Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black) by Creative
|
List Price: Category: Network Media Player See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
(Click here)
Digital camera reviews of Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black)
Digital camera Review: Best MP3 Player I've owned yet
Summary: 5 Stars
I went from the iPod shuffle (I know, I'm behind the times to this one). I love, love, love, love, love this. Great sound and it was very easy on the setup. Synced the first CD in less than a minute. I'll never go back to an iPod again! Oh and did I say I love it yet?Digital camera Review: Best MP3 player I have owned
Summary: 5 Stars
Over the past 5-7 years, I have bought 3 or 4 MP3 players, with varying degrees of satisfaction. This is by far the best one I have ever owned. The software interface and button layout are extremely intuitive and easy to operate. No touchpads, but rather actual buttons that make a tactile click when you engage them. This unit is especially good for audiobook listeners like me, because you can set as many as ten bookmarks, and access them easily by programming a customizable button to open the bookmarks screen. Another real bonus for me as a 3-time grandfather is that you can also store and display videos and pictures on this unit, and they play and look great on the screen.Digital camera Review: Best MP3 player on the market for it's price.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned this player for over a year and it is just great all around. Small size, light weight, vibrant screen, fairly durable, and an easy to use interface. The thing that sets this player apart is it's ability to work with different software. Windows media, itunes, creative zen media, or just windows browser can all be used to load and organize your media. Not to mention the battery life is very respectable...like 16 hours of music playing. I really don't have any complaints about this player. One suggestion though, if you buy this make sure you get either screen protectors or a case for the player as several drops have given my screen a few nice gashes. Do yourself a favor and buy this over an IPOD, you'll save money and get a better product.Digital camera Review: Best flash player on the market, great even for large music collections
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great choice for those people who previously limited their flash players to workout duty, or only holding a small piece of their large music collection and having to change the music on it every so often. With a 16GB capacity most people can fit their entire collection on here without difficulty, and even have room for some videos.
First impressions of this player are very good. It is extremely appealing to the eye, everyone who sees it will ask about it. It is about the size of a credit card, just thicker (less than 1/2inch). The front is a very glossy black plastic that looks great until you touch it, instantly covering it with fingerprints :) The back is a rough, cheaper feeling black plastic. Overall it has a nice solid weight and feel to it, but not very heavy. This will easily fit in a pocket.
The 2.5" screen is absolutely gorgeous. Very bright with vivid colors. The viewing angle is very good, two people can easily look at the screen at the same time while watching a movie for example. The menus are all nicely animated and intuitive to navigate. The icons and text are big clear and easy to read.
One of the big perks to having so much capacity is plenty of room for videos. This was one of the first things I've tested as it was a big reason for my purchase. First of all it DOES play Amazon Unbox videos perfectly. Transferring files was very easy (just a few clicks) and very quick. The quality of the video was great as well. The max size of videos is apparently 320x240, I have not been able to get it to play anything larger than that. If the video is smaller (for example widescreen) you have the option of playing it at the correct aspect ratio, or fill the screen (stretched out). I've gotten it to play videos encoded in Xvid and WMV format. Xvid files were encoded with AutoGK, and the WMV files were encoded with Arcsoft MediaConverter. If you synchronize with Windows Media Player, you can put in *almost any* video file and it will automatically convert the file into WMV format and then transfer to the player. How long it takes to convert depends on the type of video you're encoding, how big the file is and of course the speed of your computer.
Music sounds very good on this player, but please... get rid of the stock headphones they are horrible. Using a decent pair of headphones makes a HUGE difference. The EQ options are OK, there are about a half dozen presets and a customizable EQ. The "Bass Boost" option just made it worse in my opinion, it just distorted the sound. Otherwise it is a very even and balanced sound, very similar to the Vision:M.
The FM radio has a whopping 32 presets and the reception is pretty good. Strong stations are in stereo, weaker ones come in mono. I haven't had a chance to test out the built-in mic.
I easily transferred music and playlists onto this player from Windows Media Player and MediaMonkey, as well as protected music (WMA) from Napster. Everything was very easy, usually just dragging and dropping. The speed of transfer is probably the fastest I've seen. I've used this player on XP Home and on Vista Premium 64-bit.
Regarding the SD cards. I think its only a slight inconvenience that the memory card media isn't directly integrated with the other content. Meaning if you have videos on the SD card you don't go to the "Video" menu where all the other videos are, you have to access them through the "Memory Card" menu. Once there, you browse through the file structure like normal. If you organize the content smartly on your cards you should have no problem. And really its a small price to pay for that feature. Currently SDHC cards are up to 16GB in capacity, meaning you could double the capacity and carry around 32GB worth of content in your pocket. Amazing. I tested a Kingston 512MB SD Card and a Kingston 2GB microSD card (with adapter of course) and they were recognized and played the content without difficulty.
A quick note about the firmware. Mine came with 1.10.05. When my player turns off, it really turns off. With newer firmwares when it turns off it goes into a sleep mode for a while before it finally turns all the way off. What that means is with the older firmware each time you turn it on it has to "boot" all over again, whereas with the newer firmware you get an "instant-on" at the expense of slightly reduced battery life (since it is asleep and not off). Something to consider before you decide to upgrade the firmware.
Digital camera Review: Best mp3/video player out there ! ! !
Summary: 5 Stars
The music sounds great and the videos look amazing, the screen size is perfect. Even the video converter is reasonably fast. All in all a great product and will not leave you disappointed. It is worth it to by the screen protector and case because the piano finish does scratch easily and the screen will smudge.