One of the nice things about the Creative Zen is that it is relatively small; it is about the size of a credit card. Unfortunately it is kind of stout. This makes it feel substantially larger than the very thin iPod Nano. The Zen is Camryn Manheim to the iPod Nano's Heidi Klum. The analogy falls apart because it is the Creative Zen that married to black. Yes, like Robert De Niro the Zen only comes in black. This doesn't bother me, however, but it might turn off some.
The 2.5" screen takes up most of the surface space of the Creative Zen. The controls are to the right of the screen. The main functions are handled by a four-way directional pad which is surrounded by a select button. In addition there is a short cut button, a pause/play button, and a back button. The controls work well and it is fairly easy to navigate around the Zen’s slick menus. It is not as nice as iPod's clickwheel, but it works.
The aforementioned screen is one of the Zen's strong points. It is bright, sharp, and displays vibrant colors. Videos look very nice with little to no pixelation. The video playback is good, but you will have to convert most of your videos using Creative’s software. The Zen will not downscale videos and will not play many common formats. However the converted videos look and sound great.
The most important thing about a MP3 player is the sound quality. The Creative Zen is a fabulous sounding player. The bass is deep and tight and every instrument can be heard clearly. Jenny Lewis has never sounded better (SHUT UP). Even with the volume turned up the audio is never muffled. This is easily the best sounding MP3 player that I ever had. Just replace the stock headphones. You'll be doing the Zen and yourself a disservice by using crappy earphones.
The Zen also has a voice recorder and a FM tuner. These features are not important to me, but I suppose they’re nice to have. In addition the Zen has a SD memory slot. For most people 8 gigs is too limiting, so this is a nice feature.
WARNING The Zen has a serious problem; after using the Zen for less than a day I had to reset the player four times because of a bug that I have dubbed the 'White Screen of Death.' The name should tell you what happens. This has not happened while watching a movie or flipping through the menus; the problem seems to occur when locking the player (though not everytime). Getting rid of the white screen is easy enough; just hit the reset button. But the problem is nevertheless annoying.
For $179.99 the Creative Zen is a good flash mp3 player. The audio and video quality is excellent; and the build of the machine is good. But the Zen is not without its share of problems. The storage space is inadequate for most people, video must be converted, and the machine is buggy. As long as you have a really small pin to hit the reset button with and don’t mind the size constraints, I can recommend the Creative Zen.
