Customer Reviews:
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 Lovin It August 27, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Had mine for about a month now and I love it. Sleek, stylish, and itty bitty (it is seriously small). This thing is definitely one of hte best investments I've ever made. Controls are simple and it is extremely easy to navigate. It works seamlessly with Rhapsody To Go. No video or anything, but if your looking for somehting to play music it does that very well. Also, it can rip CDs directly and quickly. Get one!!!
Exceeded my expectations! August 17, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
The Zen V is a great little player. My wife has an Ipod Nano and the Creative Zen V not only is easier to load songs but it also sounds a lot better.
 Not as good as I'd expected August 2, 2006
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
The Zen V is a very cute little player, packed with features, and since it's flash-based you'd expect it to be pretty reliable and besides, Creative are claiming it's one of the best as far as sound quality goes. That's all very neat, except for it's ruined by the software.
Reliability first, I tried it on three computers, under both Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows and on the first one I couldn't really make it work. Or charge. Or anything besides locking up and having to reset it (speaking of which, it needs a bigger reset button hole if it's gonna be locking up THIS much).
On the second one, it worked rather well until the moment I was done with it and I had to unplug it. Since Creative say in the manual that you have to use Windows' "Safely Remove Hardware" feature before disconnecting it, I opened that and... Surprise! It was not there! My cable modem was, however, as is my digital camera when I plug that, even though neither of them NEEDS to be "safely removed". Big deal, I just restarted it and carried on. It worked fine after that.
Then I tried it on the third and final computer, where it worked great (well, not absolutely great, I'd like a faster transfer rate but I guess that'd drive the price up). Then I disconnected it and it was STILL working, finally, which it'd beter had since that's my computer with the least issues and the most music. I think I managed to make the Zen lock up on that one too down the way, but I'm not sure.
So as you see, it's not entirely reliable, at least with the current firmware. (which I updated the day before yesterday)
Now, about the sound quality. Yeah, it uses a nice DAC. Yes, it has an EQ and even an additional bass boost if you're trying to make your stock earbuds sound like a subwoofer (give it up, you can't... God I hate earbuds).
The problem is, the bass boost is only adding MUD, instead of the big, deep, solid bass. It doesn't sound one least bit deep, but I could imagine it COULD be useful if you're trying to make a cheap pair of PC speakers one little bit less dreadful.
So, if you're a sound quality freak like myself, you're kinda forced to use the EQ. And the EQ is rubbish too. I'm pretty convinced there are holes in the EQ, whether you're cutting OR boosting, and there's nothing to tweak the REALLY deep frequencies under 60 Hz, which wouldn't be audible on the stock earbuds, but HEY CREATIVE HOW ABOUT SOME OF US HAVE QUALITY HEADPHONES?
And I haven't even come to the worst part yet, the CLIPPING! As it comes stock, with 8 MIDI-like non-mastered songs, you wouldn't really notice it. But as soon as you load any mixes that are actually HOT into it, you will. The bass boost's almost always clipping, unless you've cut the bass and low midrange seriously with the EQ, they might as well have called it "bass overdrive". But that's not the actual BAD part. The really bad part is, anytime you're using the EQ, it'll clip, even if you're listening at quiet volume with bands only set to cut. Which is REALLY annoying.
It its defense, I must say if you turn it up loud enough, the nasty, gritty digital clipping is replaced by arguably pleasant solid-sounding solid-state distortion.
But anyway, it's a player with alot of potential and the faults I've listed can all be remedied with a better firmware. For now though, I'd look at the alternatives. (not the iPod please)
Impressive Little Guy July 27, 2006
169 out of 174 found this review helpful
I bought two of these (one for my wife also). I've owned a 15GB 3rd gen iPod and a 60GB 5th gen iPod (video). I returned the iPod video to buy these two and get some money back. I don't care what they say; iPods never have worked and played well with Windows.
I've never owned an iPod nano, so can't compare to it. Maybe some of this is better to be viewed as a hard disk versus flash based player review.
The Zen Vs so far have done well with windows. It's not quite as easy as drag-and-drop as they indicate on the site, but it is close. You have to open the Zen explorer (set up like the Windows explorer) and drag them into that.
I use Foobar2000 for a music player. When a good song comes on, I just drag the song from the playlist into the Zen explorer and it transfers it without a problem. Or, you can select a bunch of songs and drag them all in (from file or Foobar or where ever).
The player's screen is nice and bright and sharp, but the resolution is apparent when looking at photos. The zoom comes in handy for photos, but it never looks as good as when viewed on a high res screen, as you would expect. I put a custom background on it as soon as possible to get rid of the butt-ugly default background.
