I bought this just over a year ago and I am still impressed and use it loads. Its great to take on walks, or to pop on in the car (I have an attachment to play it through the car speakers).
Looks:
The MP3 player is very stylish. the front of the player is made of a high quality white plastic, with a silver plastic border. The back of the player is a metalic grey metal. All of the buttons on it are a slightly lighter metallic grey colour.
The player comes with a stylish black case, made from leather look material, with elasticated sides, light grey stitching, a sturdy plastic belt clip on the back with the creative logo etched into it, and the creative logo on the front in silver writing.
Erganomics:
This MP3 player is approximately the same size as my purse, or my mobile phone. This is great as it means that I can pop it in my handbag and take it everywhere with me. If you don't have a handbag, or want the player in easy reach when listening to it, the case that comes with it has a belt clip on the back.
The case:
The belt clip on the case is a very sturdy one, nice and tight so it will grip your belt well and made from chunky plastic, so not flimsy and easy to break.
The case also has elasticated sides which make it easier to slide the player into it, great if you are busy doing something else (like watching where you are walking) while sliding the player back into the case.
The inside of the case has a felt like material to help protect the player from scratches. I have had my player for just over a year now and it has absolutely no scratches, chips etc. just a few greasy finger prints.
The case itself only has a couple of scuffs rather than scratches as the material is so sturdy and protective.
At the bottom of the case the corners are cut out, this makes it easy to push the player up out of the case, as it would be difficult to otherwise because it is such a snug fit.
The player:
The player itself has rounded sides and corners, this makes it very comfortable to hold in the palm of your hand as you navigate through your songs.
The LCD screen takes up approximately one third of the MP3 player at the top. The screen has a blue backlight which makes it very easy to see the black type in either the light or the dark.
On the top edge of the player is the headphone socket, the USB port and a lock. When the lock is on none of the buttons work. This is good as it means you don't have to put up with songs skipping as you acidentally press the buttons whilst picking it up etc. The lock has an orange colour underneath the lefthand side so that it shows when the lock is on, making it easy to see at a quick glance whether or not the lock is on. The lock is also nice and stiff, and also very small with a tiny little notch sticking up to cath your nail on so there is no chance of it accidentally unlocking itself.
On the right-hand edge is the charger socket, at the top.
On the left-hand edge, is the power button at the top. The volume buttons a third of the way down and the reset button at the bottom The power button lights up in blue when the player is on, so you can tell at a glance whether or not it is turned on. The reset button is set back into the player and must be pressed with a paper clip, so that it cannot be pressed by accident.
On the front of the player there are three buttons down the left-hand side. Theses are back, menu, and random. There are also three buttons on the right-hand side, these are rewind, play/pause, and fast forward. And in the middle is an ok button, and a touch sensitive menu slider. The menu slider is very awkward to use if you only want to move a little bit. If you want to move alot then you can stroke your thumb down the length of it and it moves alot, but if you are moving a little you end up taping it gently this way and that.
Ease of use:
Deffinately very easy to use.The fast forward, play etc are all self explanitary, so I won't insult your intelligence by explaining these to you.
When you press the menu button you are presented with the options: Music library, Now Playing, Play Mode, Settings, and information. Simply scroll through these and press the ok button when you are on the one you want.
Music Library: If you go into this menue you are then offered the various choices of how you wish to view your songs. There is playlists, to enable you to choice from any playlists that you have made. Almuns to list all of the albumns on your MP3 player. Artists, Genres, Recordings, All tracks, and Randon play all
Now Playing: Takes you to the song which is currently playing, and displyed on the screen is the title of the song, the abumn it is from and the band name. Also the number of the position of the song within your playlist, a bar which shows how far through the song is, and two counters, one showing how long the song has been playing for and the other counting down how much longer the song will play for. When on the current song, you can stroke up and down the scroll pad to navigate the playlist.
