Creative Zen X-Fi 16 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver)
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 X-Fi 16 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver)
Customer Review: Poor design, poor software, useless wifi - nice speaker
Summary: 2 Stars
This player is light, small and portable. It's biggest plus for me is that it has a small speaker, which is nice when I do not want to use the headphones. I mainly use it to listen to audio books and that is where the little speaker comes in handy.
The biggest problems are that the buttons are a pain to get used to that operate the features, odd that they came up with this design when compared to the designs of other players - not sure why someone thought this was a good design.
While not a good design , eventually one gets used to it but it is needlessly poor compared to it's competitors.
The poor button design also renders it's 'wifi' option useless, I wonder what genius at Creative thought that anyone would be willing to type by using the 9 buttons with multi letters for each button.
The next issue I have is that this player has trouble fast forwarding tracks, every time the fast forward is used, it crashes, then it also crashes often when it has been recharged - is there an update available from Creative ? No, there is not. This means that the 'reset button' becomes one's best friend.
I find it odd that the president of Creative who boasted a couple of years ago that their product (at the time of the ZEN MICRO PHOTO) was as good as Apples IPOD or even better, and then comes out with this device - yest it looks nice and the speaker is a rarity on other players but that is about it.
Sorry, will most likely consider another Creative MP3 player, no matter what they come out with - even if the product was better, they just do not seem to have any interest fixing it's software once it has come out.
Customer Review: Good little player - really awful software
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had the Zen X-fi for about 2 weeks now. I'm fond of it - the sound quality is pretty good, the colors are very crisp and clean and it's fairly easy to figure out how the whole thing works. (This is my first Creative Product.) I have some minor gripes with it, such as the "random" feature seems to have an insatiable need to play songs twice in a row, or play songs from the same album through most of the album but since I tend to have to laying next to me it's easy enough to skip the track.
The layout of the buttons is a little annoying, and once you put the player inside the Creative Labs Leather Case for Zen X-Fi (Black)(optional) the buttons on the right side are a bit hard to access. They're quite small, also, and I have dainty little fingers!
I have no attempted to use the SD card, so I can't make comment on that.
My only really big gripe is the software. Good lord, it's awful. It doesn't sync! (Are you reading this, Creative?) This means that if you add music to your computer you're going to have to manually add it to your player when you dock it. I'm thinking of trying a different software altogether out.
These things aside (and except for the software they're really not big issues to me) the player is solid. It has good sound (I have Skullcandy headphones, I didn't use the earbuds that come with the player) and it looks sharp without looking cheap. I'm fairly impressed with the Zen X-Fi. Plus, it's not an Apple product! Points right there!
Customer Review: Bass lovers... This product is not for you.
Summary: 2 Stars
**The sound quality is really poor. No bass effect at all. The headphones supplied with this product are average ones. Certainly not for good listening. It does have 5 Band Graphic equiliser But I wonder what does it do? You change the settings to anything .. No effect on the output. Is this device tested by manyfacturer before releasing it in the market?
**I can somehow live with the 9 button interface they have provided but what about the Menu browsing? When you start from menu item no 1 to next..next..next... When It reaches the last menu item, pressing the down button does not take you to Menu item no 1. It drove me crazy. You have to browse all the way back to the first menu by again pressing the upper button several times.
In short ...Menu scrolling is not user friendly.
**It detects the wifi internet connections but when you try to connect to one of it....It just says 'Connecting to ' and never actually connects to wifi.It just hangs. The bad part is, once you have selected to connect to wifi..unless and until it is connected...You can not do anything else but to wait. No cancel button provided. Mine just hanged...and it powered itself off after 5 minutes.
**The speaker provided is not stereo. Not loud enough.
----- Few very good things about this player are..
Very nice FM radio reception.
Good for watching photos and movies where you are least care about sound quality.
Only very good thing is Its Price TAG. Pretty low priced.
If you are really looking for a good MP3 player... This is not for you.
I returned mine in 2 days.
Customer Review: Great player with a few flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
I used the bill me later feature that allowed me to purchase the item for 164 delivered. Great price.
The player has great battery life over their old HDD based devices, so that is a nice plus. The storage was a good deal for the price. It is also expandable with an SD card, but it does not add to the physical storage of the device, rather it is recognized as removable storage. You will not be able to create playlists from the content you have contained on the SD card. Not really that big of a deal. It's nice that you don't need any special drivers or software for the device to be recognized on a windows-based pc. You can use explorer to access any content on the device for copying or up/downloading.
The first strangeness I noticed when I started using the device was that the power meter did not accurately reflect that the device had been fully charged or even that it was in the process of being charged. I fixed that with a hard reset.
Second is that with the device playing music in the unlocked position, it will repeat about every 10th song or so, which can be a bit annoying. However, Creative can address this issue with a simple firmware update; the issue has been reported on the Creative forums, so I am confident the issue will be resolved in time.
All in all, I am quite satisfied with the purchase and use it daily.
Recommended if you like a player that provides great value for the money spent and you are not an iSheep. Four out of Five stars for Creative releasing the device with the repeating track bug.
Customer Review: It's All About the Sound
Summary: 5 Stars
Pros: Great sound (which is subjective)
Excellent included headphones
X-FI Crystalizer
Easy Sync using WMP 11
Excellent screen
Online functions work flawlessly
Light-weight and compact
Cons: This is more of a preference than a con, but I just have no use for the chat function and it is too much of a pain to type a message unless maybe they upgrade the typing platform with new firmware. And the onling streaming either from the media box or my home computer will not get much use (HOWEVER I REPEAT THEY DO WORK FLAWLESSLY)
Other Thoughts: There are allready very detailed very high tech sounding reviews on here, so I'll be a little more simple. This is the closest thing to listening to a CD that I have heard since I bought my first MP3 player (but sound is subjective and this is just my opinion). I feel the crystalizer brings life back to compressed music. I listened to the same songs on my Sony NWZ-E438F and X-Fi with the crystalizer on and I heard a good deal of difference ( I used the included heaphones with the X-FI for both). The buttons are small, but nothing a little getting used to won't fix. I used WMP 11 and it worked well with this player. I don't nitpick about button placement and plastic casing because I don't buy things for their look, but for the sound and enjoyment I get out of it. And I'm proud to show off this player. Also I bought this for music not so much video, but when I do add video I make use of an SD card to save space on my player and it works very well with a nice picture.