Sound Test (Creative Zen Touch 20 GB)

Member Name: 87degrees

Product:	Creative Zen Touch 20 GB
Date:	28/01/06 (226 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sound, lots of memory

Disadvantages: Carry case design, the headphones

I've been thinking about getting myself an MP3 player for a while, and after a lot of reading of reviews and checking prices, I went for the Creative Zen Touch. It's a good size (I know if I went for the Ipod Nano I'd sit on it and break it) though perhaps slightly on the bulky side.

The sound quality is extremely good. Some of the songs are much quieter compared to others, but I think that's proabably more to do with my encoding than the player.

There's a nice screen, 4 1/2 by 3 cm, which can have a pale blue backlight. You can change the settings as to when this turns off in order to save power. The backlight makes it very easy to see what's being displayed, but you can still read it with the light off.

There are various play settings. You can choose what it plays, or you can have it set to play songs at random. It can repeat one track or pick a track at random to repeat. I have mine set onto random. This is probably the most commonly used setting, and there is a button on the front that lets you choose this without going through the menus.

The menu system is clear, and it should be no trouble to find what you're looking for. The sections on the main menu are Music Library, Now Playing, Play Mode, Settings and Information. All of those should make it obvious what's inside them.

You scroll through the menu using a touchpad in the centre of the little device. I'm still getting the hang of how this works; it's very sensitive and I keep scrolling too far by accident. There's a button at the top of the touchpad for selecting an item, the buttons to the right control the song (pause, skip, back) and those on the left are for main menu, back in menu navigation and one to put it onto random. The volume controls and the on/off switch are on the left hand side of the player. There's one other switch, on the top, which locks the player, so that pressing the buttons has no effect. This is very necessary when using the carry case, but more on that later.

There is a lot of storage space. There are 450 tracks on mine and I've still got over 17000MB of space left. Admittedly, most of the tracks are in WMA format rather than MP3, so they take up less space, but this makes the player more versitile than some. Loading songs is extremely easy and can be done by selecting the files on the computer and copying them to the player as though it was a directory.

~~~ What Comes With It ~~~
~ Software ~
The player comes with Creative Media Audio Converter. This converts files of one audio format to another. I've not had to use this yet because all my files have been in the right format.

There's also a media player that runs on a PC. This seems to be just like most other media players out there. It opens a file in a supported media format and, as the name implies, plays it.

There is an electronic user guide along with the paper version that comes in the box.

The software CD also contains Adobe Acrobat, in case you don't have it on your computer already, because its needed to read some of the documentation.

You don't need this software to put music onto the player. You can open it up like a directory and just drag the music files over to it. Unlike the Sony players, this makes putting on new songs very easy.

~ Songs ~
The player comes with some songs already in its library. These are all classical pieces, from the likes of Beethoven and Brahms. If they're not to your taste, you can delete them easily enough. Otherwise, there's plenty of room on the player for them.

~ Charger ~
This is very obvious what it is an how it should be used. One end plugs into the wall, the other end into the player. There's only one socket on the player that's the right size, so its easy to see where its meant to go. Even if you were struggling, there's 'DC in' written right next to it.

I've not had a problem with battery power. There's a little icon in the top left corner of the screen. It's a picture of a battery with three bars for when the player is charged. It's gotten down to one bar, but I've never had it run out.

~ Headphones ~
I've not very pleased with the headphones. They do very well at making sure I'm the only one listening to my music. However, they don't do so well at blocking surrounding sounds. Walking by a road will definitely result in the music being drowned out completely.

There's also not a great fit. They're a bit big for my ears. My boyfriend used them (well, one of them) when we were watching something on his computer and he thought they were too big as well, so I don't think it's just me. They don't want to stay in my ears, which gets extremely annoying. I'm probably going to buy a new set of headphones soon.

~ Carry Case ~
This is a smart, black case that clips onto your belt. It looks very nice; plain black except for 'Creative' written in small writing on the front and on the belt clip at the back. The clip works very easily and it holds the player securely.

There are however a few drawbacks. You can't see the screen or get at the buttons while it's in the case. If you want to skip a track or do anything else with the player, you have to take it out of the case completely. This isn't too much of a problem if you just want to turn it on and leave it.

The case is tight fitting, so you have to remember to lock the player before putting it in. Otherwise, the process of putting the player in will press the buttons and make it think you're using the touchpad.

~ USB Connector ~
Pretty much all computers now have USB ports, so it should be easy to use this cable. There's a socket at the top of the player (it's very obvious which one) for the cable and the other end plugs into a USB socket on the computer. Then you can open the player in My Computer and put tracks directly on it.

~~~ Overall ~~~
With the exception of the headphones, I'm extremely happy with this player. It has great sound and an extremely good amount of memory. I haven't had any problems with the player itself and would definitely recommend it.

It doesn't come with a voice recorder, but that wasn't a feature I was looking for. It's not the same fashion symbol as an Ipod, but it is what it needs to be: an extremely good MP3 player.

Summary: A very good MP3 player with nice features but bad headphones

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