Customer Reviews

Zen V Plus 8GB Black/red Carry Music Video Clips & Photos Eng/fr

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Have had this model (the 8gb V+ black/red) for about a week now. Love it. I would give it 4.5 stars, but Amazon doesn't allow that. The reason it isn't 5 stars I go into below later.

The picture makes it look bigger than it is. This thing is tiny, will probably fit in the tiny coin/key pocket in your jeans.

The buttons have good feel to them, the 5 way joystick is similar to the one on my Sony Ericsson cellphone. Very intuitive to use. Although if you have big clumsy thumbs, it might take a little getting used to.

Power/Lock button is on the opposite side from the volume control. 3 inputs at the top of the device.
1.) USB port (for syncing and charging)
2.) Headphone jack
3.) Audio In jack for connecting external CD player directly to the Zen V+

The FM tuner is decent, can get a little static-y in-doors if the station isn't very powerful. But was able to pickup all the major stations.

The OLED screen is supposed to save on battery life, which is nice, but is also the reason I kept it from getting full 5 stars. It is very crisp and clear in doors, but outside, especially under the sunshine, it can be hard to see sometimes. I have to cup my hands over it to see the screen if under direct sunlight. My solution is to just make sure I load up the playlist in the car before I step outside in the morning when exercising.

Battery: I believe it is a lithium ion battery. So don't worry about it having battery "memory" like the old nickel metal hydride batteries. Don't wait till it gets on empty. Just plug the thing into the charger every night to ensure it always has full charge. Creative says it gets ~15 hours of play time, I haven't gone that long. Longest I've gone is 1.5 continuous hours, and it didn't make a dent in the onscreen battery display bar.

Charging: This is a bit of a pain. It does not come in the box packaged with a wall charger. It only comes in the box with a usb cable that you use to both charge from your computer and sync music with. Charging via the included USB cable connected to your computer takes up to 6 hours!! So when I bought this, I also bought the Creative brand Zen V + wall charger. WARNING: Creative, in their glorious corporate greed has seen it necessary so that normal generic USB wall/car chargers will not work with the Zen V+ (for now atleast). So factor into your budget the Creative Zen wall charger if you're thinking about buying this. With the wall charger, it only took about an hour to fully charge it from dead empty to full.

O/S and software:
All Creative mp3 players use what is called PlayForSure technology. Also known as MTP players. It is a technology Microsoft developed that allows mp3 players to talk with computers. Some good and bad sides to it.

The included software from creative is "okay", but not great. It does include the MTP drivers, and some software for converting videos to the Zen V format, and some WMP-esque music organizing/synching software.

If you have windows vista, OR windows media player 11, you already have the MTP drivers installed. The only reason then to install the creative software is if you want to convert videos so they will work on the Zen, or if you really don't like WMP11 :D

After I installed the Creative software, I went and download MediaMonkey on the advice of some mp3 player message boards. It is much better functionality wise, and is fully compatible with the Zen V+. So that is what I'm actually using to add/remove music.

The menus on the Zen V+ itself:
Very straight forward and simple. After using my brother's IPod a couple times, I had no problems switching to the Zen V+'s menu, wasn't too hard of a transition. All the basics are there. You can browse by artist, album, playlists, genre, or view all. Full shuffle/repeat/play once features available.

Since this is a MTP device, it organizes music on the Zen via your Mp3's ID3tags. It doesn't care about the folder structure you use in windows to store your mp3s. So make sure you clean up your ID3tags or you might have a lot of songs stuck in the "Unknown" menu under Artists. :) (ID3tags are editable with the Creative software, or WMP11, or most free MP3 players.)

Sound quality: Very good. I'm no audiophile or music snob(I listen to regular pop/rock/alternative stuff, nothing fancy like classical music), but it sounds pretty good on the included Creative headphones. Most of my Mp3s are at 192kpbs, I can crank it up without any noticeable distortion or crackles. There is an option in the audio menu to do "bass boost", but with the included Creative headphones, I couldn't tell a difference in the bass.

Overall, I love it. It does what it is supposed to, without any problems.

Well, my title says it all. But it really is tiny, I'd say about 2/3 the size of a credit card (not SUPER slim though, it's almost exactly the width of a dime standing up on its side), and because it has a wheel with push-button in the middle it is easy to use despite the tiny size.

I love that it has playlists. I dowload my playlists from Napster to Go, and get all of my music and standup comedy from there. I plug it in at work, to the USB charger (keep from draining the battery, not that it's finicky) and my speakers or headphones. Oh, you can also listen by artist or random play all. You can change the sound (like jazz vs live, etc), and put on random vs loop vs normal etc.

Basically, this has everything I need. I am buying my husband a Napster to Go player, and really wanted to get him something different, but when looking at the other player specs, I have to say I'm going to just get him the same player, maybe in black with a red wheel.

I bought the V Plus last month, but had to return it to Amazon. I had the problem that seems to be common in several other reviews on CNET. The software kept freezing in the middle of playback, and I could not do anything - restart song, go back, even turn the player off - without resetting, which requires a pin or paper clip. Happened several times in the first week. My files were never deleted, but it was a pain. I was sad, but could not justify keeping it - I don't plan to carry a safety pin in my pocket when hiking.

It is too bad, there was a lot to like about the player - the small size was great, sound was pretty good with EQ adjustment and menus were easy to navigate. I did not have much problem downloading files, and the bookmarking feature would have been nice to use since I listen to a lot of audiobooks (although I found bookmarking was not as easy to do as I thought anyway).

