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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Creative Zen 4 GB Portable Media Player (Black) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Creative Zen 4 GB Portable Media Player (Black) Reviews (cont...)Date: 2008-10-26 Good For The Casual Listener I have the Creative Zen 4GB player for just under a year now and I have had mixed feelings for this MP3 player. It had some great potential but due to several design decisions by Creative it never had a chance to live up to them. The pros of the device are: Small form factor Expandable memory in the form of an SD card slot FM tuner Cons: The screen will scratch at the drop of a hat You cannot sync play lists to the SD card. The unit will read the files in order of file name Battery life is just plain abysmal and the unit needs charging almost twice a day Included software leaves more than a little to be desired On screen navigation is a pain to use I've been a fan of Creative hardware for years and I wanted to stick with a name I trusted when getting a media player for the first time. Due to how the included features of the device are implemented I have to sadly say that Creative dropped the ball on this device. That being said, if all you are looking for is something that will play music and watch the occasional video then this is a handy device at it's current price point (under $100). Some helpful hints are to use Windows Media Player to sync your music content to the device. It's much more intuitive than the bundled software. As for podcast support it's just easier to download the podcasts via my web browser or through iTunes and then create playlists of the casts and listen to them that way. The Zencast software really is a bit of a joke. Date: 2008-10-25 Nice mp3 The Creative Zen 16 GB mp3 is a nice compact player which easily fits into any pocket. Date: 2008-10-25 Good player 1. Although advertised as playing AAC files, it plays only files encoded by iTunes. I have thousands of (unprotected) AAC's encoded with either Phatnoise Media Manager or NeroAACEnc, none of which will play on the Zen. Forunately I found a hack online to fix them, and it seems to be working. Also, I have heard the latest relese of Nero produces Zen-compatible AAC files. So, it's been a lot of work, but I think my library of AAC's will work out. MP3's of course are no problem; they play just fine. 2. Unit freezes from time to time. It's happened to me a few times in the few weeks I've had it. If you need something as reliable as a washing machine, maybe it's not for you. Maybe no software product is. Actually you just reset it and it works fine again. In spite of these 2 problems -- and the AAC issue would not affect most people -- I really like the Zen. It has a much better screen and more features than a Nano at the same price point. You are not tied to Itunes or any proprietary cables either. Date: 2008-10-24 pure pleasure excellent product for mp3 listening and reading books and watching clips of favorite videos. soun is great but i switched to bose headphones now thats heaven. i walk most of the day in a very quiet neighborhood as a letter carrier and this makes this even nicer. love the interface nice clear screen though the ascessories are pricey{screen cover etc} and the price, no one is cheaper--radio shack 119. ,cicuit city 109. you get the picture. not a ipod fan that status that goes with it turns me off. for under a 100.00 4 gig--plus media card slot you cant go wrong. Date: 2008-10-24 Reasons to avoid this Creative Labs Zen player. This review is based on my experience with two Creative Zen 4GB players. I returned the first one because it was dead right out of the box. The second one worked wonderfully at first and then died after 32 days. No video, no audio, no charging light. No response from any buttons. Please understand that the player wasn't abused in any way, it just stopped working one morning. I have previously worked as Tech Support for 5 years handling software problems and I'm pretty comfortable with troubleshooting or at least following directions. The Creative Labs website has some simple troubleshooting suggestions which I followed and which didn't work in my case. After going through the troubleshooting steps I emailed Creative (I didn't find a phone number listed on the website although there are two posted by a couple of other reviewers here) and I received an email from Tech Support the next day. Unfortunately the email was only a rehash of the same troubleshooting steps available on the website. Ineffective. I returned the 2nd player and bought a Sony Walkman 4GB. My advice would be to skip this model since there seem to be so many people experiencing similar 'dead' issues. It's too much of a crap shoot. If you do buy it then also be sure to get an extended replacement warranty from your place of purchase so you can just replace it without having to deal with Creative Labs. Creative Labs Tech Support seems pretty useless. Had the player continued working I would have rated it at 5 stars but as I had 2 out of 2 players die on me AND since Creative support is so weak I optimistically rate it at 2 stars. I feel you would be taking a pretty big chance on this mp3 player. I hope this review helps you to avoid the problems I and others have had with this Creative Labs model.
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