The Creative Zen Nano Plus is the sleekest flash ultra-portable MP3/WMA player from Creative. Incredibly thin in design, it is packed with the latest features to meet all your... more
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stylish MP3 player that's packed with features!It's the ultra-compact, ultra-desirable fashion accessory that's so easy to use, thanks to the blue backlit display which makes selecting the right song a matter of moments. It includes a built-in FM radio and microphone with direct recording from both. A standard AAA battery makes the Zen Nano Plus the choice for people who want style, performance and plenty of features. It will encode line-in audio direct to MP3 and PC downloads at up to a song per second are assured via USB 2.0.
player but it lacks one simple function, a loud speaker. This micro speaker will add a whole new dimension to your compatible device, free your iPod. Once connected this item will play your songs out loud through the two incorporated mini speakers. If youre at home, work or just hanging out with friends you can now play your tunes out loud abolutely anywhere. This item will work with any MP3 player which has a 3.5mm socket, one AA battery (sold separately) is also required to power the speaker. Your iPods battery is not affected by using this device and please be assured the quality is excellent.
A review by ChristopherEllis on Creative Zen Nano Plus 1 GB November 16th, 2005
Author's product rating:
Sound Quality
Good
Ease of Use
Very Easy
Look & Design
Excellent
Range of Features
Excellent
Value for Money
Good
Advantages:
Compact, Ease of Use, Quality of Sound
Disadvantages:
None for this type of player
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
An "ultra-compact, ultra-desirable fashion accessory" is how the marketing people at Creative Labs describe the Zen Nano Plus: a somewhat breathless statement with a distinctly gratuitous use of the prefix "ultra" in my humble opinion. So let's put marketing babble to one side for a moment and look at the Zen Nano Plus from a more critical point of view.
At the time of writing, the Zen Nano Plus 1GB can be yours for about £90 - less if you shop around. Creative have made a big point of making this available in 10 colours, presumable to tie in with your choice of "fashion", though you'll struggle to get this in the UK in anything other than black, white, pink, purple or red. In the box you'll find not only the unit in your chosen colour but a pair of reasonable headphones (in iPod-clone white), a line-in cable, a USB cable, one Duracell AAA battery, and a CD with drivers and software. And let's not forget the obligatory handbook (actually - you probably can forget this).
Cradled in the palm of your hand, the Zen Nano Plus is certainly on the small side - whether this can be reasonably described as "ultra-compact" or just plain old "compact" I'll leave you to decide. Certainly it's not much bigger than a Zippo lighter and its weight without battery is only a few grams - you're not going to feel like your lugging this around, that's for sure. First impressions are reasonable though: it looks well constructed, albeit from plastic and it should be immediately obvious which buttons do what at the outset, what with them being labelled and everything.
Some reviews I read prior to shelling out for the Zen Nano Plus complained about the battery cover seeming quite thin and flimsy and it certainly isn't substantial, but unless you foresee yourself brutalising it, I believe it should cope with the day to day demands you'd make of it - just don't jump on it ok? Indeed, unless you intend dropping the Nano on concrete on a semi-regular basis, the whole unit seems like it will serve you well.
Ok, so we've got the battery in, time to start her up and see what she'll do. Hold the power button in for a few seconds and she'll spring to life. The LCD screen is small, but perfectly clear and lit by a cool blue backlight. If you've got the headphones in a smarmy employee of Creative Labs will start to tell you what a terrific purchase you've made. You'll want to delete this track almost immediately but at least you know it works and at least you know the sound quality seems reasonable.
It's at this stage you'll play about with the volume (just to make sure it works - it does, honest) and the "jog-dial" button. I've never used one of these before but it takes no great mastery. Press it to get to the main menu, shift left or right to select a menu choice: "Play Mode"; "EQ"; "Delete"; "Settings"; "Music"; "Recorded Tracks"; "Microphone"; "FM Radio"; "MP3 Encoding"; "Lock" and "Skip Folder", and press to select the choice and access the appropriate submenu (and no, I'm not going to list all the submenu entries). The power button also acts as a Pause/Play so to switch off you need to hold the power button for a few seconds while it shuts down. It's as easy as that. And I've still not read the manual.
