Customer Reviews

Creative Zen V 4 GB Portable Media Player (Black/Blue)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

For one, I am not a fan of Apple as a company and will always buy anything but an IPod. From quite a bit of research I figured the Creative Zen was one of the better options.

This player generally works fine, but has two flaws that REALLY bother me! One of the most important features of an MP3 player is the ability to put all your music in it and then hit "random play" to have it cycle through your music. This does about as bad a job of that as could be possible. It will constantly feed you some of the same songs on a regular basis while seemingly never getting to some of the others. As a software developer, this really bothers me because programming a random search algorithm is generally one of the easier things you can do, and if you need to pair that with keeping a little document to reference of what has already been played so as not to repeat things too soon, that also is not hard for even the most junior programmer to do (i.e., Creative has no excuse why this feature is so bad). Then the fact that it does such a poor job of this has to make you wonder about just what else doesnt work so well but isnt so obvious. Some of the other negative reviews here indicate other problems that I havent encountered, but would be indicative of some poor programming by Creative. I think the menu system leaves a bit to be desired as well and results in too much navigating and clicking around to do simple things (i.e., the software is not as well designed or configurable as it could be). I am also pretty sure this unit doesnt allow you to record the radio, but it is so hard to tell because their documentation is thoroughly inadequate and doesn't even give a basic walkthru of 90% of the features.

Now to the thing that irriates me the most. I am not one who cares to buy music online... so 95% of the MP3s I have come from being ripped from my CD collection. The software program that comes with this, of course is geared to work with this particular player. So, if you rip using it, it will do more work and can save a copy to your player and your computer hard drive at the same time at a very decent speed. It is a much quicker process than using Windows Media Player or Music Match Jukebox to rip the music and then copy it to your player. After spending 2 hours shuffling CDs and ripping directly to the player, I realized it was ripping in WMA format. That sucks, because I want MP3s... as long as I am taking the time to shuffle CDs and rip, I want to be able to burn the SAME MP3s to CDs so that I can burn them to CD for archiving and play the MP3 CDs in devices that can do that... MP3s tend to work on all brands, not WMAs. Anyway, I go to the settings area of Creative's software package and change the setting for it to rip to MP3... and low and behold, I can do that... ONLY IF I buy their MP3 ripping support package at an additional $9.99. WTF? Yeah... nice... it is an MP3 player, but I have to pay more to rip my CDs to MP3 format! There is no TECHNICAL reason for this... it simply means Creative is using the opportunity to withhold a feature you will WANT so they can get more money from you. There is no other way to put that. It is pathetic and unnacceptable!

Contacting their technical support is absolutely useless because they clearly will not read your problem and respond to it in a personalized manner. Instead, you will get form responses stating their policies or pointing you to "how to do it with Windows Media Player 10". I am sorry, but if I am paying $150+ for the player, I certainly expect the software to do all the standardly expected things. I did not see any disclaimer on the box about having to pay extra for MP3 ripping. I went back and forth complaining to Creative about this particular issue and how I felt it was wrong for them to charge for it. All I got them to admit was it was something that was available in prior versions of their software that is not available any longer without buying the package for MP3 support. After many iterations, it got to the point where their responses didnt even match the situation... prompting a new term, I will call e-ignoring me. ; )

This is why this player deserves only 2 stars. The unacceptably bad Random feature (which requires you to skip songs regularly) is worth a star deduction in itself, but their terrible customer service and price gouging policies are truly unacceptable. There has to be a better option than a Creative Player and I would recommend most people look for it. When buying something like this, you shouldn't have to get additional software and I have talked to many people who own players from other companies where the software does rip to MP3 without further charge. Ripping through an external program and then loading the player does work here, but it is certainly slower. Windows Media Player makes the process too cumbersome for my taste. Music Match Jukebox does ok, but they purposely make the ripping process slow and then constantly bug you with popups to try to get you to upgrade THEIR software with their own $9.99 (or more) purchase. I am tired of companies always trying to make a buck at the expense of the customer. With Music Match, I understand, the basic player is free... with Creative, sorry, we already had to pay for the product, to have to may more to rip MP3s is essentially making us pay $10+ more for a product we already purchased.

