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"It really is the best of the hard drive players. Just two minor things keep it from being perfect." on by cownet
Pros: Storage, sound quality, ease of use and battery life!
Cons: Creative will not upgrade software to allow Ogg or FLAC, and there are almost no accesories for this particular Creative product.
Summary: For audiophiles and storage hounds, only the Rio Karma comes close to this thing. The Karma allows for compressesd lossless Ogg and Flac Recording. For me, reliability, battery life, and ease of use, make the Zen Touch the best choice of the two. The size is only slightly larger than the equivelent IPOD. Small price to pay for 24 hour+ battery life! IPOD's short battery life, propriotary quirks, price and moderate sound quality, make it the inferior choice for the audiophile/file hoarder. I gave my wife the 20GB model and just bought the 40GB model. It turns out, I can't fill the darn thing up! So I am recording big files for the best possible sound quality. I take it everywhere. I use an after market FM modulator that plugs into the cigarette lighter for my car (Its like a 1000 disc CD Changer), a Cassette adaptor for my wifes car and the aux plugs for stereo and work. Best of all, I have an entire 25 year old CD collection, and live shows, seperated by Genre and play lists, availible to listen or share at all times.
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"Superb sound merits good 'phones, poor navigation, battery power and storage half of advertised amt." on by biggbrother
Pros: Glorious sound.
Cons: Poor interface, battery power and storage half of advertised amt.
Summary: I have owned the 20 GB Creative Zen Touch for two months now and have used it daily for very long periods since then.
Some thoughts on the Zen Touch, concerning: the sound quality of the player (which begs for high-quality headphones), ease of use (problematic vis a vis Ipod), battery power (significantly less than advertised if you’re listening to higher bitrate files on large headphones), and storage capacity (less than half—half!! of the capacity commonly assumed—please read this last point as it applies to all mp3 players).
SUPERB SOUND MERITING QUALITY ‘PHONES: Sound is my number one priority; it was the deciding factor in the Creative purchase. If that is your concern as well, please, for the love of Peter, buy some good headphones to go with this player. I'm not sure of the relative contribution of player/headphones to overall sound, but I've heard it said that headphones are the most important factor. I bought an awkward and clunky pair of Grado SR80 headphones to go with the player and have to say the sound is phenomenal. The combo is sufficient to reveal details on the Beatles' first record that I've never heard before (like just how incredibly hoarse John had screamed himself by the time they got around to cutting “Twist & Shout”) and that's an un-remastered, relatively poor recording, compressed to 128 kbps in WMA.
THE INTERFACE: If the Cnet reviewers are correct that the Creative’s Touch Pad interface is polarizing, then I’m one of the haters. I thought my frustration was my own personal failing until I borrowed a friend’s Ipod mini and realized the beauty of going in *circular* motions to select songs. Ease of navigation is an absolutely critical issue for any player over 20GB--you're scrolling through thousands of songs, which can get tedious. The Ipod’s scrolling motion and selection--in fact the entire interface--is absolutely intuitive. I 'got it' in the first minute, literally. By contrast, it's been two months and I'm still uncomfortable navigating the Creative's controls. The difference between sliding a thumb in a linear as opposed to circular motion seems ridiculously trite, but it is unbelievably important if you regularly select material rather than using the shuffle function. Also, Cnet is right to rail against the “thumb acrobatics” required by the too-widely-spaced-buttons; the “OK” selector button is also quite disruptively placed.
STORAGE CAPACITY: If you own a moderately sizable (300+ CDs) CD collection that you’d like to try to squeeze onto 20 gigs, you can’t do it with this or any 20GB player. As you know, you'll need to encode songs at at least 128 kbps in WMA for near-CD quality sound. The 10,000 song capacity claimed by Creative and nearly all merchants is horribly deceptive. For those with relatively large music collections, don't fall into this trap--look for a 40 GB+ player.
