The Zen Has Landed (Creative Zen 4 GB)

Member Name: bhayanid

Product:	Creative Zen 4 GB
Date:	28/02/09 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Value For Money, Big Screen

Disadvantages: Crashes, Tacky Keys

I have been meaning to review this product for quite a while, although having not been a regular user of Dooyoo for the last couple of months I have not found the time. However now I feel I can give an unbiased review of this product as I have not had any MP3/4 players from Creative or any of the major rival firms like Sony and most notably Apple and their Ipod series.


Design: Well this player has been billed as being smaller than a credit card and this is completely true. Placed on top of a credit card it is in fact a tiny bit smaller although of course in terms of thickness it is not possible with the earphone jacks themselves being thicker. It is just over 10mm thick which is still pretty slick and this is a nice compact player and one of the smallest on the market. Definitely a plus point.


Screen: The screen is one of the main features with a relatively large 2.5inch screen which is comfortably more than its main Apple competitor the Ipod Nano. The only problem here is that the screen does seem quite fragile and I have heard reports of it braking easily so I would highly recommend paying a few pounds extra from a screen protector and this worry would no longer be an issue.


Buttons: The buttons feel very plastically which is a little tacky, but don't get me wrong this product is very well put together like most of the stuff that creative produce. In this regard the Ipod definitely has nicer feeling keys and Creative did miss a trick here, but it is not something that should stop anyone choosing the Nano over the Zen.


Interface: Again Nano wins here, but the thing is does the interface really matter. For Audio you will be listening to the music and not staring at the interface and with video you will be watching the video playing and not be able to see the interface. So although it is a great touch to the Nano and Zen does have a simple interface it is not anything to make a big fuss over.


Audio: Creative pride themselves on having great audio and this is no exception. The provided earphones are decent enough, but many people will buy their own preffered earphones and that is where the Zen really shines and comes into its own. The sound is clear and crisp and another great reason to buy this product.


Video: Normally I would say not to bother watching video on these players unless it is a short two min clip, however the 2.5inch screen means that everything is just about watchable and it is an adequate screen size. The quality of the videos is pretty good, with over 16million colours which not many other players out there have anywhere near to and the Nano has closer to 16 thousand colours.


FM radio: Another great touch to this player and the signal is pretty decent, although it is possible to increase the quality of the signal with the recently released firmware upgrade special made on improving the FM radio. It is not the highlight of the Zen, but a definite plus point.


Other features/notes: There is a decent enough organiser, but I do not suspect anyone will be using that at all, apart from the most die hard Creative fans. There is also a photo viewer where you can view photos at a high quality.

The major plus point for this player the ability to insert a SD card which literally no other product on the market has. So if anyone is put of by the relatively small 4gb memory where you can only store a 1000 tracks or so, then you can purchase a 8gb SD card for less than £10 of Amazon which will bump the overall memory up to £12gb which is absolute quality. The only problem with this SD memory is that Creative have not integrated it with the interla memory so you have to go to the memory card option in the interface and access the audio and video on the card seperately. It is a bit of a hassle and Creative should have spent a bit more time here, but for the price it should not put you off purchasing this.

Also I have to add that this does have the tendancy to crash and you will need to carry a needle around with you as this is needed to reset the player. This happens randomly and over time you will release little things you can do to stop the player crashing.


Price: This Zen is great value and has recently been down to £50 during the christmas sale on Amazon and that includes free postage and packaging. No other player can compete with this in terms of price apart from a couple of the Sony MP4 players, which are also very good. Even yesterday this was priced at £56 on Amazon, although when I just checked it was £62, so if you are considering buying this I would wait a bit longer till they drop the price back down again, during their next sale.


Overall: Well to conclude I feel that this player would be perfect if it did not have its few flaws like the crashing, the tacky buttons, fragile screen and relatively simple interfact. If these four factors were improved upon I seriously feel that this could be the best player on the market. However for the cost being as low as £50 I would have to say that this is definitely the best valued digital player on the market and would recommend it to anyone looking at a player where they can listen to decent quality sound as well as watching videos every now and then. 4 stars.

Summary: I highly recommend this to media lovers.

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