Editorial Review
Bring your media with you wherever you roam with the Creative Zen 4GB player. Watch 16 hours of videos, enjoy up to 1,000 of your favorite songs or share hundreds of photos with your friends. And do it all on a device that's about the width of a credit card.
A razor sharp 2.5-inch display makes your photos and videos come to life. See the Zen in detail. |
Small size. Big features. All in the palm of your hand. View larger. |
Add even more storage capacity via the SD card slot. View larger. |
Design The Zen sports a 2.5-inch TFT color display with 320 x 240-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors. This razor sharp display is packaged in a device that weighs just 2.1 ounces and measures 3.26 x 2.16 x .44 inches (W x H x D). The internal battery powers the Zen for up to 25 hours of continuous audio playback and up to five hours of continuous video playback. Use the Zen's SD slot to expand your portable media library with music, photos and videos stored on your SD card. There's also a handy built-in microphone for capturing notes on the go.
Features
Load up up your favorite songs, as well as your album art, and get going with the Zen. The device supports iTunes Plus tracks from the iTunes store and MP3 and WMA tracks. Subscription and pay-per-download music services are supported, as well. Discover, save, and play millions of songs when subscribing to services such as Yahoo Music Unlimited and Napster To Go. You can even tune into your favorite stations with the Zen's FM radio. The radio allows you to save up to 34 presets.
The Zen has you covered when it comes to video, too. The device supports MJPEG, WMV9 and--with transcoding--MPEG1 and 2, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4 and 5, and XviD. Enjoy purchased movies and TV shows from online services, such as Amazon Unbox and Walmart.com. Watch home videos. Even load your Tivo To Go movies and TV shows onto your Zen.
Additional features include a clock and alarm function, volume restriction, eight equalizer settings, and a USB hard drive mode, which allows you to drag and drop files directly to and from your Zen. The Zen can also function as a handy organizer, allowing you to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook and display your contacts, calendar, and tasks.
What's in the Box
Zen player, earphones, USB 2.0 cable, installation CD, and quick start guide.
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| A slick user interface makes it a snap to enjoy your media. |
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Customer Reviews
Nervous about your first MP3 player purchase? Stop shopping around and buy this now. 
2008-05-14
A GREAT first purchase. (And if you ever decide to upgrade your MP3 player, stick with the Creative family.)
Pluses:
-compact size, perfect for on-the-go activity
-upgrade memory with SD card slot
-plays VIDEO!! (I recommend using your SD card slot for videos.)
-easy to navigate through the menu
-adding music is easy, drag and drop!
-it looks snazzy!
The only gripe I have is that there's no way to plug it into a set of portable speakers or your car. Since this is my first MP3 player purchase, I wasn't really looking for one that did that. I have a computer I use as a stereo, and I don't spend much time in my car, so it doesn't bother me. If that's more important to you, you may want to continue searching. But I still love my Creative Zen 4gig!
Books on the Road 
2008-05-13
I look for to using it with books on the road and through my car's sound system.
Great Player at a Great Price 2008-05-09
I'll make this short and sweet. I upgraded to the zen 4gb model for a player to use while riding my motorcycle and working out. Some of my colleagues referred to this player when giving some advice. I've had good experiences with some of Creative's earlier product lines, so I tried this out. I have to say, this thing is incredible. The music manager software is very intuitive and is simple for even the computer illiterate. The sound quality is incredible. I can't vouch for the headphones b/c I switched over to my noise canceling earbuds for my motorcycling needs. Overall a great player with very little drawbacks.
Pros:
Size (tiny, yet well-built)
Battery Life (makes it through a two hour workout and a few rides a day)
Interface (very easy to use)
Sound Quality (Second to none)
Screen (Beautiful picture on videos)
FM RADIO!!!!
Cons:
A little difficult to change songs when riding
No useful armband accessory for working out
Overall I can't be happier with the purchase. I also forgot to mention that I have SIRIUS radio installed inside the "trunk" of the bike and the fm radio feature has saved me headaches when trying to continue listening to it while riding. For those with a need to listen to sirius or just wish to listen to regular radio, this is the ticket. IPOD is lacking in the fm radio arena as well as the WOW factor that this has. Simply put, it's just a better player for the money.
Oh, and one last thing: the SD expansion slot is incredible! You can't utilize the fancy interface when accessing the sd slot, but believe me, it's not a big problem. For the cost of the player and a 30 dollar 8gb HCSD card from Amazon, you'll have a 12gB player for a fraction of what you'd pay for a solid state player. That and you can interchange the sd cards at will.
I highly recommend this product to anyone interested in purchasing a quality mp3/video player without having to shell out the big bucks for one.
impressive 2008-05-09
Great product. Works as advertised. Remember you have to convert your videos using the software provided by Creative. Also make sure you create a separate folder `for converting the videos, it over writes the converted videos over the original format. I ended up loosing a couple of videos which I had to reconvert to get back.
Muy buen reproductor MP# 2008-05-08
Este es casi un excelente reproductor. Tiene un buen tamaño, los controles son fáciles de usar (aunque los botones de "adelante" "atrás" derberían estar juntos), el sonido es muy bueno y tiene una cantidad de funciones extras que hacen que sea una muy buena compra por su precio (como el reproductor de vídeo y el radio).
