Rating: 
Summary: Crashed after four month and warranty only 90 days!
Review: My Creative ZEN firewire crashed one week ago. Turned to Creative support to get it fixed. But the warranty for this is only 90 days! So they must know that this product doesnt work to good. If they don't fix it for free I will instead buy an Ipod with one year warranty.
Rating: 
Summary: A great concept, a flawed execution
Review: I tried one of these for a long time and have to say that despite all of its "features" that supposedly make this product so much better, the iPod is still vastly superior. Personally, I find the Zen rather ugly, with a tiny blue-green screen and that idiotic "mouse-style" scrollwheel on the side. The front and back are nce and shiny, but overall, from external appearances, I was not impressed. Overall it just seems like a strange size and weight and it never quite fits anywhere. On to the actual point of owning one--playing music. In this, I can say that the Zen has nothing on the iPod. The search feature (typing a letter in one at a time by selecting it with the wheel); the organization system that just doesn't make sense, and the fact that you have to view everything on that little tiny screen--sure you can put 20 GB of music on it, but I dare you to find one song on that crappy little wheel in half the time it would take me on a 20 GB iPod! I do like that you can make playlists on the actual device, but the entire system suffers from far too much needless complexity. Everything is too complicated, too much "relearning". The sides are riddled with buttons, none of which have much tactile feedback, and trust me--if this is in your pocket, you won't have much idea which side is which without looking! On my iPod, I can change songs, raise and lower the volume, etc. without even thinking or looking at the device itself. It's just a simpler, more efficient way. I've given the Zen 2 stars for having a large drive, a decent appearance (certainly better than those horrible Archos hunks-of-junk), and high-speed connectivity. It is a technical masterpiece, with the ability to create playlists, change EAX settings, add reverb and speed changes to your music, and record... but all of this is utterly ruined by its stupid wheel, bad organizational system, poor screen, and needless complexity (if you select a song in the list, it begins playing but your screen does not change to indicate which song is playing--in fact, if you scroll for a while you will soon have NO CLUE what song you're playing, what song is next, etc. until you back all the way out of every menu and go to Now Playing. By contrast, the iPod switches to show the current song, and pressing menu lets you select another song, or back out the SIMPLE, THREE-LEVELS-DEEP MENU system to get back to Now Playing. The Zen's menu system is 5 to seven levels deep when it could be two or three!) I'm all for iPod competition, but the iPod is still the best. Get it instead--you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent feature/quality/price ratio!
Review: First of all I would give the Zen a 4 star rating if the iPod was cheaper, but since it is not :)...
Anyway, my biggest concern was the sound quality of the player (my previous players produced sound of very poor quality). I was placing my bets on Creative's expertise in this area, and was not disappointed. The sound quality is excellent; the sounds is clear, crisp, and vivid!
The headphones leave something to be desired, however. I find them rather uncomfortable and their frequency response poor.
A few reviews I have read stated that the player clips when the volume is crancked up all the way. This is the case only low impedence phones, it is important to point out that this is the case with all amplifiers. All the headphones I tried produced excellent sound without any trace of clipping. I especially recommend the Beyerdynamic 770.
The controls are straight forward, but don't expect to get a lot done on the player itself - creating playlists, etc. is much easier and quicker through the computer software.
Finally, I highly recommend using the Red Chair Software Notmad instead of the software that came with the player.
Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING PLAYER
Review: This little MP3 player packs a PUNCH! 20 GB of data store is amazing. Currently, I have half the drive filled up with MP3s. No kidding, it's got nearly 1800 songs on there now. I know what it advertises, but the truth is you're probably going to want to bump up the bit rate on your songs. All mine are in 160 bit-rate now. I take this thing with me on the train in the morning. With 1800 songs to put in shuffle mode, I may not hear the same song twice for months. Good, clean display. Has an internal EQ, along with the EAX processor to suit your music tastes. I took the 2.0 version of the ZEN, not having a firewire connection on my PC. After creating my MP3 with the included software, it took about 25 minutes to upload over 10GB of music to this guy. Seems like a lot of time, but you just have to do this initally when you have an empty player. Imagine when you simply want to add a new album you just bought from the store. Since complete 10 MB songs upload to this little guy in about a second. A entire music CD can literally load in a few blinks. That's amazing technology! What a time to be alive! Get it now. Be satisfied. Don't bother with the iPod. Too expensive to play back the exact same songs in the exact same quality. You're just out more money if you go that route. Plus this player comes with a beautiful case, headphones, and software. And although you may not think this is important, the power adapter than comes with the unit is DUAL VOLTAGE so that if you happen to take the unit overseas (ANYWHERE) you can plug it in without worry about frying your new toy! Cheers!
