Creative Zen = Musical enlightenment

Author's Rating:

Pros: Outstanding battery life, inexpensive, value.

Cons: Leather case with no access to controls. Only works with Windows

The Bottom Line: 
Store you entire music library in the palm of your hand for half the cost of the leading brand.

Author's Review
In November of 2005 one of my friends bought the leading mp3 player. He bragged on and on about how he always had his favorite music with him and how it changed the way he listens to music. I decided that I needed something bigger than the 4GB model that he got for my pretty extensive collection of CD's. When I started looking at the prices of the leading brand I quickly moved to Creative. I wound up with the Creative Zen Touch with 40GB of storage for less than he paid for the leading brand with 4gb.

First Things First
The very first thing I did was upgrade the firmware on my Creative Zen Touch . The December 2005 version of the firmware offers "Playforsure" which allows you to use subscription based music services, and more importantly for me it allows you to drag and drop files to the Zen Touch using Windows Explorer. The newer firmware also addresses the touchpad sensitivity issues that some users have had. You can also sync music and playlist using Windows Media Player.

Installation
Without the latest firmware, a driver is required for Windows to recognize the Zen Touch. Once I upgraded the firmware, the OS recognized my Zen Touch right away. The firmware upgrade is simply an executable that you download from creative, plug in the Zen Touch, and execute the program. The software will update the device automatically. The music management software that came with the Zen Touch has a bad reputation so I never installed it, I planned to use Windows Media Player.

Software
Using WMP you can make changes to your music files, playlist, and track tags and have that information automatically kept in sync with the Zen Touch. WMP can monitor your music directory for changes and automatically add them to the library. When the Zen Touch is plugged in the two will sync (you can also sync manually). This arrangement worked great initially, but I soon found a limitation. WMP assumes that it is the "master" and as such it only syncronizes the things that it syncronized initially. For example, if I added a file to the Zen Touch via WMP and subsequently delete that file on the Zen Touch, WMP will delete the file from the library.

I was trying to get all of my CDs burned to mp3 so I took the last 30 or so to work. I ripped the cds and copied them to the Zen Touch. When I got home and tried to sync my new files to the library they were ignored. Try as I might I couldn't find a way to make WMP import them. So resorted to downloading the "Creative Software Suite for PlaysForSure-enabled Creative Zen Touch Players" which may or may not be the same software, that came with my Zen Toch but at least it was a new version.

I've only used the Creative Software suite for this one thing. It will allow you to choose the direction of your music file syncronization. Once I setup the software and told it where my music resides on my computer, I told it to sync one way from the Zen Touch to the Computer and all of (and only) the cds that I had ripped away from home were added. When I opened WMP again it recognized the additional files and took over from there. The new files sync just like the files that were there all along.

Capacity
I knew that I needed more than 4GB. I have over 200 compact disk that I started collecting in 1989. Initially I was going to get the 20gb version but I feared that it wouldn't be enough... I was wrong. I have about 2500 songs now and I'm only using around 10GB of storage! My entire music collection fits on a device that's just a little bigger than a deck of cards! Honestly, 40GB will hold a lot of music. Fortunately you can use the extra space as a portable drive for moving files around so it's not wasted space.

Interface
The Creative menu interface is easy to navigate using a "drill down" method. Each menu selection offers sub menus that you scroll through using the touchpad. The main menu can be accessed at any time by pressing the button labeled "menu" on the front of the Zen Touch. There's also a "back" button to take you to the previous menu. On the right side of the Zen Touch are the reverse, Play/Pause, and forward buttons. The only strange inclusion is the "random" button which oddly enough changes the now playing mode to "randomly play all songs on the Zen Touch". I don't know why this needs its own button, especially one that is so easy to hit accidentally.

The touchpad is a vertical strip in the middle of the Zen Touch that works just like a laptop touchpad. There's an ok button at the top for making selections. The firmware offers an option for making the touchpad accept doubletaps for "ok" but when I had it enabled I had too many accidental selections for my liking. The touchpad was way to sensitive out of the box with the old firmware. Even on "low" it was too sensitive. The new firmware has fixed this issue and now it's easy to get where I want with the touchpad.

You can play your music by genre, artist/album, playlist, or just browse and play from the list of songs. The Zen Touch allows you to create playlist on the fly but it's easier to create them in WMP and sync them. I usually just pick the genre that I'm in the mood for and set the Zen Touch to shuffle everything in that. It's like having a radio station with no commercials that plays only songs I like.

Sound
The earbuds that came with my Zen Touch are acceptable. They don't sound too bad too me. They aren't the most comfortable things in the world but I've worn them for a couple of hours at a time with no discomfort. Fidelity is very good.

I plug the Zen Touch into the line in on my car MP3 player (JVC-KDSH-99) and listen to it that way. I can turn the output all the way up with no distortion and the sound is as good as the mp3 cds that I used to burn.

There are several EQ settings available in the Zen Touch as well as a user setting that you can customize for yourself.

Battery Life
Amazing. This thing will last forever on a charge, UNLESS you sync a lot of files without it plugged into the wall. Apparently it's frugality comes from loading songs from the HD into ram and playing them from there and setting the HD to standby. When you sync, the hard drive is running constantly and it really drains the battery. The Zen Touch will charge via the usb port but only if it's powered off. I try to make sure that the power adaptor is available when I want to sync. Otherwise, with my normal playing, my player will last a week or more.

Leather Case
The Zen Touch comes with a very nice looking pleather case. The problem is that it completely engulfs the player so you can't access any of the controls. Maybe this is Creative's way of getting you to buy the remote. The case is good quality and I'm sure offers great protection for the mp3 player, but it's useless if you won't use it because you can't control the Zen Touch.

Overall Impression
I can't speak for longevity yet but so far so good. The Creative Zen Touch offers all the functionality of the leading mp3 player with more storage for less money. I think it's as stylish as any other mp3 player on the market. It's outstanding battery life and ease of use make it a very serious contender in the mp3 player wars.

Update
I got a Macbook pro computer in April 06 and I found out that the Zen Touch won't work at all with Mac OS X. Pity, now I've got to go with the other brand of mp3 player unless I want to boot Windows just to manage my music collection.