Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black)
by Creative
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List Price: Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black)
Customer Review: Nice device but I hate the video software team.
Summary: 2 Stars
I recently purchased a Creative ZEN pocket video player, and I have some comments about the experience.
First, the device itself is quite impressive. It is tiny, elegant, and very functional. It has performed flawlessly for several days, except for one morning when it would not start at all. There's a pinhole in the bottom that lets you reset the ZEN's internal computer, and it rebooted in seconds. The screen is bright and clear. The earbuds work with what seems to me to be sufficient audio quality for my purposes.
My purposes are to download and carry in my pocket some 1500 wmv video files that I have compiled for my academic research. Each video is about a minute long, so in total the files don't even touch the ZEN's capacity. I bought it because other reviewers endorsed it for wmv viewing.
However, the task of getting these 1500 files from my computer to the ZEN device has proven daunting. The ZEN software for video loading is hideously hard to use. Here are my observations, bearing in mind that your mileage may vary:
--- The marketing literature says the ZEN is compatible with Windows XP. The ZEN software absolutely requires Microsoft Media Player version 11. If you don't have that installed, the ZEN device won't even connect to the computer. Unfortunately, the Microsoft Media Player 11 in turn refuses to install on any older version of Windows XP Media Center Edition. Since my computer is a veteran XP Media Center, I am SOL here. There is no way to install the ZEN software on my computer. Fortunately, I have an even older Windows XP computer. MMP11 installed there without a hitch. I installed the ZEN there and went ahead.
--- The marketing literature says the ZEN plays wmv files, but the truth is that it plays a very specific type of wmv file. My 1500 wmv files were originally rendered for 15 frames per second (to reduce storage space on a Pocket PC). The ZEN won't import these files. Every last one of 1500 files had to be re-rendered at 30 fps before the ZEN found then acceptable. You would think that a device that can render 30 fps would be able to accommodate 15 fps, but no.
--- The re-rendering for import is handled by a ZEN software package that gathers all the video files in a directory tree, converts them to a respectable format, and then transfers them into the ZEN's memory. The rendering takes about a minute per megabyte. Most of the file transfers into the ZEN go quickly, but often the system just hangs and waits for ten minutes or so. Then it gives up on that file and transfers the next one. The transferred files often have multiple file extensions, too, such as filename.wmv.wmv.wmv. It has taken me four solid days of tending the computer to convert and upload my 1500 small video files.
--- If, during the re-rendering process, the software encounters an mpeg file, it will crash. It handles most video formats transparently, but not that one. One discovers this limitation by rendering a batch of files for hours and then having the software crash before the batch is done. You have to delete all the intermediate files, remove (or manually convert) the mpeg file, and then start again.
--- The rendering software has a memory leak that slowly fills up the computer's RAM until the machine is paralyzed in paging mode. This means you have to render in small batches... about 50 one-megabyte files in a batch... or watch the computer skid to a stop on its chin.
--- Once the files have been transferred to the ZEN, there is no way to reorganize the directory tree (or move files around). The software lets you look at the ZEN directory structure and delete or rename items, but you cannot move files from one directory to another. If you don't like the directory structure on the ZEN, your only option is to reorganize the directories on your PC and then re-import (and re-render) your files again.
So, bottom line, the ZEN player is very satisfactory but the associated software has stolen about a week of my life and I'm sick of it. Fortunately, the 1500 files are almost all converted and transferred at this point, and they play well on the ZEN. I am pleased with the viewer in actual use. However, in terms of convenience I really regret giving up my Pocket PC. The Pocket PC played all my files just fine, and uploading them was as simple as Copy and Paste from the File Manager. Not so with the ZEN. Perhaps someday it will catch up to the things that a Pocket PC could do five years ago.
I will be using this heavily and am glad to have it, but I will never give it to anyone as a present. I want to keep my friends.
Customer Review: Best flash player on the market, great even for large music collections
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great choice for those people who previously limited their flash players to workout duty, or only holding a small piece of their large music collection and having to change the music on it every so often. With a 16GB capacity most people can fit their entire collection on here without difficulty, and even have room for some videos.