Rating:
Summary: Nice looking, heavy, good value, sub-par performance.
Review: Alright, I thought this was my solution to not having to lug around my CD collection everywhere and it seemed a great alternative to the iPod. Well, unfortunately it is not. I got the unit and was so excited about the look and features of the product. It This wore off after the first night when the backlight went out (and stayed out). This was a little disappointing, but I wasn't going to let it ruin the sparkle of my new product. I had already loaded about 1/3 of the alotted gig space on the player and figured the backlight isn't that important. Well, I was wrong. I purchased a tape adapter for my car to listen to the mp3 player through my car speakers. It sounded horrible! I also could not see the LCD screen (it being night) and the backlighting doesn't work. The player is bulky and heavy. Granted it is small for what it is, but it's going back and I am going to splurge on the smaller, more reliable iPod.
Remeber, 5 stars means the product is flawless. 4 means above average.
Rating:
Summary: Best firewire player out there for [the price]
Review: Overall I've been very happy with the Zen (Firewire/USB version).
The battery life is good and the menu system is very intuitive.
The signal to noise ratio is one of the best.
Of course the small size is the main feature. Only the iPod is smaller. But a 20GB iPod is currently $...!
Through the Creative s/w you can store non-audio files on the hard drive. This is handy for transporting large files from home to office. The only things I don't like about it are fairly trivial.
- The ON button is recessed and can be difficult to reach.
- The text on the LCD screen is a little on the small side.
- You can only access the unit from a PC with the Creative s/w installed. It would be kind of nice to be able to access it as a normal Firewire drive.
Rating:
Summary: The Zen Is Great
Review: I bought my Zen from a local electronics retailer after my friend broke my old flash memory player and reimbursed me the damages. The audio quality is great, I put my music library on it, and I backed up XP on it! This thing is pretty cool. However, buy it from a retailer that offers a 4 year protection plan. IPods and Zens have a common flaw- their rechargable Lithium-Ion batteries are non serviceable. Creative's nor Apple's techies can replace the factory installed batteries. After 1.5 to 2 years, the battery will no longer recharge and your Zen will be a paperweight. However, with the 4 year pro plan, you just get yo-self a new one. Don't go with the Jukebox three- too pricey and bulky. For more info go to for Creative's website for its Nomad players.
Rating:
Summary: This is what I was holding out for...
Review: I have been "lurking" the MP3 HD market for more than a year. My requirements were pretty simple: Big (Memory), Small (Size), good sound, not too expensive, no Content Protection mechanism and a good song organizer & locator.
The IPOD is really impressive, but too expensive and Windows also isnt exactly its natural environment.
Enough bashing the competition, lets talk about the Zen:
Its small enough (I would prefer it smaller), Nice interface, the dual Firewire & USB is great for me (Home - Firewire, Work - USB), 20 GB is enough, for PC interface I bought the Notmad explorer.
The sound is great - I dont use the Headphones (bought a Sennheiser 457).
Bottom Line - this is a great player. I love mine.
Rating:
Summary: Best Product I've Ever Bought
Review: I really can't say enough good things about this MP3 player by Creative Labs. My unit was up in running after only having to charge it for an hour when I opened it. I use FreeRip (can be downloaded free online) to rip my CDS and PlayCenter (included within the package) to transfer the files to my player. It is instinctively easy to understand and operate and the sound quality is exceptional- even through a cassette adapter to my car stereo. No more lugging around CDs wherever I go- this was truly a worthwhile purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Very Cool
Review: I've been playing with the Zen for about a week now and I still find new, cool options. I had no trouble hooking this thing up to my computer. I simply plugged it into the AC power adaptor to charge it and then plugged it into my fire wire card and was ready to copy. I had one small problem, at first Windows media player didn't recognize it but after the latest update I was going on that media player too. When hooking the Zen up to my Klipsch speakers I couldn't tell a difference between the Zen and my computer. But I can't in good conscious give the Zen 5 stars because of one fault, it doesn't appear as a removable hard drive. Creative does offer a program that allows you to put any file you want on it but you need this program in order to transfer files. If you want a huge (20gig) mp3 player to replace you stack of CD's, this is for you.
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