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...Before I Made My Purchase...

...First off, im not usually the kind of person who would buy a product so quickly after it comes out, I always do my research for products I intend on buying. And also I had told myself I wouldnt buy another mp3 player until my old one, a Zen Neeon, had died. Well as fate would have it, my Neeon did die, about a week ago, and I found my self stranded without a player, right at the time the Zen was hitting the market. I keep up to date with creative products and so I knew of the Zen, I was particularly impressed with its sd slot, and divx/xvid support. I love sd cards, I have too many to count, mostly for storing movies, so I thought given my playerless status and that the Zen was the only player since the Neeon I had seen, that I felt like I could see myself owning, I bought the bullet, and I headed down to my local Dick Smith Electronics, where I had seen it the previous day, for some late night shopping...

...First Impressions...

...I arrived 5 minutes before closing, they were closing the gates when I got there, but I said I knew what I wanted, and they let me in, I headed straight for the cabinet with the Creative products and pointed out what I want, the 8 gigabyte zen, on special for $278 AUD. As of this writing approximately $251 US. The guy opened the cabinet and seemed confused."Thats the old price" he said, "its back up to 340 now, but you can have this one, lucky you." He Commented on my creative shirt, it has a zen micro on it, and then I forked over the cash and walked to the bus stop, contemplating whether i should open it now or wait till I got home. I waited, satisfied with just staring at the deceptively minimal packaging. When I got home I opened it up, and the first thing that hits you is how light it is. The way people talk about it, whether they approve or not, gives it a psychological weight, that its physical form doesnt share. My Neeon was 6gb microdrive, small but you could hear it whirring around. This baby is silent running. Youve seen the tiny usb cable, ill use it for some other things but not the zen. The rest of the packaging is headphones and instructions, plus cd with no media source, just the essentials. The instructions fold out like a big map for some reason. That made me laugh. The player came charged and from the first little show it gives you at the startup screen your hooked with the vibrance of the display. You give your player a name, Nedry is mines name, (My Neeons name was Lando) and your on your way...

...The Details...

...OK, so everyone has an opinion on the zen. A lot of the criticism seems to be coming from vision m owners who were expecting more continuation into that style of hard drive player.Personally I dont like hard drives, im all about flash, but with rumours of a potential vision m successor to appear around christmas, and sim wong hoos recent comment about x-fi in players in the near future, vision m owners may not have to suffer for long. I never owned a vision m, and so many of these criticisms are lost on me.
In Short, The Zen is fantastic. Audio is so clear and crisp I wonder how I ever got along without it. Even compared to my Neeon which was better than anything id heard at the time, it pales in comparison to the zen. The interface is fun, and the screen is beautiful. When you encode video right it is stunning to watch.
(NOTE: A tip if you insist on encoding with your own programs such as Super, if you let the Creative software encode just a portion of a file, and then abort the process, you can right click the aborted file and find the zens optimum encode settings)

The biggest difficulty ive had with the zen so far has been my own fault. The Neeon was a mass storage class device. Drag and Drop removable hardware. I just put things in folders and the Neeon took it from there. And so not only have I had to learn the ins and out of ID3 tags, which I had never before used. I had to go back and tag some 2000 plus files from hundreds of artists and albums. But after two days of tagging software and mp3s I can really say im much happier having it all organised. Ive even mastered the use of album art, though I tend to use pictures of the artists instead of actual albums. I find it more fun. Ill put some of the images I use instead up at the end of this to show you what I mean.
(NOTE: Album art will only show, and in some cases tracks themselves will only show, if you send them to the zen via the creative software. The tracks are still there you just have to go to and select them manually, until you resend them through the software)

S.D. Integration is not something im concerned with. My music is on the player. My movies are on my cards. Re-encoding takes time but its worth it, because i can now watch them on the train, or in bed or wherever.

OK, so any negatives you might be askingż In fact when a review is all positive you have a right to be dubious. Here are the few minor flaws ive noticed, which have yet to cause me any real bother, and can most likely be fixed in future firmware.
(Mine shipped with 1.03.04., and so ive not updated it yet)

1.When playing large video files, fast forwarding for prolonged lengths of time may cause the player screen to turn black, and not respond. Resetting solves the problem, but i hope this will be fixed in future firmware.

2.There is a reported slight screen flicker when the battery is low, it hasnt happened to me yet, but it is evident when powering off.
No real problem for me though.

3.Some people have stated that the reported battery life is longer than the actual player can handle. I have tested this and can get around about what creative claims, 25 hours audio (Ive not tested video) if the screen is turned off, which is done by putting the player on hold. People have complained that this means they cant switch tracks or use the volume, but if you have the creative wired remote, which im happy to report works with the zen swimmingly, you can use all the functions of the player while the screen is off, and not consuming power.

4.For a little while i thought this player was gapless, turns out it isnt, im just not used to such a fast player, gapless playback isnt that big on my list of needs, but this player is really good with live albums, or others that need continous playback. An example i like to use is the perpetual motion machine. There was a guy in texas who claimed he had built a perpetual motion machine, people would come from all around to look at it, then after thirty years one day it just stopped. The scientific community said it wasnt perpetual motion so not of interest. But the guy still built a machine that went under its own power for thirty years!. Thats impressive! Even if its not perfect. [/rant]

Okay, that was long, and as a rewrd, ive got that "album art i promised" and also ive uploaded a video of the interface. Im sorry its shot with a webcam, its all ive got, but i some of the cool functions. Thanks for tuning in everybody, and i hope you all get the chance to use this great player at least once...
...And no i will not stop typing like this...

...see my use of album art...