Creative Zen X-Fi 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver) by Creative
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Digital camera reviews of Creative Zen X-Fi 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver)
Digital camera Review: Broken Product - Back to the Drawing Board, Please
Summary: 1 Stars
Whatever the benefits are (good sound), the problems with this product are manifold:
1) it has a horrific interface design. Let's say you played with the x-fi setting 15 times back and forth, trying out the sound on an album; well, to get back to your albums you will have to press "back" 15 times, there is no button that takes you to the main menu, there is only "back" button that takes you thru the steps you did before. Also, there are 9 buttons for navigation (a phone keypad sort), of which only 5 are used, so why are the rest 4 even there? They make operating the player without looking almost impossible as they get in the way of the buttons you need.
2) unstable software that crashes constantly - and I mean constantly, sometimes several times a day (this happens when disconnecting player from your computer). Then you have to reset the player. This often screws up the library so album art shows on wrong albums or some albums stop showing art altogether, so you have to delete and re-upload particular albums. On occasion, after resetting the player, the organizer software stops recognizing anything already in the player, so you will have to rebuild your whole library.
3) this player isn't compatible with any movie formats, and whatever it is compatible with, I haven't encountered (it accepts wmv, but even then it has to convert it for some reason). This means that for any video file that you want to feed the player, you will spend long minutes and sometimes hours converting it. Results of the conversion are not guaranteed: sometimes the lag between audio and what's actually happening on the screen is so bad that the movie is impossible to watch.
Digital camera Review: Cleanest mp3 player there ever was
Summary: 4 Stars
Not much new in this review, I love the sound and ease of use and wish the battery life was doubled. It survived a trip through the clothes washer and after drying out, started right back. This is the second Creative player that has been washed in the home and both made it through. I give it 5 stars for durability.Digital camera Review: Cons outweigh the Pros by a metric ton.
Summary: 2 Stars
The sound quality while playing mp3-encoded music is absolutely above my expectations. This quality, alone, earns it 2 stars. The X-Fi Crystallizer is very nice and generally improves my experience while listening to mp3-encoded files especially when the file is encoded at a low or moderate bitrate. The built-in speaker is also a nice feature. The headphones are decent.
While reading what I think went wrong with this device, keep in mind that I am using the latest firmware available from the manufacturer.
However, the sound quality while playing AAC-encoded files (as in most things from iTunes) is a HUGE disappointment. Also, the device cannot play Quicktime video without first transcoding it to a very specific format. Even when a video is put into this player's preferred format, the picture is plagued with minor artifacts (albeit, perhaps minor enough for most users to forgive--not so for me). The interface of the device makes it a royal pain to use. The buttons are not always responsive. There is NO WAY to advance or rewind your position in a song quickly. When you press the next-track button while an audio file is paused, it rewinds the current song instead of advancing. If you make use of podcasts, you can either spend loads of time working around the shortcomings of this product, or just forget it altogether with this device.
The worst part of this device is the worthless battery life. This issue is compounded by the much-less-than-intuitive battery saving logic. The display will never turn off while the device is on--unless the key lock is engaged and the device is playing an audio file. If the key lock is engaged while an audio file is not playing, then the device will never sleep or turn off the display. Whenever the device manages to reach a sleep state, it takes many seconds to shut down and many more to restart. Every return from sleep mode requires a full boot-up that is a delay of more than 10 seconds. Once the device finally starts, it only retains the song that was playing at the time that it was shut down--not the position in the song, and not your position in your library navigation.
Before deciding what music player to buy, I considered many competitors very carefully, including the iPod. I hated the idea of being locked into using iTunes. After all of that, I regret not getting an iPod. Moreover, I VERY DEEPLY REGRET buying this device at such a high price and it delivers on almost none of the features I need.
Digital camera Review: Couldnt be happier
Summary: 5 Stars
the user interface is simple to use you just have some extra buttons but you will have it figured out in 5 mins the only con i can think of is that it is not free.Digital camera Review: Couldve been so much better
Summary: 2 Stars
I just bought the 32 gb zen x-fi, and returned it after 3 days.
The UI was a joke & hard to navigate. The software that came with it? Pathetic. the 9 keys? retarded design. The player also froze on me 4 times and i had to do a reset to turn it back on.
The software that came with it automatically loaded whatever files were in the "my videos" and "my pictures" and "my music" folders. I have like 200 gb between all 3 folders. So my player was instantly loaded with crap.
The video converter was crap to. it took my avi's and cut the resolution in half. But the speaker worked well. The only way I was able to erase everything, was to format the disk. POS. stay away. They need alot of work on this thing.
In theory, everything seems great about this player, except for the obvious SD slot shortcomings. But in reality, its not worth the effort.
Pros:
- SD slot for expandability (though not integrated with players memory)
- FM radio
- Built In Speaker
- Voice Recording
- Decent earbuds
- Large Screen on compact player
Cons:
- Craptastic Software
- Unfriendly User Interface
- Retarded Button design (The previous zen's is much better)
- Software Freezes
With a player with this many problems that interfere with regular daily use, Im playing with the thought of just getting an.... (shutter) ... iPod.