 Creative Zen 8 GB MP3 Player (Black) home electronics. |
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Creative Zen 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)
cheap audio, video, ultimate electronics for sale
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List Price: $199.99
Our Price:
$135.99
You Save: $64
Features
• Enjoy all your media on a device that's about the width of a credit card
• Watch 32 hours of videos, enjoy up to 2,000 of your favorite songs or share hundreds of photos with your friends
• 2.5-inch TFT color display with 320 x 240-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors
• Clock and alarm function, volume restriction, eight equalizer settings, and a USB hard drive mode
• Weighs 2.1 ounces and measures 3.26 x 2.16 x .44 inches (W x H x D) |
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Creative Zen 8 GB MP3 Player (Black) description
Bring your media with you wherever you roam with the Creative Zen 8GB player. Watch 32 hours of videos, enjoy up to 2,000 of your favorite ... review details
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Creative Zen 8 GB MP3 Player (Black) Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Great hardware, but software kills experience
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For three years I used a [[ASIN:B000E15BQI Creative Labs 70PD055000031 Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB]] and loved it. Sure, it was clunky and the size of a Walkman, but since I grew up with those portable tape players, it worked fine for me. Syncing was stress-free on a variety of software (RealPlayer, Rhapsody, WinMediaPlayer, and even Creative's house app.) But, around Christmas time, it finally got to the point where it was full almost all the time. Since I had ripped my music to MP3 @ 192bps, I figured I'd just re-rip everything and save enough space to get another year out of the old friend. All that churning was too much for the disk, and the capacity quickly dropped from 30GB to 20GB due to disk errors.
My overall good experience with Creative led me to look at them again for a replacement. I decided to go flash instead of drive-based, and wanted something that supported videos and subscription-based music files (Rhapsody to Go). The new Zens looked like the best combination of capabilities/price, so I got myself one for a belated holiday gift.
At first, I was impressed. The device itself is both sleek and light and surprisingly solid. The quality of video and audio playback is great, up to the Creative standards.
But a couple of months of use have revealed a much higher stress level than my old Xtra. Syncing is a slow process on most apps (although WinMediaPlayer seems fastest). Regardless of player, transfers sometimes hang. It works with Rhapsody, but only when everything goes well. If anything happens during a Rhapsody sync or update, the players gets confused and redownloads everything again, even through the original files are still there. The need to "import" supposedly supported video formats is a major hassle. And the memory card feature is almost useless -- as other reviewers note, it is totally unintegrated with the main player. It's bad enough you have to browse a specific folder to play music there, if anything happens during playback (like an idle shutdown), the player makes you go back to the main memory card menu and start browsing all over again. You can't even see the card when browsing using Windows Explorer or Media Player. Needless to say, you can't store protected Rhapsody files there.
If the main thing you listen to is music you own (rather than rent) and you don't mind letting the little guy sit for 10 minutes or so to transfer a couple of albums, this player should work for you. I'm personally disappointed and will be looking at other manufacturers when it's time to replace this one. |
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