As others have pointed out... this will not hold the amount of songs they advertise because no one sane uses an 64KB rate... even 128KB is hardly good enough. I do 160KB and will end up getting between 600 and 700 songs on this unit. But, this "problem" is the same on all players, their song claims are just unrealistic to the real world... just know that going in... if you want oodles of songs, go for the hard drive models that hold 30GB... but, 700 songs is ALOT more than it seems and the flash memory players are still better for running and such... jolting and bouncing has no effect on them in terms of theoretical wear and tear.

If not for the fact that returning electronics is a pain and there are usually restocking fees, I would have returned this unit. I bought my son one as well that has not been opened and since that will have the same problems I encountered with mine, we are returning it. I told Creative I wanted them to give me the MP3 support I expected for free or I would return my son's unit and post this honest (but unflattering) feedback here. They would not even acknowledge my request (which I think was reasonable), so here my honest assessment is. You might disagree with my assessments, and that's fine, but if I read what I am writing here, I would have not bought this player... and I wish I would have at least known all of this before hand. Then I could have made an educated choice rather than be so disappointed by the things this player and software do poorly.

I had a Zen Vision:M but I returned it because I decided I didn't need quite that much storage capacity and the hard drive seemed to sputter and whirr too often and I wanted the peace of mind that comes with owning a flash player compared to a hard drive player, so I decided to go with the Zen V since it's interface is almost identical to that of the Zen Vision M's(which I liked).

The first thing you will notice is the physical design. Initially I wasn't that impressed, but it's really grown on me. The height x width dimensions are comparitively much much smaller than the iPod nano. You can actually wrap your entire hand around the device, and the soft finish feels very nice in your hand. The second color that fills the seams of the player is a very nice touch as well.

The music is organized your standard Artist-Album-Song interface that is becoming quite a bit stale in my opinion. Still, it's as simple as you can get I suppose. The device officially supports album art although it seems to be very hit-or-miss in that regard in my experience. The screen is vibrant and colorful but is very hard to see in bright sunlight.

The middle joystick is used for navigation and it works very well in that regard, although wedging your thumb underneath to move upward can be tricky sometimes and result in an accidental button push. A dedicated volume control switch is found on the side and a hold switch on top.

The player syncs with WMP11 via USB connection. Syncing it is a snap although I was not impressed with the transfer speeds. Also, if you sync the tracks on your player back to another computer, album art will not be attached to the music tracks.

One final note, if you are a newbie to buying MP3 players make note of the different sized models. Creative boasts that the 2GB model holds 1000 songs, but looking at the fine print reveals this is based on a 64kbps bit rate! If you have no idea what that means, it means your music collection is most likely encoded at twice that amount, 128kbps, which is the general default setting for most ripping programs. So a rule of thumb would be to cut the the number of songs on the box in half.

Summary:

Pros:
Excellent physical design
Easy to use interface
Good navigation
Great sound quality

Cons:
On-the-go playlist creation is flawed
Album art support hit-or-miss
Slow transfer speeds from WMP11
Accesories rarely available in brick-and-mortar stores

Ultimately, I recommend the Zen V over the iPod nano mostly on the strength of it's vastly superior physical design.

Update:

The player freezes with no sound and with the screen on (displaying album artwork), at random times and for no apparent reason. One of my two units had to be reset so many times that it can no longer be reset: it feels like that internal pad you press on with a sharp pin has now disappeared (it must have broken off). Our only recourse now is to wait 3 days for the battery to run dead, and hope that it will be reset simply by recharging it from scratch. We've only had this unit since August (it's now December), so I no longer feel the reliability level of this product is sufficient to justify its purchase. Buy something else that doesn't have to be reset all the time!



