Good Design and Hardware. Glitchy Software.

Author's Rating:

Pros: SDHC.
Battery Life.
FM.
Voice Recording.
Video.
Flash Memory.
Beautiful Screen.
Sound Quality.
Simple Software.

Cons: Two-Handed Use.
Hold/Power Switch.
Freezes.
Connectivity.
No WiFi.
No FM Recording.
No AM.

The Bottom Line: 
The glitches hold this player back. But if you need an inexpensive flash player with unlimited storage, this is the way to go.

I thoroughly researched MP3 players for a month. My options narrowed down to 3 players:</p>

The Ipod Touch 32GB, the Sansa View 16GB, and the Creative Zen 16GB.</p>

The Sansa View had all of the features I wanted, from expandable memory, to FM and Voice recording, and I have had good experience with various Sansa players in the past, including the e250, the e280, and a couple of c200 players. However, despite the phenomenal price, the reviews on the View were nothing short of horrific, from shoddy firmware and poor construction.</p>

The Ipod touch made up for the fact that it did not have FM radio with its WiFi, but the price was prohibitive, and I already have a laptop.</p>

So the reviews of the Zen looked the best of any non-Apple flash player.</p>

The battery life is very good. For music and radio, I can go about 4 days between charges, and nearly 20 hours of play-time.It does have SDHC support, and I knew going into it that it does not integrate the SDHC memory into the player. That is why I made sure to get at least the 16GB version. To be honest, the ideal situation would have this player have no internal memory at all, bur rather multiple SDHC card slots.</p>

I like that the player uses a standard USB mini cable. This makes lots of inexpensive spares. I do not know if the screen scratches much, because I made sure to get a stick-on screen protector from the moment I got it. It is small, but is not designed for 1-handed use. I do not like that the hold button and the power button are one and the same. I also think it takes too long to boot when powered off too long.</p>

The voice recording quality is good.</p>

The syncing software is OK, but it looses connection sometimes, and the computer (both Vista 32 and Vista 64 systems) has to be rebooted to get connection back. I have not yet tried to convert video.</p>

The player itself, despite shipping with the most recent firmware, froze on me twice in the 1st few minutes. I feel like I have to carry a pin with me for the reset button, just in case. You can drag and drop data onto this drive, but it is not as simple to drop media. It goes through a conversion/indexing process when music is dropped into the icon on the My Computer window.</p>

The sound quality is good. I am fairly sensitive to good sound, and it is definitely better than an old 3rd Generation Ipod I used to have, as well as the e200 that my siblings now use. I have not even tried the earbuds that came with this player.</p>

I wish it had come with a case, but since it does not, I got a noreve case with a belt clip.</p>

I would have given the player a higher rating, but the software glithcing is just discouraging. Hopefully Creative will release an update with the new X-Fi WiFi Zens that are coming on the market now.</p>

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