Superb portable MP3 and movie player. (Creative Zen 8 GB)

Member Name: alistairgd

Product:	Creative Zen 8 GB
Date:	07/02/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sound, great visuals and handy features

Disadvantages: None

I researched my mp3 purchase for sometime before settling on the Creative Zen 8Gb model. I went to a retailer that had all the top mp3 players so I could get a hands on them all before I decided that the Zen was the best buy, and here's why!

For me the really cool thing about the whole zen experience is the Zencast Organiser software that is installed on your PC. This allows you to organise all your favourite video podcasts, then when you connect up your Zen to the computer it'll automatically transfer the podcast videos to your zen in the correct format for viewing at your leisure. If you don't use podcasts at the moment this is a great opportunity to get into them, they are available for just about any subject matter, and for free!

This brings me nicely onto the video playback on the Zen. The screen uses OLED technology which is brighter than LCD. It's an expensive technology for large screens, but for MP3 players it is perfect. If you tilt the screen slightly while viewing, do you get a slight variance in brightness, but I would not mark the player down for this because the screen is simply stunning. Before purchase I was a bit concerned about the size of the screen for watching videos, because at the time I used a Sony PSP for portable movies. However the sheer pocketability of the tiny Zen makes up for the small screen size. It is perfectly acceptable to watch movie son, you'll be surprised by the clarity if you have never seen a small screen like this in action before.

You can use the included software to put any kind of video clips you like on the Zen, home movies, movie trailers, full movies and music videos (which look great!)

It's primary function is of course mp3 playback though, and it handles this superbly. The quality of sound is brilliant, and the menu options are really cool. I wanted a player than I could quickly navigate to either a particular song, playlist , genre, album or even artist, and the Zen allows this quickly and simply. There are some cool features than I like to use here too. The DJ option automatically selects tracks according to your preference. You can tell it to play the tracks you play most often, least often,the tracks you have rated highest or even the tracks that have not been rated. These features are superb, very useful and not at all gimmicky.

A note on rating tracks, as this is not made clear and it took me a while to figure it out. While a track is playing, to press the main select button, and a series of 5 empty starts appears, you then push the up key and each time one of the starts will be filled in yellow. In this way you can rate each individual track from 1 to 5!

Those are the Zens primary functions and it does them very very well. In addition though, there is an organiser, a calender, FM radio, and photo storage.

In day to day use the Zen is great, it has long battery life, is extremely small, thin and light and the buttons are instinctive to use. Charging is done with the same USB cable that transfers the files, so no need for a separate charger which is a bonus.

Finally, because the zen is so popular, there is a lot of online support in the forum of official Creative support and also peer to peer support in Zen forums. There are also lots of accessories that are pretty cool. For example, I couldn't decide which protective case to buy and ended up buying three. The one I use though is a clever neoprene type rubbery case that does not add much bulk but does prevent scratches and has a clever design that allows storage of the headphones/cables so you never lose them and they never get tangled - to me, that was almost worth getting the zen for!

The Zen really is a great device, and I cannot fault it at all!

Summary: For podcasts, movies or music, this is a winner.

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