Now you'll want to get some of your music on to the Nano.
When I was looking for an MP3 player I had two over-riding caveats:
1. It HAD to use AA or AAA batteries. 2. I could "drag and drop" MP3s using Windows Explorer.
This is because I have two pet hates when it comes to electronic devices:
1. I'll be damned to an eternity in Hell before I pay the manufacturer of any electronic device a vast sum of money for a replacement battery, ever.
2. I'll spend two eternities in Hell listening to the Bay City Rollers before I install some heap of horse-dung software just to move a file from one place to another!!! What a damn, bloody liberty!
There were other caveats of course, but they weren't quite as overriding as the above, one of these was of course that it had to play MP3s natively and not try to convince me to convert my beautiful collection into something atrocious like, oh, say, ATRAC. "But it's more efficient!" They whine. "Buddy, you've got too much time on your hands," I reply. Oh yes,and let's not forget that there's no attempt to tie you to some ludicrous Digital Rights Management (DRM) music store: I'm not a thief or a pirate. I refuse to be treated like one.
Given these caveats, the Creative range of MP3 players was starting to look attractive and given that I was looking for a flash player rather than a hard drive player the Nano just leapt out at me.
Sure enough, plugging the Nano into a spare USB2 socket resulted in Windows recognising the Nano as a removable drive and in a few minutes (I didn't time it, but it was no more than 'a few'.) I had 144 MP3s all transferred across with room to spare for plenty more. HINT1: You will want to organise your MP3s into folders as it makes navigating in the Nano a piece of cake but you'll discover that for yourself in time. HINT2: You probably won't need the software or drivers if your using Windows 2000 or XP and if you're not using DRM Protected WMA files (it plays standard WMA files natively)
Happy as a pig in a pile of poo, I remove the Nano from the PC and start to give the sound quality a critical listen. I'm not an audiophile, I don't pretend to be, but it's as good as any portable CD player I've ever owned and that's with the supplied headphones. The range seems reasonable and there's no discernable hiss or interference - except between tracks where I detect a faint click - nothing I'm remotely worried about though. Perfectly good, is how I would describe it and more than adequate for my needs - that, I guess, is the most important thing.
If you ever got bored listening to MP3s there's always the built in FM tuner to keep you occupied. The unit found all the available FM transmissions in its scan and the reception is pretty good considering I live in a veritable radio wave black hole, where it's impossible to listen to anything other than FM without a thunderpole the size of blackpool tower.
There's an inbuilt microphone so you can record dictations (or lectures perhaps?). The quality here is fairly poor to be honest but in playback you can tell what's being said clearly - there's a fair bit of extraneous noise though so don't expect any miracles and I would doubt the range of a microphone on such a small scale is up to the job of recording lectures but I could well be wrong - it's worth a try. These recordings are .wav for some reason.
Next up is the line in port and a nice addition in my opinion. I can see occasion where maybe a friend has a great song on his MP3 player that I just have to have, one quick connection later and it's transferred across as an MP3 at a bitrate of 128kbps - not that I would ever recommend you do this with copyrighted songs - I'm talking about songs my friends' band has recorded - hope that's crystal clear (and not remotely sarcastic)?
I figure I'll get about 200 MP3s on this (and some of those are audio books so we're not just talking 4 minute songs here) and that's more than enough for me. All of these are at a bitrate of 128kbps (CD Quality) which does me fine. Obviously if you record at a lower bitrate you'll get more songs on, at the expense of quality, and if you record at a higher bitrate… well, that just seems anal to me so I'll just ask who precisely needs "better than CD quality" (with the honourable exception of those in the industry) and leave it at that. The more discerning amongst you might want to consider 'Normalising' your MP3s before transferring them to the unit - that way you won't be reaching for the volume buttons all the time - the even more discerning amongst you might scoff at the idea of 'Normalising' and instead plump for some lossless gain adjustment. Either way - it's an idea and you should at least google "MP3Gain" before dismissing it out of hand.
