Creative Zen Nano Plus user reviews (1GB, White)

Pros Compact. Very Good Sound. Easy to use. Has equalizer

Cons Treble can sound 'muddied'.

Summary couldn't find any posting of side by side comparisons of these three
units...so already owning a Ipod Shuffle, I purchased both a Creative
Zen Nano Plus and an IRiver T30. I loaded the same song files into all
three so that the comparison would be valid. I used only the earphones
that came with each unit.
The Ipod is simple as can be to use. Partly good design and partly
fewest features.
The Creative Zen Nano has a decent LCD and a menu system that has a
short learning curve. It is also the only one of the three to have a
built in radio.
The Iriver has the greater learning curve partly because it has more
customizable options.
Both the Creative and the IRiver have line in ability to copy directly
from CDs.
Of course only the Shuffle has a bulit in rechargable battery (not user


replacable) while the other two use AAAs. Of course you can purchase
rechargable AAAs (Rayovac makes ones that take 15 minutes to
recharge!).
Sound quality...My primary concern.
All three have pleasant sound with plenty of volume (too much!).
First of all the Ipod Shuffle has no controls at all to customize the
sound. It does sound very good, however.
The Creative Zen Nano has an equalizer.
The IRiver T30 has both an equalizer and an entire set of other sound
controls from the SRS WOW component.
A fair comparison requires us to set both the Creative and the IRiver
to what I and my son believe to give the best combination of bass and
treble response. Of course that is somewhat subjective. However we both


agreed on the settings.
I know that some 'tests' /reviews say they leave the settings at
'neutral' to be fair...I beg to strongly disagree...after all why
shouldn't the Creative Zen Nano and the IRiver benefit from a
capability that they have built in! Users would surely use those
controls..so they should be evaluated. Each unit producing the best it
can!
Again..all three sound very good.


Treble...The Apple Shuffle Ipod and the IRiver T30 had the best treble.


Clear. The Creative was somewhat muddied in response, but not bad.


Bass...Here the IRiver shone above the others... definitively. The
Creative was second with the Ipod Shuffle not far behind.
I found the following SRS settings to be the 'best' on the IRiver;
SRS...08
Focus..Low
Trubass...10
Boost...60


Overall..the IRiver's sound was definitely the best of the three. The iRiver also supports OGG in addition to WMA and MP3.

Pros Small, light, pretty easy to use, looks

Cons Could be a bit easier to use, ear buds are a tiny bit to big (try Koss sparkplugs), More accessories would be nice

Summary I like the Zen nano (so far), seems to work well & even though you dont have a playlist option you can add folders (e.g. Gym, Car, audio books, Dance, Country etc) & then you can just put your songs in each folder so you almost have a playlist & can select a folder to play depending on what type on tunes you want at the time.
Shop around when looking as some places do not have the full line of colors & some colors cost more.
I got 2 of these from zipzoomfly & a pink one cost $15 more than the white one. Still the chaepest place though.

Pros Small. Light. Competitive price. Works like a standard USB storage device = drag and drop from Windos

Cons Some useful and basic functionality is missing. Slow USB transfer speed.

Summary (This review is for the picky people who like to dig a little deeper into the details.)

I have this player for about a week now and let me say I generally very satisfied with it. Especially when you compare the price to other 'big-name' mp3 players, this turns out to be a gem.
I won't go over the positives, you can find about them in plenty of other reviews.I am going to mention what I found to be the drawbacks of this device which may be of more interest to you.

This player has some, rather silly, limitations and omissions which may cause annoyance to some. Folders and subfolders that you put into the player are all flattened out on a single level. So you can't for example group subfolders together when using the player. They will be treated as all the folders belonged to the root. There is also no option (among the wealth of play modes) to "play folder once". This means that if left untouched, the player will keep on playing all the files it can find until either the files run out, or the battery does. No option for "I just want to listen to this folder only". And there's no sleep function either so if you fall asleep listening to music, you may wake up the next morning with a dead battery. Very unthoughtful.

There is no info available on the length of each song, you only see the elapsed time. Forget about extended ID3 tags, song info, song number, artist and so on. You only get to see the filename if the player is stopped, or a plain song title when in play mode. Nothing else. You do get to see folder name and number if you go to a special menu but during play mode you have no clue what folder (and folder number) you are in, what song number you are listening to... you just see a title scrolling. Also, no remaining time, no song position bar etc... Just very very plain basic info.

These are the main faults I could find. If all that is a big deal to you, or not... it's totally up to you. I find them rather annoying since both of my old portable mp3 CD players (with an even smaller LCD screen) had more decent functionality for file/folder/ID3 tag info.

The battery life is... ok for most. I would prefer to be able to use an AA battery instead (3x the capacity) in exchange for a bit more weight and size. The AAA is fine but if you are like me, and use the player constantly for hours on end, then you might find out it doesn't last too long. I suggest you invest in NiMH rechargeables to save some battery money in the long run. Try to find a charger that can also do a single AAA battery at a time (some only charge them in pairs), since this player only takes a single battery, you should be able to charge one AAA while using the other.

Pros Don't have to charge, 44.1/20hz-20k sound, built in mp3 ripping up to 160, ease of importing/sharing files, bonus features

Cons
1Gb of space (is a Con if you think you want more), doesn't play apple .aac/mp4 files

Summary Here's the deal guys & gals: I can't find anything wrong with this thing: the thing is cheap, light, comes with all the accessories you need, requires no external software for Windows or MAC and has higher sound quality than most Apple players like I-pod. Any problems I read in other people's reviews were uninformed and incorrect. I purchased this player (the black colored one) from Amazon.com for only like $60 with free shipping, about a month ago, and I use it with $9 Sony headphones with ear-clips that I bought at Best Buy, because I prefer those to normal ear buds, like the ones it comes with.

CONS:
The only downside is that if you want to carry around more than 1GB of music and/or files at one time, you should get a bigger creative labs player. This is no problem for me because I am a professional songwriter and singer, and I'm always changing out the music I listen to.

I can find no other downside... I guess another potential downside is that if you want to use Apple's .aac/mp4 format you have to first burn them on to audio CD's and convert them to .mp3 or .wma files. (Note: this problem exists with EVERY legal mp3 player on the market)

PROS:
POWER--You don't have to charge it...Uses a AAA battery and lasts about a month with heavy, daily use. When you are hooked up to a computer the USB powers to save your battery. Plus, it has plenty of options like backlight, power-save, and contrast settings to further the life of the battery

EASE OF USE/SHARING FILES:
Look, all you do is hook it up with the provided USB2 cable and you import/export files like an external drive or folder. You can share music with your friends, or even use it as a flash drive for school or work. It creates menus (or you might call them 'playlists') according to the folders that you create on the thing. I always name mine '[artist] - [album (year)]'.

BUILT IN ENCODING UP TO 160 KPS: and this works extremely well (contrary to ignorant reviews I've read) if you set the levels correctly out of your source. I have been using it to rip mp3's of VINYL right out of the headphone jack of my home stereo tuner and they sound @#$% GREAT! It even comes with the line in cable you need to do this.

FM RADIO, VOICE RECORDING, ETC: all these other features work great. The radio gets great reception and you can even rip mp3's off the radio (although you should realize that these will be significantly lower quality than if you rip from the line in jack).

SOUND QUALITY:
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but this thing operates at 20Hz to 20kHz which is the approximate maximum hearing threshold of the human ears... I-pod and other players are actually lower quality than this, I believe. It also runs at 44.1k which means you get no sound degradation if you rip mp3s at 256k from a CD.

Need I say more... buy some of these before the price goes up or they take them off the market. jb