gwilks98
12-25-2007, 11:34 PM
My g/f was wonderful and got me what I wanted for Christmas: Creative's 32gb Zen.
Her brother got a 16gb View as well.
There were so many sub-par players on the market, I had trouble deciding on any one particular player.
Because neither the Zen nor the View was available until recently, it was difficult to find any user experiences with the devices. (Hence, I thought I'd post what I've discovered so far)
The Zen
Creative's player sounds great, though contrary to reviews I saw, the stock earbuds aren't the greatest. I purchased some Shure E2C earbuds from a deal here a while back and they are a night/day difference.
I also got the companion armband and workout earbuds that wrap around the ear. Those sound much better than stock earbuds and did not have any trouble keeping them on during my workout. (Though they can be a bit uncomfortable over prolonged periods of time.)
Navigation is simple once you understand what each button does. I'm still trying to figure out why there is no "stop" button for the player, only "pause."
Making playlists seems pretty easy. I haven't dived too deeply into this but it's relatively painless.
It's hard to use the player in the dark as the buttons are very close together. Not really easy for people with big hands.
They put the headphone and USB jacks on the side of the player with the buttons and it tends to get in they way while you're navigating throughout the player.
I don't know if the player is drag 'n drop, but I can use Windows media player to transfer all my songs through the "sync" wizard, and it requires no conversion for MP3's up to 320kbps. I don't have music encoded into anything else (including itunes) so I don't know how the other formats work.
The screen does not go into "sleep mode" while your music is playing. It's a pain if you like to listen to music in bed at night, and it seems inefficient use of the battery. It could be due to the firmware update I did (not explicitly meant for the 32gb flavor of the zen).
The screen looks fantastic. Don't try to copy movies over via the sync manager: use the media converter that came with the device. It will shrink them down and ensure the audio is in a supported format. As seen in other reviews: the viewing angle is fantastic except for from the top looking down at the player. However, the angle it drops out is outside of what you'd be using the player for anyway.
While the audio did seem to lack bass, I believe the problem is the earbuds and not the player itself. Hooked up to my home theater via Y cable produced plenty of bass at the stereo defaults, but the sound did come in a little muddier than when I listened via headphones.
If I had a decent pair of over-the-ear headphones, I'd love to see what this thing sounds like.
The custom EQ is nice, as I like to bump the highs and lows and reduce the mids a bit. However, don't look to this to give you significant bass boost: it only amplifies distortion at the highest of levels.
Memory card expansion slot: haven't used it; don't need it. I've seen reports that the library is separated from the memory card and you can only play songs from built in or external at a time: not both. I can't comment on this but don't care to. 32GB is head and shoulders above the competition - I shouldn't need SD memory for quite a while.
Voice recorder - haven't used it. Could be useful if I get pulled over though...
FM receiver - reception is bad for what I'd expect. Autoscan picks up a lot of garbage and assigns it to a preset. If you go through and delete the false positive presets, the player still makes you skip through these now-blank presets. Blech.
Calendar/Organizer: haven't used it. Have a blackberry for this purpose.
No video out: bummer.
Battery life: didn't test it. I expect it to improve somewhat with later firmware versions though per my comment above.
Itunes music: don't use it, don't care if it works. Screw Apple.
The Sansa View:
I only got a few hours to play with it, but here's what I thought:
The scroll wheel is a significant improvement of the Sansa in the past. It's softer, with 4 direction clickable sides. I wish the Zen had something like this. (It's more friendly to lefty's and righty's.)
There are fewer buttons overall on the sansa, so it makes the interface a little more challenging to move through. (for example, it was harder to figure out how to play all tracks on an album instead of just one.) Overall it was less intuitive.
The sound is worse, in my opinion, and they seem to promote a louder overall sound to hide it's deficiencies.
The size is significantly larger despite a negligably smaller screen. (It's taller.)
The battery life is supposed to be better as well.
The screen quality is nice, but I don't think it's capable of doing what the Zen can do. I didn't see any videos, so I want to be fair though.
Her brother was trying to get his DRM itunes files over to his player and I could not find a way short of burning to CD, then ripping back to a less anal format. Again, screw apple.
The player boasts drag 'n drop through my computer, but it gave me a load about 192kbps files being put on the player, saying they were not supported. (The player was still able to play them though.)
The sansa does have TV out ability, but it's only availble to those who have an interest in hacking it at this point in time. Search around the web and you'll find the how-to.
The Zen is $150 more than the Sansa, some may find the differences hard to justify the price. I feel much more comfortable with my choice. Among other reasons, I have 700 songs on the player and the movie 300 and I still have 8 or 10 gigs more memory than a blank 16 gb sansa.