I bought the 2 GB model because the 4 GB version wasn't available yet and it had the largest flash memory of any unit that works with my Napster-To-Go subscription, so it can store the largest number of songs and color photographs. The 4 GB version is identical except for the amount of installed flash memory.

Why did I choose a flash memory based MP3 player? Napster-To-Go compatible hard drive models with much larger storage capacity abound, but I figure they'll break prematurely because they use a hard drive that can't withstand much jogging, accidental bumping or dropping.

I bought two of these players plus the separately sold AC wall charger, and attached one of them to the wall charger for 6 hours, while I attached the other one to a USB port on my PC to charge it for 6 hours.

At the end of 6 hours, the unit attached to the PC was fine until I unplugged it, then it went comatose and would not even revive when the reset button was pushed several times. I had to exchange it for a replacement unit just two days after buying it.

The unit attached to the wall charger was fine, and I went on to load it up with music using my Napster-To-Go subscription. That was fine until 2 weeks later, when my wife charged it on a PC using the USB cable. After charging and disconnecting from the PC, it too went comatose.

This time I was able to revive it by pushing the reset button.

Then I took a look at the other unit, which had been charging on the AC wall charger. It had also gone comatose, and I was able to revive it by pushing its reset button.

The reset button is inside a tiny hole on the left edge of this unit. You can find it by following the thin groove that's below the screen all the way to the left edge of the unit, where you'll find it on the side. The picture in the manual does NOT accurately depict its location.

The hole leading to the reset button is very, very small. The instructions say to penetrate that hole with a pin.

I used the sharp end of a safety pin to do this. When the pin is inserted, it's quite easy to miss the reset button unless the pin is inserted at exactly the right angle. You'll know it's not at the right angle if you don't feel that you're pushing on a pad with a spring behind it when you reset the unit. That pad travels a short distance until it's stopped by a control surface inside the unit; that's when you know it has been reset.

The reset system should be redesigned so that it doesn't depend on the angle you insert the pin to work. I suspect that the first unit I returned could have been reset if I had known that you have to insert the pin at just the right angle to do it. Since I didn't know, my several attempts to reset it were not successful.

Resetting the unit is akin to rebooting a PC: it revives it when the internal software (called "firmware") has frozen by restarting the software. It does not erase your songs or photos.

Make no mistake: this MP3 player looks, feels and works beautifully. However, since the firmware is newly designed, it appears to have bugs relating to disconnecting it from USB or charger power that cause it to freeze, and the reset button is a little hard to use if you don't know about the things I described above that could cause you to be unable to reset it. You may just end up with a unit that's frozen and not be able to reset it.

It needs to be a little more user friendly than that. Hopefully a future firmware update will be available that will lower the occurrence of the unit locking up (freezing), especially when disconnecting from a USB port or AC charger after recharging it. As another user noted, the "safe disconnect" icon is often times not even in the system tray.

If you don't subscribe to Napster-To-Go, your options to get content for your MP3 player are to transfer your favorite songs from CDs you own to your hard disk ("ripping the songs"), or purchase songs one track or album at a time, at a price ranging from 88 to 99 cents per song from Napster, Rhapsody or WalMart.

You can also download books you want to listen to (such as best sellers and classics) or "podcasts" (your favorite newspapers read aloud, or your favorite radio programs like NPR) from a plethora of sites (like NetLibrary or Audible) that make these available, onto your computer's hard drive. Now you can listen to your music, audible books and podcasts over your PC loudspeakers while sitting at your PC.

Then you can transfer your songs, audible books and podcasts from the hard drive of your PC to your MP3 player(s). This enables you to take your MP3 player with you to enjoy listening in your car, in your office, while jogging or working out at the gym, while shopping, or at the pool or the beach to hear your music, audible books and podcasts anywhere.

I recently received the Creative Zen V as a birthday gift and I couldn't be happier. This is a fabulous little mp3 player.

I too have had other mp3 players (had a horrible experience with a Dell DJ and a lovely experience with a Rio Sport) and this is a wonderful compromise between a bigger player like the Dell (or an iPod which I refuse to buy and become enslaved to Apple) and my little Rio.

