Creative Zen Review, Part 6

Previously, I had described some of the experiences I have had with my new Creative Zen [creative.com] portable media player (PMP). This is part 6. [Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7.]

As a device for listening to talk radio or audio books, the Creative Zen does an admirable job. However, as a tool for listening to music, this PMP fails in many areas.

First off, even at the lowest volume setting, the audio is too loud. Fortunately, there is a customizable equalizer that you can use to make it quieter.


The steps between volume levels are also too large.

The next problem is that you can't sort your music by folder. The player only lets you sort by genre, artist, album, etc. This is pretty irritating, and it forces you to have very clean tags on all of your files.

The screen on the player is very good. It's just large enough, and it is fairly bright. Unfortunately, the screen is almost impossible to read in sunlight outdoors, but I haven't had too much difficulty seeing it in the car.

In normal playing mode, the backlight on the screen never turns off. NEVER. The backlight does dim after a configurable delay, but the only way that you can get it to turn completely off is to engage the keypad lock.

I regularly use the PMP for 11 hours between recharging, which is plenty for me. However, when I am worried about battery life, I do engage the keypad lock whenever possible (which turns off the backlight and thus saves power). Your mileage will vary of course, but running with the keypad lock engaged as much as possible seems to at least double the battery life (in my unscientific tests) -- meaning that you should be able to run at least 20 hours between recharging.

As a final note, the fast-forward/rewind does have acceleration (which is a detail left out of most reviews). The acceleration is relatively fast, so it isn't irritating to use. When you are fast-forwarding and rewinding, you do not hear any audio. I wish that you would hear little blips of audio that you are scanning over, which would help to determine when you have fast-forwarded or rewound enough (I have had older MP3 players that did this).

[Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7.]