Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
smaller than I thought and easy to use, October 14, 2006
I got my zen v and was surprised how tiny it is. It is much smaller than you might think. It's light and easy to use. I found the new joy stick to be a great idea. I didn't have any problems and I dont have tiny fingers. This is an easy player to use and is built beautifully. The quality is as good or better than iPod. I was going to get the zen v plus with video but I couldnt wait and am not that into video on a small player anyhow. The price is very low for these zen v players, especially considering that they are super high build quality. All you have to do is charge the player for a few hours before you mess around with it. So, I highly recommend this delightful player for ease of use and build quality. IMHO it's better than apple and much better than sandisk. You will be impressed. I also would like to stress that the joystick system on this player is easy to use and very simple to figure out. I have had nothing but a good experience using this. Read the manual on the cd if you can hold back from just trying to play with it to figure it out. Even though it doesnt have radio or a video function, the zen v has a lot of options in its menu to mess around with. I am very impressed with the high quality creative is giving out along with low prices. The mp3 market has a lot of options now but the zen v plus is the best for my money. I have a lot of experience with MP3 players and this is the most impressive one yet for its size. Go to a store and check out how small it really is and how nice the player is put together and how easy the navigation is with the new joystick system. You will probably end up getting one. To be honest though, if you do check it out, you won't freak out how small it is when you get it in the mail like I did before seeing it,so flip a coin on that deal.Have fun!
I want to add some things here. First of all, I am not a creative fanboy. Secondly, I own a lot of mp3 players. Now back to the zen V. I've read a lot of bashing on this and I think it's just spin against Creative. First of all, I've had zero problems with this player. I also wanted to say the pictures are better on the screen than you might think from reading some of the reviews on the internet. Although the zen v has mainly gotten very high marks from the pro reviewers, they sometimes mention the controls as hard to use or Ive even seen one review that you cant "scroll". Well, if you hold the joystick you can lol. THey also sometimes say the picture quality isn't so great. Well, I own a few others with picture capability and this is the best and clearest of them all!. I read about 15 reviews before I bought this little creampuff, and I have to laugh at how wrong even the few cons were. I am not praising the zen v as the best overall small but feature filled mp3 player for any other reason than that it is. If you want video and a radio, get the v plus but the zen v is pretty darn cool. I dont even really need the pictures. I just wanted something nice. I own apples irivers, cowens, sandisks and other no name mp3 players. I am dead serious when I say this little gem is hot for good reason. Even the battery life is a little BETTER than they say it is, but if there is a slight negative its the battery life, but it's really not so bad as they say. If a new iPod came out this good, I would praise that too. I have no love for any company that makes these little music players. This one really deserves the praise, and the bashers will lose out as more people talk about how reliable and what a solid and nice looking sounding gem this player really is. Besides that i found out it has the latest chip powering it from Sigmatel, which runs around 200mhz. That is a powerful and award winning relatively expensive chip folks! THis is no cheapo player. From the outside to the inside its all top notch.
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Buy This!, September 1, 2006
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 it had the largest flash memory of any unit that works with the Napster-To-Go subscription, so it can store the largest number of songs and color photographs. The 1 GB version is identical except for the amount of installed flash memory.
Why did I choose to buy a flash memory based MP3 player? 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 the 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 sites like 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 and Audible) that make these available, to 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.
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25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't work well with Audible, September 6, 2006
I bought this as an IPOD alternative for Audible books . It takes a long time to start and stop and does not return to where you left off in a book accurately. Maddening. I'd avoid this if you listen to audiobooks.
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