Zen Touch is an Amazing Player. One of, if not, the best on the market.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Amazing sound quality. Long battery life. Can play the superior WMA format.

Cons: Poor supplied case. Lack of aftermarket accessories. Sensitive 'Touch' strip.

The Bottom Line: 
If your looking for a well built, great sounding, huge capacity player with amazing battery life that is WMA compatible, look no further. The Zen Touch blows the others away.

Author's Review
After extensive research I decided to buy a Zen Touch over several other brands including the (over-hyped, in my opinion) Ipod. I've had it for about 8 months and absolutely love it!! This player is built like a tank. It feels solid and the controls are firm and have great feel.

The 'Touch' pad, for which this player is named, takes a little getting used to. It could use a couple more levels of sensitivity to get the feel just right. It just tends to be a little too sensitive for my liking. That being said, once used to it, the touch pad works fine and by no means should dissuade anyone from buying this player. The menus are straight forward and can sort files by playlist, genre, etc.

One of the main reasons I decided on this player was it's ability to play WMA files. You never hear much about this point, but if you are running a Windows machine, why wouldn't you want to use the WMA compression? They sound better than MP3 and are slightly smaller than MP3 for the same bitrate. It's a no brainer, in my opinion. I rip my cd's or dvd's using Media Player 9 and from there, upload the WMA's right into the Zen. Downloaded music can be transferred to the Zen the same way. I don't even use the software provided with the player.

Once loaded the Zen really begins to overtake the competition. The battery life is unsurpassed in this category. Don't worry about the battery being not 'user' replaceable. There are batteries available online if/when it's needed and it would be about the same difficulty as replacing a battery in a cordless phone.

The sound quality is where this player really shines. I can play this unit through my $3500 Anthem pre-amp and it sounds good. That's how good this player is. Granted the included ear phones are your basic run of the mill ear phones (typical with any player out there), but with a pair of Sennheiser PX-100's this player sounds great. Part of that is due to it's very high S/N ratio and part due to the WMA compression. (Ipod users eat your heart out.)

The other thing about the Zen Touch is the supplied case isn't very good. It is a nice case to store the unit in when not in use, that's about all. When in the case, you can't access the buttons on the front of the player. Don't worry though, buy yourself a nice Noreve case and you'll be set. Don't expect to find a ton of aftermarket accessories for these players though. The Ipod people definitely have that market locked up, unfortunately.

Overall, this player rocks. And with the money you'll save over the Ipod, you can buy yourself a nice set of headphones to complete the package.