The Zen is tiny in overall size; smaller than my debit card in dimension and about the size of a AAA battery in thickness. You can very easily drop it in your pocket and forget about it. A wonderful feature when you're working out and don't want to feel like you're lugging around a brick!

It comes with your typical set of ear buds but I prefer sport earphones that fit over my ears and they work just fine with the Zen.

I've got the 4 mb model and when I have it fully loaded with music, I average around 800 songs on the player.

The interface to add music and manage playlists, etc. is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. It can't get any simpler than the command entitled "Load player with music"! You can also use regular old drop-and-drag to add music as well.

The battery life has been phenomenal and I have yet to run it down completely even after listening to it most days while at work and in the evenings when working out. (Any time you have it plugged into your pc to add music, remove music, etc. it's getting re-charged...)

The screen is very clear and easy to read for the small size of the player itself. Again, navigating around the player is very intuitive. You can add and remove features from the main menu screen as it suits your needs. The controls for playing songs, controlling volume, etc. are also easy to use and pretty much idiot proof.

I love flash players because as others have said, they never skip a beat no matter what you're doing and the Zen is no exception. I run on streets, sidewalks and uneven terrain and there's never any worry about rattling the player too much as you bounce around.

All in all I couldn't be happier with this player, especially for the price! I would (and have) enthusiastically recommended this to anyone in the market for a simple to use player that's inexpensive and can hold a ton of songs!

I have had my player for a month now. I did some extensive research before I bought mine and found that every MP3 player on the market had problems with freezing. I was not paying attention when I bought the ZenV and thought it had an FM radio, which it doesn't-- my fault. It doesn't matter though because I am quite happy with it's performance so far. Out of all the players I have researched this one has the best ratings per number of people who have responded. My player did freeze up on me once, but I was advancing quite quickly through the now playing selection- no different than if you do too much with your PC at one time.

I will agree that the booklet does not include enough information about the details of working the player. I must say I learned alot more from reading the reviews of the player than the instuctional book. I keep a pin with me when I use it, but like I said, I only had to reset it once.

I have no complaints about the speed of the installation or transfer and ripping of music. To me everything was fast enough. I could understand how having to plug your player into your computer to charge it would be a hassle while travelling. So buy the adapter. At the price of this player it's not that much more. Plus if you don't travel alot, you must sleep... sometime. It takes six hours. If you don't get six hours of sleep, you work too much. If you can't live with out your player for six hours, you need help. And, you only need to charge it that long if you let it die. Plug it in when you sleep and you're fine.

I was debating whether to buy this or the Zen V plus, and I am happy I bought this one and saved $30. The Plus has video, but I don't have any intention of watching thumbnail-sized movies--especially considering how fast video eats batteries. The sound is very good for an MP3 player (almost as good as CDs if you choose the highest recording quality).

I bought this player in large part because it has a bookmarking feature for audiobooks.

The controls are pretty intuitive and the buttons are in good places.

There are some drawbacks:
1. Creative will charge you (some ridiculous amount--$13 I think) if you call their tech support after the first 60 days.
2. The battery is really bad. It is built into the machine, and it recharges extremely slowly. I would prefer regular old batteries like my old iaudio had. I'm not looking forward to the time when the built-in battery becomes weak. I will have to send in the entire machine to the company so they can put in a new battery, almost certainly at a high price. The majority of other players are also like this, however--I don't know why the designers think people want non-removable batteries. Also: you can't even listen to the player while it is charging.
3. You have to install a bunch of software that comes with the player in order to use it. But I can't complain too much about this because most players are the same, and at least some of this software is good.
4. If you turn off the player in the middle of a track, it starts start up in the same place again (good for audiobooks)--BUT if you pause it before turning it off, your place will be lost.
5. If you are listening to track 2 and want to rewind past the beginning of track 2 in order to hear the end of track 1, you can't do it. This is annoying if you want to listen to audiobooks that have multiple tracks and you miss something towards the end of a track. To be honest, though, I have not found a player that has all the features one would want for audiobooks. Whichever company is first to make a player that has all the features audiobook fans want is almost guaranteed to make a lot of money!!!!
6. The player freezes up sometimes for no apparent reason when you are listening to it. So you always have to carry a pin for pressing the emergency shutdown button. If you don't have a pin with you, the screen will just stay in the on position until your battery is completely drained. Then you have to plug it in again and wait another six hours or so for it to charge. This crashing is actually a pretty serious defect.
7. There is a shrieking sound when rewinding/fast forwarding.

