Average budget MP3 Player (Creative Zen Nano Plus 256 MB)

Name: dfisher

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Product:	Creative Zen Nano Plus 256 MB
Date:	22/09/06 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very compact. good build quality. FM radio.

Disadvantages: Dull sound quality. Tiny capacity and poor battery life

The Creative Zen Nano is certainly a very small device and will suit most people.

Features-----

The menus are certainly intuitive and are easy to use. I found the buttons a bit slow to respond and this can be quite irritating. Perhaps if they used a better processing chip this might improve.

Battery life is quite disappointing. I am lucky to get even half the recommended battery life that Creative mentions and thats even using their own battery that is supplied. I have a pack of 900mah (highest capacity AAA rechargeable batteries available) and find that these run out after about 6 hours - make sure these are on you list when buying this device.

The screen is a black and white LCD job and is clear and informative. The letters are a bit on the small side but a clear blue backlight does help legibility. I found the backlight drained a lot of power from the batteries, but you will find a function that dictates how long the light remains on for.

A built in FM radio is provided and the signal reception was exceptionally good from such a small device. Strangely I found the radio function less power draining than the MP3 function. A built in microphone is also provided which is suitable for making short voice reminders bbut no very good for the budding journalist.

The capacity of this device is very limited at 256MB. There are versions available that go up to about 1Gb and these don't cost that much more. There is no expansion slot for SD cards or similar and this severly limits the usefulness of this device.

Using it--------

Sound quality is clear, if a little dull in my opinion. There is plenty of bass but I found treble lacking. Bass can be adjusted from the main menu.

The headphones supplied are OK. There aren't fantastic as they lack power, so leave some money to buy some better headphones. This device uses a standard 3.5mm jack.

The player itself lacks volume. I suspect its because the thing only runs on one battery, but out on the street or on the train I had to crank it up to over 75% before I could here lyrics clearly. This had the effect of fraining the battery even more.

The radio is excellent and very clear, even when being used in the city amongst tall buildings. This part of the player won't disappoint.

Equipment----

Comes with headphones, USb wire and a battery

Transferring----

Links up to a PC via USb and is visible as an external USb drive. Simply drag and drop your MP3 files into the window. Transfer speeds are a little slow, however MP3 song lovers won't notice this too much but speaking book listeners will.

Overall-----

Not a bad player. Certainly is very small and build quality is solid. The sound quality is a little dull and the player lacks volume. The biggest grips are memory (lack of) and the poor battery life.

Summary: Perhaps suitable for those on a very small budget - but get some rechargeables.

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