I haven't been using the cheap bag they include with it. It's too big and too ugly. But even without the bag, I haven't noticed any scuffing or scratching so far. I haven't intentionally tested it, but I haven't been gentle with it either. I always kept the 5G iPod in its case, but seemed to scratch it anyway. I'm still puzzled about that.
Navigation is easy and intuitive; click right to move deeper into the menu, left to go back to a higher level, until you hit the end (play a song or view a picture), then the back button is used the get into the menus again. Holding the back button will bring up the options menu. There are plenty of settings to play with, which I like.
The player has a solid feel to it. I like how all the buttons feel. The joystick is a bit small (and I'm a big guy), but I don't have too much trouble getting around with it. I don't think about it at all now, just a few days after getting it.
From my few days of listening to it, the sound is very good. Most of my mp3s were transcoded using high quality settings, so they are a good test. You would have to be pretty picky to complain about the sound quality. That wasn't the case with my two iPods in my opinion. I should mention that I used a good set of studio headphones to form these opinions. They sound excellent with this player. The bundled earbuds are fine, but not great.
The recorder works fine; easy to use, sounds just ok.
Haven't tried the inline recorder.
I've been surprised at how many songs I've been able put on it. I was used to 60GB of space and thought I'd really miss it. But now I realize I just had a bunch of crap I didn't listen to on the old player; I was constantly fast forwarding through songs I didn't like. I have 234 tracks on it and have it ~half full.
The scroll wheel on the iPod was better for running through songs, but the Zen V has a keyword search and quick way to get to the start of a section (like the songs starting in M section). It's different, but just as effective. Honestly, with 60GB of stuff, the scroll wheel still took forever to find anything. I think I like the keyword search better.
I like that it attaches with a standard USB cable (mini on one end). Cheap to buy a replacement or a longer one (the included one is short, but fine).
The Zencast software works great for syncing to the player, but it's not quite as intuitive to get podcasts as with other programs I've used.
I like the size and shape of it. It fits easily into my shirt pocket without making it droop badly like the iPod did. The earbuds are the hardest thing about pocketing the player.
Things that it doesn't do (picky stuff):
If the last song played was paused when the player shut down, it doesn't power up into the middle of the song, it restarts it. If you power it down while the song is playing, it starts where it left off.
Doesn't seem to count correctly when waiting to dim the screen, does it too fast for the setting it's on.
Doesn't have radio, wish it did.
Doesn't have video, but the screen is so small I don't think it would be worth watching.
Doesn't work as a USB drive - Doesn't do this right out of the box, but might be able to be configured as one.
Doesn't have that cool padlock style screenlock thing that the video iPod had
Doesn't use iTunes... oh, wait, neither do I (not a big fan), maybe that should be in the pros column.
Doesn't fetch me the newspaper or make me coffee.
One warning: Install the software before plugging it in the first time. Windows won't recognize the player if you don't.
All in all, I'm really happy with this player. I'm a really picky person, so that's pretty high praise from me.
CREATIVE ZEN V 2GB July 23, 2006
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
Just got the cute little thing up and running. It's nice! The color screen is very readable, and controls are intuitive enough to use without needing 2 hours of instruction. ZEN V has a great feature set with line in MP3 recording and easy to use menus. Battery life seems to be pretty good for something so small. The Zen V unit is the size of a large ZIPPO lighter; because it's so small, larger hands and fingers might have a problem manipulating the buttons. Not that big of a deal.
Set the sleep timer, and resume playback where you left off when you turn the unit back on, which is great for large continuous recordings. The forward fast is super speedy; you can get to the center of a five hour recording in a minute or so. Unfortunately, the Screen is too small for photos or video, so unless you NEED the FM tuner or motion video it may not be worth the ZEN V PLUS.
AVOID THE CREATIVE NEEON even if the 5-6 GB capacity is attractive, it was slow to respond, locked up quite a bit and choked on it's own recordings, not to mention that the navigation wheel was a joke. This little ZEN V is responsive to the push of the navigation buttons and powers on quickly and plays on command.
The AC/110V charger is a "Must Have" accessory, and yes! The ZEN V is totally functional when using the sync cable for recharging, or while using the AC wall adaptor. The Zen Neeon was non-functional once you needed to recharge the unit with a USB sync cable. The Earbuds are Ok, a bit large for my liking, but they sounded fine when they weren't falling out of my ears. I am sure there are plenty of aftermarket headphones/Earbuds that would work fine.
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