Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black) by Creative
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Digital camera reviews of Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black)
Digital camera Review: A little Do-it-all
Summary: 4 Stars
After going through two ipods in a span of 2 years, I got fed up with this toy and purchased a Zen.
It is a powerful device and a hybrid of PDA, portable audio, and tiny DVD player.
It is easy to use, has a great sound and video quality and it's just as small as an ipod. It is also itunes compatible.
The only thing that prevented me from giving it a full five stars was the fact that purchased, and therfore copy-righted, songs from itunes cannot be downloaded. But I guess that is an itunes problem and not Zen's.
Digital camera Review: A tip for "rescuing" the Creative Zen from near-death
Summary: 4 Stars
I love my Creative Zen, but as others have noted it does have occasional problems with freeze-ups and "death" experiences in which the player will not respond. Here's a tip:
Stick a needle into the reset hole (bottom of the player) and hold the reset button in. While holding the reset button, hit the on switch and hold it for a few seconds. Or try the opposite - hold in the on switch and hit the reset button.
I have "rescued" my player several times by doing this, and so far it is still giving good service.
Another tip - I think I killed one player by using a third-party charger. So I forked out for Creative's own charger (available for around [...] bucks) and have had no problems. It shuts down when it finishes charging and therefore cannot overcharge.
Digital camera Review: A wonderful piece of technology, with three tiny flaws.
Summary: 5 Stars
I should get the bad parts out of the way before I start gushing, because there are only three of them and only one really detracts from the awesomeness of this product. Firstly, the FM radio has mediocre reception--not a fatal flaw, but one that can make a cloudy day even more depressing than normal. Secondly, the bundled USB cable is so short as to be useless--but that can be solved by attaching an ordinary USB extension cord.
The more significant problem is that the Zen works poorly with Windows Media Player's sync function; it has a tendency to freeze when syncing, connecting, or disconnecting, and it's a pain to reach for a pencil lead or a paperclip every time you use it. Fortunately, the player includes all the tools you need to bypass this problem: bundled sync software of its own, and an SD card slot.
Those problems aside, the Creative Zen is a beautiful device both visually and technologically (though the glossy finish does accumulate fingerprints and scratches rather easily). It easily stores more music than you could possibly need, so feel free to add some video files to your library--and with the aforementioned SD slot, you can carry your entire media library in your pocket, regardless of size. The sound is crisp and worth shelling out for a good pair of headphones to fully enjoy, and the video is clear and bright even on a sunny day (even if it does make the smudges and scratches on the screen stand out). It's the highest-quality player I've ever owned, and I'll definitely look to Creative again if I need a new one.
Digital camera Review: All around good performance
Summary: 4 Stars
All in all the ZEN is a great alternative to an ipod. If you're like me you'll never fill that 80GB worth of space and so why should you pay for it? With the ZEN I got exactly what I wanted, my music library in my pocket.
The following are what I personally found great and not so great.
Pros:
- 16GB worth of space (thats about 4160 mp3 songs)
- a vibrant screen that looks great with videos
- the ability to import any short video or pictures (providing you convert them first)
- you can take any picture and make it your wallpaper
- a great price (especially from amazon)
Cons:
- creating playlists on the ZEN is a disaster, much easier building it on the program bundled with it.
- video and audio playback can sometimes get out of sync and you'll have to pause the video to let it correct itself
- when connecting the player to the computer things can get a little crazy as both the player and Windows Media Player try to sync each other up, you can get quite a few doubles of songs in your library. Make sure you tell the media player to not start syncing without your consent
So with that I highly recommend this mp3 player as it has a slick design and works like a charm, plus it's a great mp3 player that doesn't have the apple logo on it!
Digital camera Review: Almost a 5 star
Summary: 4 Stars
The only real physical drawback I can see is that it isnt 32gb. I should have bought the next step up. Thats not so much of a design flaw as it is a money issue so I will let that go. A real annoyance (and pretty much the only one) I have is the power button being directly below the headphone jack. If you have a par of headphones with an L shaped jack or if you have large finger, the headphones do tend to get in the way.
Software wise, I dont use podcasts and I dont plan to ever watch a movie on this. I did however put some small tv episodes on here. Encoding software was amazingly hard to find. The supplied software takes far too long. It was difficult to find exact specifications of formats/codecs etc and the amount of junkware out there really made it difficult to find a solid piece of software to use. Xilisoft was the answer. Create a Zen profile and go to town.
Other than that, its bootup is fast if used regularly, the screen is absolutely beautiful although easily smudged and the navigation is extremely simple. Extremely happy with my investment.