So, what's my overall opinion? Is it an "Ultra-desirable, ultra-compact fashion accessory"? Erm… well… with all due respect, I think that's twaddle and frankly, underselling. The Zen Nano Plus is a very usable, quality piece of hardware that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone in the market for a flash player. I'll be changing the headphones at some point - not because they're not up to the job - but because they're white and I wouldn't want anyone thinking I've got a bloody iPod in my pocket.
Advantages: it's not an iPod, it's a decent MP3 player Disadvantages: no "hold" option; bundled software is excessive
...my most recent purchase, a Creative Zen Nano (in black). I haven't experienced so much joy in saving up to purchase something since buying a Gameboy almost a year after its release. I've been looking for a replacement MP3 player since selling my typical, Hong Kong 512MB one last year. I've always been against buying an iPod, simply because of its status symbol/fad/fashion trend image, not to mention its overprivileged family on benefits price.
Looking ... ...Creative Zen Nano, but for me its biggest selling point is battery life.
STARTERS
The Creative Zen Nano - or CZN, as I'll refer to it - comes adequately packaged: not excessive, not too little. It was a bit tough to open due to the plastic hook which covers the flap.
The first noticable thing as you open the contents is the USB cable; it connects the CZN to your computer. This makes it a bit awkward to use the CZN as a portable removable drive, ...
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Sound Quality
Ease of Use
Look & Design
Range of Features
Value for Money
very helpful
21.03.2006
zen nano Review ofCreative Zen Nano Plus 1 GBby
gav-o
Advantages: small, good audio, microphone, 18 hr battery, radio Disadvantages: no "hold" button
...of equipment is top notch. creative zen have always produced reliable and good quality mp3's and this is no failure to say the least. the blue display screen and slick black body provides a very appealing and attractive finish. the one great feature about this is the ease to put songs onto it. it uses a simple drag and drop, as opposed to the installment of itunes from apple and etc. the built in mic is also real cool little feature you can record ...
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Advantages: Very Light and Compact Disadvantages: Possibly a bit short on the storage
I bought this item to use in the gym as I didn't want to be jumping and running around with my ipod. I really didn't expect much of it but it's actually really good and easy to use.
Although I can't say it's replaced my ipod, it does beat it in terms of features. Theres an fm radio and voive recorder which can also be used to record from the fm radio, aswell as this there is a line in feature so that you can record straight from your cd player. ... ...I really like about this is that it plays wma's which ipods don't , wma's take up less space so you can cram more music onto it. Transferring songs to the Nano Plus is really easy as its just a drag and drop system, this is great if ur in a rush and you just want to quickly put some stuff on it.
My one little gripe about this is that this doesnt recharge you have to use a battery and this may be a problem for some of you who will use this a lot. ...
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Advantages: Tiny and lightweight Disadvantages: Supplied earphones may be too big for some
I spent hours trying to decide which mp3 player to buy, and considered many of the unbranded clones which are currently available, but for the price and storage capacity I didn't think this little player could be beaten. I have been very pleased with my choice and was glad I went for a well known make having seen the problems others have had with the cheaper ones. The player holds around 10 albums (depending on file size) and the sound quality is ... ...for my ears and would not stay put, so I am using a cheaper pair for now, but the sound is still very good. The player looks nice, although the shiny surface may be easy to scratch - as it is so small, finding a case for it is very difficult. The display is back-lit in blue and quite clear, and the little rocker switch allows easy fast-forwarding or rewinding between tracks. Moving between folders, changing to the radio, setting the equaliser, etc ...