Her brother got a 16gb View as well.
There were so many sub-par players on the market, I had trouble deciding on any one particular player.
Because neither the Zen nor the View was available until recently, it was difficult to find any user experiences with the devices. (Hence, I thought I'd post what I've discovered so far)
The Zen
Creative's player sounds great, though contrary to reviews I saw, the stock earbuds aren't the greatest. I purchased some Shure E2C earbuds from a deal here a while back and they are a night/day difference.
I also got the companion armband and workout earbuds that wrap around the ear. Those sound much better than stock earbuds and did not have any trouble keeping them on during my workout. (Though they can be a bit uncomfortable over prolonged periods of time.)
Navigation is simple once you understand what each button does. I'm still trying to figure out why there is no "stop" button for the player, only "pause."
Making playlists seems pretty easy. I haven't dived too deeply into this but it's relatively painless.
It's hard to use the player in the dark as the buttons are very close together. Not really easy for people with big hands.
They put the headphone and USB jacks on the side of the player with the buttons and it tends to get in they way while you're navigating throughout the player.
I don't know if the player is drag 'n drop, but I can use Windows media player to transfer all my songs through the "sync" wizard, and it requires no conversion for MP3's up to 320kbps. I don't have music encoded into anything else (including itunes) so I don't know how the other formats work.
The screen does not go into "sleep mode" while your music is playing. It's a pain if you like to listen to music in bed at night, and it seems inefficient use of the battery. It could be due to the firmware update I did (not explicitly meant for the 32gb flavor of the zen).
The screen looks fantastic. Don't try to copy movies over via the sync manager: use the media converter that came with the device. It will shrink them down and ensure the audio is in a supported format. As seen in other reviews: the viewing angle is fantastic except for from the top looking down at the player. However, the angle it drops out is outside of what you'd be using the player for anyway.
While the audio did seem to lack bass, I believe the problem is the earbuds and not the player itself. Hooked up to my home theater via Y cable produced plenty of bass at the stereo defaults, but the sound did come in a little muddier than when I listened via headphones.
If I had a decent pair of over-the-ear headphones, I'd love to see what this thing sounds like.
The custom EQ is nice, as I like to bump the highs and lows and reduce the mids a bit. However, don't look to this to give you significant bass boost: it only amplifies distortion at the highest of levels.
Memory card expansion slot: haven't used it; don't need it. I've seen reports that the library is separated from the memory card and you can only play songs from built in or external at a time: not both. I can't comment on this but don't care to. 32GB is head and shoulders above the competition - I shouldn't need SD memory for quite a while.
Voice recorder - haven't used it. Could be useful if I get pulled over though...
FM receiver - reception is bad for what I'd expect. Autoscan picks up a lot of garbage and assigns it to a preset. If you go through and delete the false positive presets, the player still makes you skip through these now-blank presets. Blech.
Calendar/Organizer: haven't used it. Have a blackberry for this purpose.
No video out: bummer.
Battery life: didn't test it. I expect it to improve somewhat with later firmware versions though per my comment above.
Itunes music: don't use it, don't care if it works. Screw Apple.
The Sansa View:
I only got a few hours to play with it, but here's what I thought:
The scroll wheel is a significant improvement of the Sansa in the past. It's softer, with 4 direction clickable sides. I wish the Zen had something like this. (It's more friendly to lefty's and righty's.)
There are fewer buttons overall on the sansa, so it makes the interface a little more challenging to move through. (for example, it was harder to figure out how to play all tracks on an album instead of just one.) Overall it was less intuitive.
The sound is worse, in my opinion, and they seem to promote a louder overall sound to hide it's deficiencies.
The size is significantly larger despite a negligably smaller screen. (It's taller.)
The battery life is supposed to be better as well.
The screen quality is nice, but I don't think it's capable of doing what the Zen can do. I didn't see any videos, so I want to be fair though.
Her brother was trying to get his DRM itunes files over to his player and I could not find a way short of burning to CD, then ripping back to a less anal format. Again, screw apple.
The player boasts drag 'n drop through my computer, but it gave me a load about 192kbps files being put on the player, saying they were not supported. (The player was still able to play them though.)
The sansa does have TV out ability, but it's only availble to those who have an interest in hacking it at this point in time. Search around the web and you'll find the how-to.
The Zen is $150 more than the Sansa, some may find the differences hard to justify the price. I feel much more comfortable with my choice. Among other reasons, I have 700 songs on the player and the movie 300 and I still have 8 or 10 gigs more memory than a blank 16 gb sansa.