Una característica que de verdad lo destaca es que puede expandirse con tarjetas SD, lo que lo hace muy práctico para cambiar "playlist" y tener toda la música personal lista para el camino.
Aunque creo que no llega a 5 estrellas, principalmente porque no se siente tan sólido, como un iPod por ejemplo, definitivamente lo recomiendo.
BEWARE! 
2008-04-27
Bring your media with you wherever you roam with the Creative Zen 4GB player. Watch 16 hours of videos, enjoy up to 1,000 of your favorite songs or share hundreds of photos with your friends. And do it all on a device that's about the width of a credit card.
A razor sharp 2.5-inch display makes your photos and videos come to life. See the Zen in detail. |
Small size. Big features. All in the palm of your hand. View larger. |
Add even more storage capacity via the SD card slot. View larger. |
Design The Zen sports a 2.5-inch TFT color display with 320 x 240-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors. This razor sharp display is packaged in a device that weighs just 2.1 ounces and measures 3.26 x 2.16 x .44 inches (W x H x D). The internal battery powers the Zen for up to 25 hours of continuous audio playback and up to five hours of continuous video playback. Use the Zen's SD slot to expand your portable media library with music, photos and videos stored on your SD card. There's also a handy built-in microphone for capturing notes on the go.
Features
Load up up your favorite songs, as well as your album art, and get going with the Zen. The device supports iTunes Plus tracks from the iTunes store and MP3 and WMA tracks. Subscription and pay-per-download music services are supported, as well. Discover, save, and play millions of songs when subscribing to services such as Yahoo Music Unlimited and Napster To Go. You can even tune into your favorite stations with the Zen's FM radio. The radio allows you to save up to 34 presets.
The Zen has you covered when it comes to video, too. The device supports MJPEG, WMV9 and--with transcoding--MPEG1 and 2, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4 and 5, and XviD. Enjoy purchased movies and TV shows from online services, such as Amazon Unbox and Walmart.com. Watch home videos. Even load your Tivo To Go movies and TV shows onto your Zen.
Additional features include a clock and alarm function, volume restriction, eight equalizer settings, and a USB hard drive mode, which allows you to drag and drop files directly to and from your Zen. The Zen can also function as a handy organizer, allowing you to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook and display your contacts, calendar, and tasks.
What's in the Box
Zen player, earphones, USB 2.0 cable, installation CD, and quick start guide.
| | | | |
| A slick user interface makes it a snap to enjoy your media. |
Really great MP3 player 2008-04-25
I've got this player a wile ago, and very happy with it. Great navigation, sound quality, MP3, FM... All what I need. And guess what? The price is awesome! Creative as always the best. I had Cowon players, Iriver, Ipods, and 2 different Creative player. Nothing can beat Creative.
Everything you'd want for the price you're paying. 2008-04-24
This was a great buy. I bought it for my brother who would only use iPods before this. He no longer wants to go back to the iPod. The sound quality is great, video quality is really good as well. The included software is better than others I've seen (though not as sleek and useful as iTunes). The expandable SD memory slot is very nice to have, and the interface is pretty intuitive. Overall, it's one of the best mp3 player's I've seen.
Ripoff - Creative Zen 4 GB! 2008-04-21
Don't buy this product unless you have Windows Vista. It will not work with XP or earlier OS's. Creative says it is a Microshaft problem, but it is their problem because they chose Windows Media Player 11 to be their media player and you can only get Windows Media Player 11 with Microshaft's Vista.
Deeply Flawed Software 
2008-04-21
If you're like me and have thousands of mp3's that are not classified by album, then don't go near this player with a ten foot pole. The reason I say this is that when you attempt to browse songs by a particular artist or band, you can only view the songs by album - any song that does not have it's album tag filled in won't show up under that artist. Basically, if any track has no album info, it becomes invisible. Older Zen mp3 players had a "List all Tracks by Artist" option when you browsed a particular artist or band - selecting this option would show all the tracks by that artist in alphabetical order regardless of whether the album info was filled in for a track or not. The new Zen players do not have this option. I went to one artist on my player that I had 60 songs for, except none of the tracks had album info, and when I selected that artist the player told me their were no tracks by that artist on the player - totally and completely ridiculous.
Worse yet, all those tracks that have no album associated with them will not play in shuffle mode. I loaded the player with 1000 songs that had no album info and 10 songs that did have their album info, and put the player into shuffle mode. Shuffle mode then told me their were only 10 songs on the player, and proceeded to play those 10 songs (the ones with album info) over and over, while completely ignoring the other 1000 songs (the ones without album info). This has to be about the dumbest thing I've seen in any consumer product in years. I've seen complaints about how lame the shuffle play feature is on these players and how they seem to play the same songs over and over in shuffle mode - well this is the reason why. A large percentage of these users tracks are not even being recognized in shuffle mode.
If you keep all your mp3's tagged by album then you will be fine. If not, then don't go near this player.