Play Mode:
The choices in this are: Normal, Repeat Track, Repeat All, Shuffle, Shuffle Repeat, and Track Once. Again these area all self explanitary so I won't insult your intelligence
Settings: Again this provides you with another menu, with the choices:
Owner: Obviously to enter your name.
EQ Settings: Here you can choose what sort of sound you want from your player. There are 10 choices in here, Off, Custom EQ, Acoustic, Classical, Disco, Jazz, New Age, Pop, Rock, Vocal.
Backlight time: To set how long you want the back light to stay on for each time you have pressed a button.
Contrast: To set how much you would like the writing to contrast with the backlight.
Idle Shutdown:
Date and Time:
Touchpad: To set the sensitivity, whether or not it makes a clicking sound when you use it, and whether you can select objects by tapping the touchpad.
Language:
Reset Settings: This just allows you to set the player back to the default settings
Back to the main menu, the last choice is:
Information: This gives you various statistics about the information on your player, such as how much space is left on your hard drive, how many songs you have on it, how many albumns, how many artists etc.
The player is also very easy to put your songs onto. You simply install the software which comes with the player. Any songs which you have downloaded, or which are copied from your CDs should already be in a file on your computer. The creative software allows you to tell it which files to look in, and then you can simply highlight the songs which you want to transfer onto your player. Once selected, press a button which says transfer and they are put onto the player in seconds (depending how many songs you have chosen, but very quickly).
You can make playlists for your player, which you can name to make them easily recognisable. These can either be done on your computer on the software by choosing to make a new playlist and then adding each song to it. Or by editing current playlists. Or you can make your playlists on the player itself. To do this you simply select each song that you want on the playlist and then click ok on one of the songs listed and choose 'save as playlist', you will then be asked to name it.
I think that the playlists are great! It means that you can either choose to listen to a particular albumn, or have a playlist of your fav songs etc! I have different playlists for myself and my boyfriend, so that if either of us are in the car alone we can listen to our own favourites and if we are in the car together we can tell it to play both playlists so that we each get to take turns. I also have different playlists for different moods, and one to play if the other people in the car are of my age group, or one which I have on when my grandma is in the car, so there is no swearing, or thrashy style songs!
Accessories:
As I have already mentioned, the player comes with it's own great carry case/belt attachment. It also comes with a charger as it has an inbuilt rechargable battery. It comes with its own headphones, which are very good quality for something which comes free with the player. Obviuosly the software also comes with it.
There are also various accessories which you can buy to go with the player. I have got an attachment which simply plug into it and has a tape style thing on the end, which goes into the casette player in my car, and means that it is played through the car sound system. You can also buy speakers to plug into the player, and no doubt various other things.
The player also comes with a selection of songs already on it. There are quite alot of them, but they are all classical music. Great if you are into classical music though. And I didn't think that I was, but I litsened to some of them anyway, while I was waiting to download my own and found that I actually like some. The rest I have deleted though.
Although expensive, it's certainly great value for money. I got it a year ago for around £170, but they are bound to be much cheaper now as there is a newer version out with the ability to record, and which includes a built in radio. I have had a quick peek on EBay for current prices, and there are a few of these that are still approx £100 with 17hours to go?!?!?!?
Good points:
I have had this player now for over a year. I have 2194 songs on it and still have 7024MB left out of the original 19056MB of space when the player was empty.
Also the player still looks brand new even though it is used on a daily basis, and carried around with half the contents of my house in my bag all day!
It also has great sound quality.
Bad Points:
Sometimes the player crashes, for no apparent reason. When this happens it simply freezes. To rectify this problem you need to push a paperclip into the reset slot at the bottom left-hand side. This has sorted it out easily each time. When it first did it though, I thought it had broken!
More details
Video Quality
Very Helpful / Very Easy to Understand
Durability
Excellent
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ideal digital audio player for music fans. Its innovative Touch Pad supports easy, fingertip navigation through your library of songs, while the 20GB hard disk can al...
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