Customer Reviews:
 Not the greatest... August 10, 2008
I just bought my Creative Zen about a month ago, and it's not a bad mp3 player. Nice size, attractive design, good font choice, plays well, good battery life, etc. Decent player.
One of the major flaws of the Zen is that it organizes everything by how your songs are tagged. I would prefer if it went by the file name itself, since that's how I have my music organized on my computer (I consistently name my files as "Artist - Track", but I've never paid much attention to how the files are tagged). It's not a huge deal though; as long as I can find the song I'm looking for, that's good enough.
However, it's NOT okay that I'm only able to shuffle my music within an album, not within an artist. For example, say I'm in the mood to listen to only Ben Folds. You would think that the Zen would allow you to shuffle all the songs where the artist is tagged as Ben Folds, right? It doesn't work like that though. If I want to listen to Ben Folds, I have to choose whether I want to shuffle within Whatever and Ever Amen, or within Songs For Silverman, etc. It's not going to let me hear "Trusted" followed by "Selfless, Cold, and Composed" because those two songs are from different albums. That's unacceptable to me. The only solution I can come up with is to re-tag all my music so that every file's album name is tagged as "Album". That way, all the tracks for an artist would be listed under the same album name, thus allowing me to shuffle within a specific artist. What a colossal waste of time that would be though, considering the size of my music library.
I think it's pretty common for people to want to shuffle their music within a certain artist every once in a while. The fact that the Zen can't do this is a major drawback, and I'm regretting having bought this player for that reason alone.
 Great Product August 9, 2008
This is a great MP3 player. I can't see why anyone would spend twice as much on an IPOD when there is a player like this available for less. It is every bit as good if not better than an ipod. It supports more file formats than an ipod which is great. Also the video on it is really good I put some of my movies and tv shows on it and was amazed at the picture quality on such a small screen. It's wonderful. Definetly buy it if your looking for a great mp3 player at an affordable price!
 My girlfriend likes it August 7, 2008
I got this mp3 player for my girlfriend a few weeks ago and she likes it a lot. The only complaint she's had so far is that the arm band that goes with it is not user friendly. It's bulky and doesn't allow you to see the screen or any of the buttons so she's unable to skip over songs while she's running. But other than that she seems really happy with it!
 Buggy, non-functional, defective, poor workmanship August 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was happy to find this player because it has a small format but adequate storage for my whole collection. Unfortunately, it didn't work. At first use, the headphone jack was loose, so that it needed to be wiggled to achieve good contact. But that was nothing: after only a few days of use, it just stopped -- locked up completely and did not respond at all. Well, not for a few hours. Then it started up, took a few minutes to "rebuild," and worked normally. But only for 10 minutes, at which point it just stopped again... became completely unresponsive for several hours, then rebuilt, etc. It did this three times, and it's now on it's way back. I will buy a different player with my refund.
Great Decision August 2, 2008
I needed a new MP3 player to replace my stolen iPod. I didn't want another iPod, as I hate trying to deal with the scroll wheel while driving, and it sucked trying to make it work with Linux. The Creative Zen is much more driving friendly, especially protected by the silicon case and screen protector. Transferring music isn't quite as easy as advertised for Linux. The proprietary Microsoft MTP (Music Transfer Protocol) is required to be used to transfer music. There are workarounds for Linux, like mounting hacks or using Gnomad2, but the advertised "Drag and Drop- like a USB drive" isn't quite correct. It is drag and drop, once you get around MTP- something that happens in Windows automatically. Also, the Zen doesn't do a very good job of recognizing music files placed on it without it's software. You can get them on there, but some/most aren't recognized (for me, no AAC recognition) and none of the album art is seen. However, it does work fine if you use the Creative software. Maybe it was just the way I did it, but I ended up having to boot into Windows to get all my music on there (now that I think about it, Gnomad2 might work better, but I gave up before then. It has a crappy interface).
All in all, it is a very good player. I am extremely happy with my purchase, especially now that I got all my music on there. I focused solely on problems I had, and everything else imagionable about this player is positive. Music playback is great, I like the interface, the controls are very well thought out, the "Album of the Day" button is the best idea I've ever seen on a player, and movie playback is great (once movies are converted into the correct format- which you will have to do and requires Creative's software to do it). I would definitely buy again.
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