Opinions: The Creative Zen

In what will (hopefully) be the first part of an ongoing series, I present my opinions on the Creative Zen, the new MP3 player (media player?) I got yesterday. There are no pictures in this post, and if you want a professional review just search around the net a bit. So, to begin ...

It's tiny. The size of a credit card, which makes it small enough to fit in most pockets, or perhaps even wallets (although it's a bit thick for mine), while being big enough that you won't lose it as easily as an SD card. Despite being so tiny, the interface is really easy to use, and the buttons are fairly intuitive (once you've read a bit of the quick-start guide), so it doesn't take much thought to navigate through it. There's only one button which I don't really understand, but it's not essential for usage of the device.

It has 9 buttons used to control the interface, in addition to the on/off switch. These include the standard four-buttons-in-a-square-with-another-in-the-middle, a menu and back button above this square, and play/pause button (and the one which I don't understand) below. All of these buttons are to the right of the screen, and the device is clearly designed to be used with the right hand, so left-handed people may have some difficulties with it. The buttons, and in fact the entire screen-side of the player, are very prone to picking up fingerprint marks. I would rather that they were not, but I don't have much of a choice. The player is black, so they're no that obvious unless light is being reflected off them, and cleaning it off with a wet paper towel seems to work fairly well, although it's probably not a good idea.

The interface itself is not as responsive as it could be, but is overall easy to navigate. It looks pretty good, with very polished graphics. There are some areas which you may need to play around with a bit to fully understand - the FM tuner, for example - but understanding them did not take very long.

4GB (3.7 GiB) of storage allows me to have around 20% of my collection on it, or perhaps a bit less. While I would like to be able to mirror my entire collection, this is still okay, and, as storage sizes go up to 32GB (for $250), someone who was willing to throw more money at it would be able to store a lot more on it. It also has an SD card slot, which means that, if I ever feel a need for additional storage, or want to carry around a collection of additional music, I could invest in a number of fairly small SD cards (2GB ones can be had for around $10, and 1GB for around $4. 4GB is under $40. 2GB are my preference: a good amount of storage, and I know that they will work with my camera, so if I need to I can wipe them and use them to take pictures - thus, storing all of my music on SD cards would probably cost around $100, or less as time goes on), label them based on the music they contain, and carry them around.

It works fine with Linux, although, since it's using a rather weird filesystem, or (I've heard) a database instead of a filesystem, I've had to use Amarok to talk to it (which isn't an issue, I just prefer normal filesystems). Works perfectly, if slowly. It has a mode where it functions as an SD card reader as well, allowing an SD card in it to be accessed through a normal filesystem.

The cable it comes with is very, very short, but, since it's a stanard interface, getting a longer cable would be easy if I felt like it. The earbuds it comes with have a much longer cable than my old iPod earbuds, which is really great, as it's long enough that I can keep it in my pocket. I also got a packet of screen protectors, little plastic sheets which can be pasted onto the screen, and they seem to be working, although I can't figure out how to get the first one off.

Audio playback is great, nice high-quality sound and all that. While I haven't been able to get it to play any of my videos (it wants lower resolution files, and I don't feel like figuring out how to reincode them. The software included with it has some issues under WINE, so video playback will have to wait for a while), it plays the included videos fairly well (which is to be expected). There's also a library of pre-installed music, including some audiobooks, which I promptly deleted to free up some space.

Eventually, I'll reincode some videos at whatever resolution it wants, and try playing them on it. Expect another post or an update when I do.

The claimed battery life - 30 hours for audio, 5 for video - is amazing, especially since the charge time was around 2 hours for the initial charge. I can't give any information on what I've observed the battery life to be, or subsequent charge times, but if I can get away with only recharging it once every one or two weeks (say, three to four hours of audio on week-days, probably a bit under once a week), I'll be happy - keep in mind that my other portable device, an Eee PC, needs to be recharged after around two hours of use, severly limiting it (and making me want to get an internet tablet, such as the N810, which is very, very shiny).

Hmm, what else ... The microphone! It works, it's good for recording thoughts and whatnot. Volume has to be turned up to hear it, though (I've found that a volume of around 4 (out of 25 or so) is perfect for most of my music, with a maximum of 6. Podcasts require higher volumes. There's an option for smart volume adjustment, which I think that I'll try, to see if it can even out everything so I don't have to tweak the volume all the time). It's theoretically very sensitive, but I haven't tested that very well. It would be nice if the device also had audio-in, so that I could use my own microphone, but it doesn't, which is fine. After all, how often would I use audio-in?

The radio works. It's pretty good, although KQED reception is a lot worse than KALW.

It comes with a SD card place-holder inserted into the SD card slot, which I prompty lost, and then found a few hours later, along with a pen.

The back of the device is more rubber-like, and resists finger-prints. It also feels a lot better than the plastic on the front, a lot smoother, lower-friction. This is good.

That's basically all I have to say about it.

Link - Creative Zen. $99.99 for the version I have (though they dropped the price by 10% right after I bought it, presumably for a promotion), price goes as high as $249.99 for 32GB, and as low as $79.99 for 2GB. There's also a more expensive version with WiFi (the 16GB or 32GB Zen X-Fi), and a more expensive version with built-in speakers (the 8GB Zen X-Fi), which you might want to know about if you have a lot of money to spend on an MP3 player.

(If you have any opinions, feedback, etc. about this post, please comment. Comments are moderated, however, so I'll have to approve them before they appear. Or, as most people reading this probably know who I am, you could contact me via AIM / GTalk / Reality.)