless of genre and should please even hardened critics.
Video playback is similarly impressive -- pictures are smooth, with vivid colours and excellent blacks. The terrific LCD screen helps, of course. Sadly, not that it was a surprise, the bundled earphones are rubbish. Get yourself some posh ones to do justice to the excellent sound quality the Zen is capable of.
Conclusion
Creative's Zen is a terrific portable
media player. Music, videos and photos sound and look superb. The
inclusion of an SD card slot adds limitless storage potential, too.
Features are well-implemented, though a small navigational learning
curve will take a day or so to master. Overall, it's a solid offering
and at a decent enough price to fairly compete with Apple's dominant iPod nano. We're just sad there's no hard disk version available.
An alternative player would have to be the new nano. Its unrivalled simplicity and seamless integration with iTunes will please newbies and MP3 veterans alike. If expandability and extra functionality is more your thing, check out Cowon's iAudio D2 -- its SD card slot and superb sound and picture quality could be just what you're after.
Available from AdvancedMP3Players.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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User reviews6
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Kit Scotney 18 August 2011
Good: works fine for a time
Bad: dies and you can't recover it again
Comment: Warning - don't buy creative!! My experience with 4 different players has been awful. The creative zen products work fine for a time and then - BAM! they crash and you can never get them working again and have to replace them. I have owned 4 creative players in 2 years and all of them have crashed and i've lost my entire music library. Thankfully the stores know about the problem and issue you immediately with a new on - but good customer service doesn't make up for a shoddy product. My 4th player has just crashed and I've bought an iPod - thank god - and now creative won't give me a refund..................
adrianmol 6 January 2010
Good: Sound quality, ergonomics, easy to load up songs & Videos, battery life, not tied in to iTunes
Bad: Anything stored on the SD card is searched via a seperate menu
Comment: I've had a 16gb Zen for 2 years and my wife has also has one. Seems to work perfectly once I realised how not to leave it switched on (A dead Zen is usually a dead battery). The sound quality is very good and so are the headphones. I play 256 mbit MP3's or WMA files. The battery life is great, 3 hours at an airport then a 4 hour flight is no problem.
When connected to my PC I can sync using Windows Media Player, or the Zen software or Media Monkey the latter being my preferred choice. I can also drag and drop files using explorer.
The downside is that the user interface is not as slick as an iPod although Apple had to pay damages to Creative for ripping off some of their U I. I put videos and certain types of music on the SD card because I can't search the SD card from the main music library, it is in a separate library. Playlists work well. Watching videos is surprisingly good.
I am a bit of a HiFi geek and I rip my old Vinyl using an external Creative Blaster usb sound card. The tracks go onto my laptop and I copy them up to the Zen or the SD Card. I can listen to Pink Floyd and Led Zep with the sound quality that web download sites can only dream of. Most of my MP3's are ripped from my CD collection. The Zen is a great music player it is not vehicle to get the user to pay to download music from the WWW.
The Zen seems to be rugged and has survived accidental several falls and a few wet motorcycling holidays.
capri_stylee 13 November 2009
Good: Looks, Sound quality, Controls, Video looks great
Bad: Tendancy to freeze, Customers support virtually non-existant
Comment: I got a Zen in Jan 2009, it was great, I was in love. Things went well for the first 6 monts, then it froze and no amount of patches, resets or formatting could fix it, Argos replaced it no problem. I've had the replacement 8 weeks, its started doing the same...
Its a great piece of kit, and excellent value for money, when it works.
See all 6 user reviews