First impressions of this player are very good. It is extremely appealing to the eye, everyone who sees it will ask about it. It is about the size of a credit card, just thicker (less than 1/2inch). The front is a very glossy black plastic that looks great until you touch it, instantly covering it with fingerprints :) The back is a rough, cheaper feeling black plastic. Overall it has a nice solid weight and feel to it, but not very heavy. This will easily fit in a pocket.
The 2.5" screen is absolutely gorgeous. Very bright with vivid colors. The viewing angle is very good, two people can easily look at the screen at the same time while watching a movie for example. The menus are all nicely animated and intuitive to navigate. The icons and text are big clear and easy to read.
One of the big perks to having so much capacity is plenty of room for videos. This was one of the first things I've tested as it was a big reason for my purchase. First of all it DOES play Amazon Unbox videos perfectly. Transferring files was very easy (just a few clicks) and very quick. The quality of the video was great as well. The max size of videos is apparently 320x240, I have not been able to get it to play anything larger than that. If the video is smaller (for example widescreen) you have the option of playing it at the correct aspect ratio, or fill the screen (stretched out). I've gotten it to play videos encoded in Xvid and WMV format. Xvid files were encoded with AutoGK, and the WMV files were encoded with Arcsoft MediaConverter. If you synchronize with Windows Media Player, you can put in *almost any* video file and it will automatically convert the file into WMV format and then transfer to the player. How long it takes to convert depends on the type of video you're encoding, how big the file is and of course the speed of your computer.
Music sounds very good on this player, but please... get rid of the stock headphones they are horrible. Using a decent pair of headphones makes a HUGE difference. The EQ options are OK, there are about a half dozen presets and a customizable EQ. The "Bass Boost" option just made it worse in my opinion, it just distorted the sound. Otherwise it is a very even and balanced sound, very similar to the Vision:M.
The FM radio has a whopping 32 presets and the reception is pretty good. Strong stations are in stereo, weaker ones come in mono. I haven't had a chance to test out the built-in mic.
I easily transferred music and playlists onto this player from Windows Media Player and MediaMonkey, as well as protected music (WMA) from Napster. Everything was very easy, usually just dragging and dropping. The speed of transfer is probably the fastest I've seen. I've used this player on XP Home and on Vista Premium 64-bit.
Regarding the SD cards. I think its only a slight inconvenience that the memory card media isn't directly integrated with the other content. Meaning if you have videos on the SD card you don't go to the "Video" menu where all the other videos are, you have to access them through the "Memory Card" menu. Once there, you browse through the file structure like normal. If you organize the content smartly on your cards you should have no problem. And really its a small price to pay for that feature. Currently SDHC cards are up to 16GB in capacity, meaning you could double the capacity and carry around 32GB worth of content in your pocket. Amazing. I tested a Kingston 512MB SD Card and a Kingston 2GB microSD card (with adapter of course) and they were recognized and played the content without difficulty.
A quick note about the firmware. Mine came with 1.10.05. When my player turns off, it really turns off. With newer firmwares when it turns off it goes into a sleep mode for a while before it finally turns all the way off. What that means is with the older firmware each time you turn it on it has to "boot" all over again, whereas with the newer firmware you get an "instant-on" at the expense of slightly reduced battery life (since it is asleep and not off). Something to consider before you decide to upgrade the firmware.
Customer Review: magnificent display, decent design, terrible firmware
Summary: 2 Stars
The first thing you will notice when you pull this MP3 player out of the box is the large, sharp, and bright screen. For the price, it would be hard to find a unit with a better screen. So my first impression of this player was very good. My experiences with it over the 4 months since then have completely turned my opinion around.
First, I'll tell you a bit about the way I use it. Mostly I listen to podcasts and music as I go about my daily activities. I also listen to the occasional audiobook. At the gym, I use it to watch tv while I'm on the treadmill.
There is nothing wrong with the hardware in the creative zen. The sound quality is fine, and the design is functional if not ideal. What really kills this player is the awful firmware. I often wonder what the designers were thinking when they dreamed up the user interface. It typically takes 11 clicks to get from powering the unit on to hearing music.
One example of how the software ruins an otherwise fine player is the battery life. Creative put a nice big battery in this player, but the software stupidly doesn't turn off the screen unless you lock the buttons. I typically leave the buttons on my mp3 players unlocked if they are in a jacket pocket, but this severely shortens the battery life of the zen.
I'll go through the ways in which I use the player and why it performs poorly.
