Editorial Review
Bring your media with you wherever you roam with the Creative Zen 16GB player. Watch 64 hours of videos, enjoy up to 4,000 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 or rented 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
Best MP3 Player I've Ever Used 
2008-05-03
I absolutely love this player. It does everything I want it to, and it does it all well while still looking sexy. The interface is far better than that of the iPod, and its looks and features put the poor Apple product to shame (and I'm a Mac fanboy... it's painful for me to say that!) Note - even though it was advertised as only working with Windows, I use Ubuntu and Rhythmbox recognizes it just fine with the MTP plugin activated.
Pros:
Amazing sound quality. Really good library management (quick alphabet scroller is a great touch). Features out the wazoo (calendar, tasks, photos, videos, FM radio, microphone). Responsive user interface. Tactile buttons feel good.
Cons:
No "All Albums" selection under the Artist menus is a little pet peeve and the included headphones are gigantic (my ears are small). Those are the only issues I could find with this player!
It is ok 
2008-04-29
I was excited to recieve this product.
It was an awesome device until it froze.
And it froze, and it froze, and it froze!!
I love it but it freezes too much and I
have to constantly restart it.
Other than that, PERFECT. =)
Great and low cost product 2008-04-28
This is a really good device, from the amazing screen and the options you have what you paid for. The screen is fantastic, supports a lot of media codecs (Divx and Xvid for instance). One of the things I really liked is the use of so many standards so you don't actually need to install anything on your computer, easy as plug and play. Even the data/power cable is a normal USB 2.0 cable, so replacing is no problem, but the only drawback I saw was the short USB cable that comes with the box. And of course take the SD card reader and you will be able to double the storage capacity or copy your camera photos, videos or any SD capable device to the ZEN on the fly, obviously mini SD and micro SD needs and adapter.
We've got a winner! 2008-04-28
After a couple months of reading every other review in the world on every other flash memory player, I decided on this little guy. The price on the 16gb made the most sense and with the SD slot I had upgrade potential. All the positive qualities listed on the other reviews are for real.
As for some downside, the SD incorporation could use some work. It works as advertised, but it would be quite slick if all of the SD content showed up in the same spot as all of the media stored on the internal memory. Like any other MP3 player, ditch the headphones. Thirty dollars will get you the V-Moda Bass Freqs and they are perfectly paired with the Zen. The Shures and Bose offerings at 100 dollars are great, but these are only a minor step down for nearly a quarter of the price.
There is a button that you can setup as any function you want and after playing around some I found that I liked it most as the random song selection.
I'm awfully happy with my purchase.
Pretty Darn good player 2008-04-25
Overall I think that this is an excellent player. It is easy to use and it looks sylish. I like the fact that it is light weight and I can fit it into any pocket. The screen is big enough for me to watch my videos on. Downloading is very easy. The sound quality is also very good. The only problem that I have with this player is that it freezes up on me. The first time I bought it, it froze up and I had to return it to Amazon. I called Amazon and they replaced the product immediately. The replacement player is great, but once again, it is starting to shut off on its own. I don't know if it's because I detached it from the computer without first disconnecting from my utility tray. That is when the problem started. My advice would be to make sure that you disconnect the player using the utility tray. But overall, I say that this is an excellent player and I would recommend it over and over again.
Everything I want it to be.... 2008-04-24
Bring your media with you wherever you roam with the Creative Zen 16GB player. Watch 64 hours of videos, enjoy up to 4,000 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 or rented 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. |
Very happy with this Player 2008-04-22
I like this player alot. If the size is good for you, I dont think you can go wrong with this one.
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.
Almost a 5 star 2008-04-21
The only real physical drawback I can see is that it isnt 32gb. I should have bought the next step up. Thats not so much of a design flaw as it is a money issue so I will let that go. A real annoyance (and pretty much the only one) I have is the power button being directly below the headphone jack. If you have a par of headphones with an L shaped jack or if you have large finger, the headphones do tend to get in the way.
Software wise, I dont use podcasts and I dont plan to ever watch a movie on this. I did however put some small tv episodes on here. Encoding software was amazingly hard to find. The supplied software takes far too long. It was difficult to find exact specifications of formats/codecs etc and the amount of junkware out there really made it difficult to find a solid piece of software to use. Xilisoft was the answer. Create a Zen profile and go to town.
Other than that, its bootup is fast if used regularly, the screen is absolutely beautiful although easily smudged and the navigation is extremely simple. Extremely happy with my investment.
Nice unit, provided it doesn't freeze on you all the time 
2008-04-19
Where do I begin?
The unit looks sleek, operates well, and is smartly designed. My beef is with the software. Right off the bat when I tried to update it, the thing crashed. I had to find a site that installed the old software and then reupdate to get the thing to work. For a while it worked beautifully, provided the headset did not shock your ear so bad you pull out the earbuds in pain. Lately the unit has been freezing upon activation randomly, until just recently it completely froze. I can reset it and turn the thing back on, but no matter how many times its reset it still continues to freeze as soon as the current song pops up. What good is a unit that freezes half the time you want to use it?
I'm probably going to try and get something back for this unit and get an Ipod instead. At least those units don't freeze up all the time -_-
