Creative ZEN 8 GB Portable Media Player

This is an all around solid MP3 Player. I will describe some of the pros and cons about this player. I will say right now the pros strongly outweigh the cons. I have also tested this player adequately and have tested the SD card slot which I find very nice. Despite some complaints about the SD card, I find it adequate to suit my needs.

By the way if you are wondering why I am publishing this review... I received the player from Creative where it is in stock. Amazon is taking a little while longer.

Pros:
+ Excellent Sound - This MP3 Player is a bit louder, and sounds better than my previous Vision:M. I think the sound quality is quite superb.
+ Bright, Brilliant Display - The display is just stunning, and the 16 million colors really show great improvement over the ZVM.
+ Easy Navigation - I love the navigation on this player, and I really love the different themes.
+ Videos - The videos look incredibly nice... I've only played a few
+ Transfer Speed - Extremely Fast! What can I say? This is what has surprised me the most. The speed is an extremely huge difference over hard-drive based players.
+ Good Button Placement - Though small for some, I do happen to like the buttons
+ Nice looks - I really like the looks of this (this is very subjective)
+ Small Size - This is a very light player, that is only a foot print of what the ZVM was. The most amazing part is that the screen is 2.5" inches.

Cons:
- Power Adapter - It should come with one, but it only comes with a USB power cable (which is acceptable)
- Crappy Ear phones - Eh. Buy the Creative EP-630. You don't buy a nice player and use the provided ear phones. The EP-630 are an incredible set.
- Buttons are a bit hard to push at first - This is something others have experienced... this is true for a while.
- Can smudge - to prevent this get the plastic case!

How does this stack up against an ipod?

It crushes it in my mind. I really think Creative did a fine job here, and I'm sure firmware will be updated constantly knowing Creative's attention to the customer.

Pros:
+ Easy Interface
+ Syncs Fast (A 45-min TV show took about 20-30 seconds)
+ Great Display
+ Voice Recorder
+ FM Radio
+ Plays Unprotected AAC files

Cons:
- A little quiet - Listening in public places is a little difficult.
- SD Card support is mediocre - you cannot manipulate content on the card as much as you can with the native memory
- Podcasts - The ZENCast program does not boot up on my computer, so I use iTunes (which I find a great podcast organizer), but there is no menu selection that can easily separate the podcasts from the music - shuffling through all my songs, I run into a few podcasts.
- Minimal contents in packaging - only the player, manual, 3-inch USB cable, and headphones come with it.
- Video support - I've been having difficulty getting WMV's to work with the player, but XviD and DivX are supported in the .avi container. I haven't tried other formats yet, but things can get confusing. I really don't understand why there isn't native support for MPEG4, but there is for MJPEG. Also, all of your videos have to be smaller than 320x240, which is especially annoying when your format is correct, but your video is too big. I would have been happier if the video support reflect that of the Vision M.

Although there are some problems with the player, it's still great. You can't go wrong with it. Although you run into some problems when it comes to video formats, as well as the accommodation of audio podcasts, this i still a good choice.

WARNING: Any content on your SD card will not show up in the Music Main Menu. You litterly have to browse to your SD Card, browse through whatever directory you have created to find your MP3s for playback. You can not shuffle the expanded memory with the onboard memory, nor can you shuffle the music from the SD card period. This is a huge flaw, and I have looked on Creatives website for a firmware upgrade to solve this, from what I have read there is no indication that they are going to integrate the SD card so that it can be used in this way.

I am litterly on the fence about taking this back as this was the main selling point for me.

However that said, it is a wonderful product, perfect in size, the music sounds fantastic, far better than my iPod. There are still gaps between Classical or New Age tracks, the interfeace is nice too. I love it, but the SD is a HUGE disapointment!

If you're like me and have thousands of mp3's that are not classified by album, then don't go near this player with a ten foot pole. The reason I say this is that when you attempt to browse songs by a particular artist or band, you can only view the songs by album - any song that does not have it's album tag filled in won't show up under that artist. Basically, if any track has no album info, it becomes invisible. Older ZEN mp3 players had a "List all Tracks by Artist" option when you browsed a particular artist or band - selecting this option would show all the tracks by that artist in alphabetical order regardless of whether the album info was filled in for a track or not. The new ZEN players do not have this option. I went to one artist on my player that I had 60 songs for, except none of the tracks had album info, and when I selected that artist the player told me their were no tracks by that artist on the player - totally and completely ridiculous.

Worse yet, all those tracks that have no album associated with them will not play in shuffle mode. I loaded the player with 1000 songs that had no album info and 10 songs that did have their album info, and put the player into shuffle mode. Shuffle mode then told me their were only 10 songs on the player, and proceeded to play those 10 songs (the ones with album info) over and over, while completely ignoring the other 1000 songs (the ones without album info). This has to be about the dumbest thing I've seen in any consumer product in years. I've seen complaints about how lame the shuffle play feature is on these players and how they seem to play the same songs over and over in shuffle mode - well this is the reason why. A large percentage of these users tracks are not even being recognized in shuffle mode.

If you keep all your mp3's tagged by album then you will be fine. If not, then don't go near this player.

This ZEN is a very good player when it worked which was a little over 3 months. The screen is just white now when you turn it on. Creative seems to have no customer service phone number to call, you have to e-mail to return the product. In starting this process I found out the ZEN only has a 90 day labor warranty and that to get it checked to find the problem it cost $25. Knowing this now I will probably buy Apple products even though I like how the ZENs works, this type of warranty is unacceptable to me.