First, forget about using this for audiobooks. If the unit is powered off for a few hours, it looses track of your place. If you forget to place a bookmark every time you set the player down, you will be in for an unpleasant surprise when you get back. How many hours did you listen to since the last bookmark? The fast forwarding feature doesn't help. Good players start fast forwarding slow and then ramp up the speed slowly as you hold the button down. This player has that feature, but it takes far too long to ramp up the speed and when it does ramp up it gets too fast far to quickly. You'll find there is a very small difference between fast forwarding 45 minutes and 8 hours.
Also as a podcast player, this unit fails utterly. The bookmark problem persists, but with an added twist. When you resume a bookmark, the player forgets what playlist the file belongs to. So when you resume halfway through a podcast you will have to manually select the next one after it finishes. There is also the fact that you have to use playlists in the first place. With my old samsung, I simply put all my podcasts in the same directory and the player was able to understand that I wanted to listen to all the files in that directory. The zen stores the directory structure, but will not let you use it to play files. If you want to play all the files in a directory, you have to manually create a playlist.
Then there are the bugs. I have never experienced the dreaded white screen of death, but the zen has many other creative ways to fail. Sometimes the unit just crashes while playing. It must be reset after this. Often there seems to be no reason for the crash. One second I'm listening, and the next I'm not. Don't have a mechanical pencil handy? tough luck. If the headphones are yanked out too fast, it crashes. If one of the earbuds touches a static charged surface, it crashes. If I unplug it from the computer without closing the synching software, it crashes. And sometimes the synching softare forgets that the player recognizes mp3 files. I will try to add a file from the software and it will claim the format is not recognized. But, if I manually drag and drop the file by opening the player as a drive in windows it accepts and plays the file just fine.
And finally, the headphones. throw them out the instant you open the box. I'm used to earbuds being painful after a few hours, but these only take a few minutes to start hurting me. its like trying to walk around with marbles in your ears.
Actually I'm not quite done yet. This player is great for one thing. Playing movie files once they are in the correct format. Converting a half hour file can take several hours, but once this is done the picture quality is beautiful.
In short, I would not recommend this player to anyone, unless they plan to strip out the screen and battery. and throw the rest away.
Customer Review: My week with ZEN
Summary: 2 Stars
I'll start by saying that I have issues with things that don't work as described right out of the box. Whenever I have to spend time and effort to bring an item to its advertised features and functions, I get concerned. The ZEN has a strong feature set but some don't work without substantial tinkering. A complete description of what might be available can be found in the product listing here or on the Creative site. Below is my experience.
My first adventure started with the A/V being out of sync. The included software (the latest and using the most current firmware for the player) resulted in a painfully slow conversion process to WMV that yielded a progressively out of sync video. As the video ran, the sound would increasingly lag. This led to my first workaround consisting of many hours of reading posts all over the place and downloading a half-dozen different progs. I found one with a modest learning curve and in about six hours of experimentation, converting clips and such, that issue was put to rest: Research and related time invested, about 20 hours.
The device did not recognize sub-folders for organization/playback purposes nor existing .M3U play lists. I could, however, create sub-folders but for personal organization, only. I loaded my music through the mandated, included software and had to rebuild play lists within the device that already existed elsewhere. Please note that this player keys to ID tags so, if you, like I, have ripped a lot of old vinyl albums, you'll have to spend hours building ID tags on the computer as you can't do it once the track is on the device. Thus, if not done, album tracks will be out of sequence as the player re-sorts everything regardless of how you drop it into its storage. Time invested in building ID tags, sorting tracks into sub-folders, creating new play lists from re-sorted sub-sub-folders, about 6 hours.
It did not act like your typical USB mass storage device. I was not able to move files once on the ZEN. I could delete them, only. If I wanted to change the location, I had to delete and reload. That proved to be an annoying inconvenience. The files were regular MP3's and I can think of no reason why they were not allowed to migrate. This, also, disallowed backing up the contents of the player when I had to reformat it...all gone, back to square one.
Several MP3's that I had exported to the player became corrupted. There was nothing consistent about the files that may have contributed; seemed random. I wasn't aware that they were corrupted until I was searching for a track that I knew was there but wouldn't play. I had to browse all 800 or so tracks, delete, reload, rebuild play lists, etc.