In sum, it has a lot of drawbacks, but it has some important benefits too, like excellent sound, easy-to-use buttons and menus, and a bookmarking feature. The answer to whether it is the best choice for the money is "maybe."

UPDATE 5/5/2009: My player stopped working for no apparent reason a few months ago. I sent it in to Creative for warantee service. I had to pay a fee just to do that. And then they returned it to me still broken. There's no way to talk to a real person at their office (at least not that I've figured out). My opinion of Creative is much lower now.
LATER UPDATE: Well, I sent it back again (I paid the postage) and this time Creative just sent me a new player, which works.

Wanted to record CD's, cassettes, LP's... w/out bothering the computer.
If you have headphone output, the inline record works. Direct to this little cutie. Have to adj. volume & it takes as long as the song plays, but I think it's great.

This is a great little MP3 player. I can use almost any program to sync it with and I can add songs one by one if I want. Creating a playlist is incredibly easy, as as editing them! The only drawback on the entire thing is that the instruction manual wasn't completely clear on everything and I had to go to the website for some answers, but the website is very helpful and I was able to get the information I needed. HIGHLY recommended!!

Recently I was heartbroken when I misplaced my 30gig video vision M. Music makes my world go round, as a college student i sometimes have a long walk across campus to get to my next class and music helps me focus. As such set out to buy a new creative zen, having been so impressed with the last one. I selected the V for a few reasons:

1. the size- it's very very tiny, it fits in the fifth pocket of women's jeans that is normally used for chapstick!
2. the price- It's comparable to the Ipod with features I want more
3. the Zen name. I've never been let down once by them
4. the design- I love when I walk into a class and my classmate pulls me aside to ask me what MP3 player I'm using because it looks nice and they are fed up with their IPod or Itunes. everyone says it's one of the nicest looking MP3 players they have seen, and when I tell them details they all say they are going to drop their old I pod and make the switch.

I have now had my V for about two months and I'm glad to report that I have not had any of the operating issues that the negative reviews on this site claim. There is one downside of the V and that is the lack of products designed for it, but they are not impossible to find. amazon has a wide range of cases and other things to go with the V.

I have never found a type of file it didnt play in the strictly music realm and the recorder is great for lectures and other things you might want to listen to later. over all a very nice little product.

My irrational desire to possess a tiny movie playing gadget eventually led me to buy the 4GB Creative Zen V.

Of the video MP3 players available on Amazon, it seemed to have the fewest negative reviews. Other video MP3 players made by different companies tended to die quickly and could not be revived or fixed.

I've owned mine for about 3 months and it's still working. I'm generally happy with it.

The positive:
-The controls are pretty easy to manipulate. The manual teaches you the basics and refers you to a website for the complete controls
-The software seems to work well for organizing songs on the player and converting 30 minute video files to be played on the player
-It's impressively tiny
-Good color and picture on the screen and good sound on the audio

The negative:
-While the player's flash memory is large enough to hold a full 2 hour movie and more, the conversion software can't seem to convert a video that is longer than about 30 minutes
-This last point is sort of moot if you consider how rarely you'll actually be watching something longer than a few minutes on a 1 inch screen. So, the tiny screen could be considered a negative when you realize the actual experience of watching a video.

If you've read this far, you may ask yourself if you really want a tiny video player. I'm still charmed by this gadget, but I honestly never watch videos on it. It's not often that a tiny video player is useful. It's just kind of fun!