BATTERY POWER: The advertised battery life is premised on 64 kbps in WMA! Higher bitrates (and decent over-the-ear 'phones like the Grados) apparently suck out significantly more power. My battery life is about half of the advertised capacity. -
"Great device, sturdier than Ipod" on by spmartindale
Pros: Lots of storage space, good sound, ease of operation
Cons: Software takes trial and error to figure out
Summary: Smaller and flimsier (Ipod) is not always better. For $20 more than a 4 gig Ipod mini, I got 20 gigs with the Zen. This thing holds a LOT of music, and the navigation system works great. Sounds great. Plus, the sturdy construction is a huge plus compared to the Ipod. On my first day out with the Zen, I managed to drop kick it off of my bicycle. The Zen became one with the asphalt, doing about 20 mph. It left an impressive scar on the corner of the metal box. But the Zen didn't skip a beat! When I plugged back in, the song was right on track. No ill effects. There is no way an Ipod would have coped with a blow like that - I have 2 friends who have broken their Ipods by dropping them 3 feet onto the floor. For a device designed to be portable, I'll take the sturdier box any day.
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"Excellent Product, Better than the iPod" on by MIFSA_0914
Pros: Great EAX2 based sound quality, Amazingly shocking battery life, great navigating, awesome screen resolution, Anti-Skipping, great features and high speed functioning
Cons: headphones are ok, not good, no external battery, and some menu features canceled from previous Creative products.
Summary: Day after day, Creative is improving its products amazingly, by this new Zen generaton Mp3 player, you can find whatever you need.
The Design:
Pretty new-age and cool, Small, comparing to other devices, a lil heavier than the iPod but its features are way more better, the touch pad unlocks great maneauverablility with the selection, a very cool lock button and slim shape.
Features:
Great features, the shuffle mode is pretty awesome that shuffles your songs in a second so you can listen to your songs randomly, great screen resolution, has a very high speed USB2.0 powered by its great high speed Hard-drive.
Sound:
Sound is tremendesly awesome, based on the new-tech HiFi EAX2 sound engine (One of the best in the world) with great Equlizer Selection and also Customized features. Anti-Skipping features are great comparing to iPod and other major competetors, except for the headphones provided, they are a little bit uncomfortable.
Connectivity/Storage:
The Connectivity is pretty fast, USB2.0 and FireWire features are unlocked, Storage is massive, 10,000 Songs (128k Mp3/64k Wma) and also the open storage provides Customized Disk Drive usage not like the iPod that HIDES! your songs, also as you know iPod doesn't play WMAs.
Recommendations:
I really recommend buying this product, great value with great price, I think iPod is cool and has great scrolling features, but in my opinion this Mp3 Player beats it in many other great specs like for instance (Battery Life) iPod=12hrs/Zen Touch=24hrs. -
"Just like the iPod only costs less." on by Luyba
Pros: software,case, comes with 59 songs, easy to use, small, light, not as ugly as it looks in the pictures,
Cons: Headphones, fat fingered people beware of the touchpad,
Summary: This is a really good mp3 player. A big plus is that it comes with software, manuals, and all the calbles you need. They even give you 59 classical music songs to get you started. Honestly, it's really a lot like the iPod but it costs less. Yes an ipod is more "stylish" but everyone has one and this is more of an original choice. The battery life is good like everyone says.
Its really easy to get music on the player and off of it also. It comes with great software. It even has an audio converter. It's also semi-charged when it arrives so you can hook it up to your PC right away.
It's great and easy to use.
Now the flaws: The headphones SUCK! unless you have big ears then your good. The touch screen is fine but you should turn the double click off because you might accidentaly delete a song like I did. Yes.. you have to be careful about that, since if you press OK and not the play button on the side it gives you options. Make sure its not on "Delete Track" which it only goes on when you scroll. But, that's not a really big deal.
I got used to the scoll pretty quickly so It's not as bad as everyone says...unless you have fat fingers I guess. If you read the manual and see how it works and don't press too light you should be fine. As great as the sofware is in your music Library it can get kind of confusing.
Also be prepared to enter a lot of the Track, Album, and Genre Names.
Overall it's a great buy. I highly recommend it.
Creative ZEN Touch user reviews (20GB)