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Advantages: easy to use software, nice ear phones Disadvantages: for some reason i just dont like the shape
i have owned this product for 1 month and have used it every day. The sound quality is brilliant. I wanted to get an ipod but was turned off because i heard that there was a problem with the batteries. The nano plus runs on one AAA battery so you don't have to worry about buying expensive lithium ion batteries. Most of the lithium batteries have to be special ordered and cost as much as the players themselves. The microphone on this is amazing. The ... ...on it by accident, kept it in my pocket next to my house keys, and loose change and it still works like clockwork. Since this player is flash memory not hard drive memory there is no moving mechanical parts. You can also store upto 500 songs. The transfer rate is fast from cd player / computer to mp3 player so if you want to change your song list around it is incredibly easy. ...
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Digital Player Functions: Radio, line-in recording
Width: 3.4 cm
Depth: 1.3 cm
Height: 6.6 cm
Weight: 22 g
Enclosure Colour: Black
PC Interface Supported: USB 2.0
Audio system
Capacity: 1 GB
Digital Storage Media: Flash memory - integrated
Sound Output Mode: Stereo
Equaliser: Yes
Features: Voice recording, FM radio recording capability
Built-in display
Built-in Display: LCD
Equaliser
Equalizer: 4-band
Equaliser Factory Presets: Rock, Jazz, Pop, Classic
Digital player (recorder)
Supported Digital Audio Standards: WMA, MP3, protected WMA (DRM)
Response Bandwidth: 20 - 20000 Hz
Signal-To-Noise Ratio: 90 dB
Total Harmonic Distortion: 0.1%
External Hard Drive Function: Yes
Features: MP3 direct encoding
Radio
Type: Radio tuner - digital radio tuner - FM
Tuning Display: LCD display
Preset Station Qty: 32 preset stations
FM Preset Station Qty: 32 preset stations
Headphones
Headphones Type: Headphones - binaural
Connectivity Technology: Wired
Sound Output Mode: Stereo
Manufacturer's product description
The Creative Zen Nano Plus is the sleekest flash ultra-portable MP3/WMA player from Creative. Incredibly thin in design, it is packed with the latest features to meet all your needs. Enjoy the amazing, skip free, audio quality when you're listening to your MP3 and WMA music. The Zen Nano Plus comes complete with a FM tuner, Voice/FM recording, and Line-In encoding for direct connection and recording from any audio source. Directly record your music from a CD player - no computers needed! Transfer audio and data files in seconds with the Drag-and-Drop feature and USB 2.0 support. In addition, Auto Synchronization makes it easy to transfer your favorite songs and albums from CDs through the line-in connector. Experience uninterrupted listening pleasure with its 18-hour battery life. Hold it in the palm of your hand or slip it into your pocket. Start feeling your music, not your player!
Microphone
Type: Microphone - built-in
Connections
Connector Type:
1 x USB
1 x headphones ( mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm )
1 x audio line-in ( mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm )
Miscellaneous
Included Accessories: Neck strap, audio cable, USB cable
I recently bought a Zen v plus 4gb from Amazon. It was only about £91. My husband has the Zen 20gb and loves it.
The Zen v plus 4gb holds around 2,000 according to the box, I haven't filled it up yet, i've only put 140 tracks on.
The small big more
Recently it was my girlfriends birthday, and having heard her talking about wanting an mp3 player, I decided to get her one as a present. I looked at the obiocu Ipods etc but couldn't afford anything quite so luxurious, instead I took a look at the... more
CREATIVE - Where the ZEN came from - 02/11/2007
The Creative Worldwide network is called LABS > Creatives UK product branch is under the Europe labs which established itself in 1993.
Networks include - America labs- Asia labs- Europe... more
Hello all. First off, it’s literally been months since my last review (exams, don’t ask) but I’m back! I hope to be around a little more now I’m not pulling my hair out.
There’s always a story behind my reviews, this one’s a little sad. My lovely... more
At first sight the skin is a nice shade of pink, looks very sturdy and has a handy clip on the back. Ideal if you are like me and prone to breaking/losing things! I shall write more when I have used it for a while :)
I have returned! I have had... more
It seems that unfortunately Apple has managed to shake off one of its leading competitors in the race to produce the cheapest and most stylish mp3 player. A few years back, the '''Creative Zen:M''' was actually a better product than the '''5th Generation more
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