Sorry, Creative. Hope the software/hardware issues will be improved in the next generation.

I bought this as a replacement for my trusty Rio Carbon(s) which died for the 2nd time (not sure if you can even get refurbs anymore). I basically use the player for International travel and in the car for podcasts so it is not in constant use but I would guess it is getting used about 20 hours a month.

The capacity is about right for my usage and its solid state so you don't have the stability issues as I did with the disk based carbon. So far I've had a lot of little pleasant surprises like the lanyard that allows me to hang this around my neck and listen to it while sleeping on the plane. Another pleasant surprise was that the software seems to work with the IE proxy settings so I can download news at work through the firewall when I'm overseas which I really enjoy. Its also nice and small which makes it convenient for travel, outdoor walks, etc.

The screen is big enough to watch an episode of nightly news but I wouldn't plan on much more than that. Its hard to hold in place for a long period (because of the small size) and the video quality at this screen size is so so. The audio quality is good but I confess that I'm not really an audiophile.

I was also pleasantly surprised that the software was pretty good. I've lived through more than a few creative sound blaster driver disasters so I was worried about this. It actually works well. It is kind of clumsy in the windows vs itunes-monolith way but there's really only two programs that you end up using (an explorer extension and a podcast client). The podcast is a big improvement over public domain software like ipodder in that it takes care of some of the tagging inconsistencies that used to drive me crazy on the Rio. The pod/vidcasts will always end up in the same place on the player menu so you can find them. The only complaint that I have so far is the way the UI triggers video conversion is really poorly handled (but it does work).

Finally the biggest downside is the documentation. Its basically useless. I will probably be spending the next few months discovering the features on my own.

All in all I am very happy with this player. It is easily exceeding my expectations and the best part is that I didn't have to join the Apple fanboys club to have a quality MP3 player!

This does everything it supposed to do. It sounds good. It is very tough, I have dropped it several times - if this was a hard-drive based player I am sure it would be out of commission. The software makes it easy to transfer files. The controls are easy to use. It has been problem free for 10 weeks.

The negatives are:

1. It charges too slow on the USB via the computer. I bought the wall charger which works fine.
2. the ear foam comes off easily.
3. The on/off switch must be held down for about a second to work.

Update: August 8, 2010 this thing died. It wasn't the battery. I had it plugged into the Creative Labs charger, and was listening at the same time.

I liked my Zen Plus 4G so much that I decided to get my daughter the 8G for her birthday. I'm very happy with this product. I've had several mp3 players and this is the best yet.

I have been using this product for more than a month now and it is working great like my previous creative flash player MuVo 512MB. Apart from video (though the screen is small) and audio reply capacity, it has FM radio (32 presets), Line recording, voice recording, Organizer. It can be used for data storage. Top of all, it product is $40 lesser than the 8GB ipad but with lot more features than ipod.

I recommend this product to everyone


Update : April 06, 2010
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Still going strong. The battery life has not gotten reduced, is working as it was 3 years back. Despite dropped multiple times, it has not broken. I have a rubber sleeve on it for protection. My kids have ipod, Nintendo DS lite, DSi, iPhone, Blackberry, Sony Mp3 player, etc. This one beats every thing in loading and managing the songs than any other product.

I've had this thing for a few days, and so far I rather like it. It isn't perfect, of course. My main issue is that it won't automatically sort by only artist (you have to then go through album), or by folder. But using playlists pretty much fixes that. Also, I haven't been able to make any videos convert to its format yet, they're always stopped by some sort of error.

Otherwise this is a great little music player. It has a couple distinct advantages over the iPod (my previous mp3 player). First, you don't need ANY software at all to use it. With Windows XP it just installs itself once you plug it in, and you can drag and drop mp3 files to it with Windows Explorer. The software that comes with it is useful to make playlists and convert videos, but it isn't necessary to play mp3s.

Also, the joystick is nice. I find the iPod's touchpad very annoying, because it's so easy to accidentally touch (normally this suddenly raises the volume) that you ALWAYS need to keep the player on locked mode. This means that when you want to change a song you can't just reach into your pocket and push a button; you have to unlock, then carefully push forward without accidentally changing the volume (usually this involves having to take it out of the pocket), then lock again. Very annoying. The joystick on the Zen V Plus is a much better idea for a portable device. The joystick and buttons aren't too easily pushed, so lock mode is usually unnecessary.

Also, this player has a sound recorder with built-in mic, and an FM radio! Very nice.

The menus of this player are very easy to navigate, and (unlike a few players) it has buttons for volume so you don't need to go through menus to change it. It also has alot of storage space for the price.

In any case, having owned several different mp3 players (iPod, Sansa and BenQ), this is my favourite so far!

Sound quality, excelent! Price, excelent! Everything works fine, but do not try to change or operate the menu in the sun, I mean, with the sunlight in front of it... You are not going to see anything !!!

Good choice, Better than the IPOD thing!

The Creative Zen V plus works nicely, is durable, is attractive, is well made and has a fairly intuitive menu structure. Caveats are . . .

In my normal use it crashes and has to be reset with a pin about once a week; but nothing has ever been lost with a reset.

Synchronizing contacts and calendar items with Outlook is not useful, mainly because it arranges contacts by name instead of by "file as"