There's quite a bit more that resulted in my returning the ZEN. I had read the reviews and noted all the praise. Where did I go wrong? Well, I didn't read those stellar reviews well enough. They seem to have an implied asterisk attached; works great once you jump through this hoop and that fire-ring. Wow, how can you give something high praise when you have to spend so much time fixing it or conceding that half its functions don't work? Perhaps it's all relative. If so, about everything else must REALLY suck and this sucks less because of its beautiful screen and great sound quality. I truly regretted that the function-frustration overwhelmed what could have been an ideal player. Guess I'll wait a bit longer and hang in with my three year old 1gb MP3/4 player from god-only-knows where but has NEVER caused me a lick of trouble and the conversion software is fast and efficient enough to produce in-sync video. Go figure.
UPDATE 3/3/08: I picked up an Insignia Pilot, 8gb. I think the Zen sounds a tiny bit better but, guess what, the Pilot worked immediately as described and incorporates the (up to) 32gb SDHC card into its system unlike the Zen. It was worth getting the Zen and returning it to steer me to something that works NOW and doesn't eat up all of my time.
Customer Review: Zen vs Ipod: and the winner is...
Summary: 3 Stars
I had super high hopes for the Zen when I ordered it, and finding it on sale was the perfect excuse to nab one. I've had about 5 generations of Ipods and have always wanted to try Creative (I used to sell electronics for about 5 years, so I have a decent head about me with MP3 Players, to be honest after everyone wanting an iPod you just really wanted to encourage any kind of other player) and I didn't like the fact that over many years, Apple has gotten rid of some of my favorite features (like the manual backlight) and not added some badly needed ones (like being able to add/delete songs, name playlists, have more playing options). After trying the Zen out for a week, I am sending it back today.
*I originally bought it as just something to jog with, but I found major flaws with just the simple features I wanted the most. It DOES NOT work with mac, even as a flash drive, which I found very disappointing. My Ipod, when formatted for windows, works on both my Mac and PC with full control (adding/deleting songs, making playlists, etc).
*I don't like the all-plastic body that the Zen has, whereas my Ipod is 100% metal and can take a hit (and has, believe me!!)
*I find scrolling annoying on the Zen, it seems to take forever to get to the song I want. It does have a system on the righthand side where you can select a letter of the alphabet to jump to, which I do enjoy.
*Songs/Albums are listed as title only, so you have no idea what artist sings it. On the ipod when you scroll through songs, albums, etc it lists the title of the artist in smaller text below, which is extremely helpful (especially if you have similar names for songs, mixes, etc or if you just listen to a lot of new music and want to be able to differentiate easily).
*I just don't like the Zen software that much, iTunes is much more user friendly and since it integrates so well with your music collection it is much easier than with the Zen, moving folders here and there instead of having straight-forward music lists and searches.
*The backlight IS ALWAYS ON! There is NO WAY to turn it fully off unless you put the Zen on 'Hold,' which HIGHLY irritates me since most of the time I just want to turn the volume up a little or simply skip a song (I like to keep the unit in my smallest jean pocket an just occasionally click a button, which I keep sticking out slightly). But to do that, I would need to take the unit off hold. Lame, frustrating, and just a bad idea. Way to conserve battery power, Creative.
*The Zen seems to take a while to load up/shut down, whereas my iPod is almost instant.
*Lastly, I know this isn't really fair to say, but when choosing an MP3 player you need to consider the accessories you can get along with it. Creative only has a few, the iPod has about a million. Any case you can dream of, which is SO NICE since the lack of selection on the Zen leaves you with a case that you probably won't like.
A Few Pros:
*Flash drive memory, which is harder to break and more reliable.
*Sound is a bit better than the iPod
*Expandable memory card slot
*'DJ' function - probably my FAVORITE thing on the Zen. You can choose to play recently added, most listened to, least listened to songs, which is a major plus for me since I'm always adding and deleting, getting new music.
In all, I'm sticking with my iPod (160GB) even though I don't completely agree with all the changes Apple has made to its software over the last few years. Though, if you just want a decent MP3 player for your smaller music collection, or know almost all the songs you're going to be putting on it, the Zen isn't bad at all. The software won't bother you that much unless you've got an extensive music collection, I think. If you're just going to add a lot of music in one go, then add a few songs here and there, you may find happiness with the Creative Zen.