Great battery life, easy to use and attractive design
Disadvantages:
Heavy, bulky and the accompanying software isn't up to much .
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I've wanted an MP3 player for a while now, and recently bought myself a Creative Zen Touch, on the advice of my ex-boyfriend who assured me that they were the best on the market. As I was determined to get anything other than an iPod, I agreed to try it out.
So what is my verdict?
Let's cover the basics of the Zen Touch.
Creative has managed to secure itself a pretty good reputation in the MP3 field, and while Apple still reigns surpreme other companies such as Creative and IRiver are finally beginning to give Apple a run for it's money.
The Zen Touch measures 106mm by 68mm by 24mm, which is quite bulky when compared to others on the market - it's also considerably heavy to someone used to a midget mobile phone. However, the 20gb capacity explains it large size. Advertised as having storage for 'up to 10,000 songs', in reality my player has 19gb of space, so it won't hold that many. Having said that - so far I've uploaded 21 albums/300 songs and that has used up less than 1gb. We're talking some pretty heavy duty memory storage here.
Design wise, the Zen Touch isn't as simplistic as the iPod (but personally I hate that design anyway). It's got a white face, with a grey back and a silver panel runningaround the front. The sides are curved so it looks stylishly finished, and hard to measure accurately! It's got a touch sensitive strip running down the middle, which you can use to navigate through your tracks. It's really easy to use, and has different sensitivity seetings, so those heavyhanded individuals (ie my ex) don't go flying past the track they want. There are six buttons on the front, three on either side of the touch strip. The lay out goes:
[]=my symbol for the button. Don't laugh, you'll shatter my self confidence!
[] < = this sends you back to the previous menu you selected [] MENU = opens up the main menu while the player is on [] RANDOM = sets the player to play tracks at random restarts the current track, or starts the previously played track = |<< [] plays/pauses the selected track = >/|| [] skips to the next track = >>| []
There is also a round button at the top of the touch strip - this says OK in the centre and is basically the MP3 player equivalent of the left mouse button.
On the top of the player there is a port for headphones and USB cable, and also a little button that locks the player up - very useful when you don't want to accidentally change the songs. On the left hand side we have the port for the charger, and on the right the on/off button above the volume up and volume down buttons. All buttons are silver, and the on/off button is backlit in blue when the player is on or charging. (It flashes while charging).
The menus are easy to use and there are various settings you can modify - for example the length of time the blue backlight stays on for, the sensitivity of the touch strip and time&date.
The battery life really is fantastic. Advertised as 24hours, I've had mine on almost constantly for three days and only needed to charge it once.
The Zen Touch doesn't come in a box, rather in that awful clear plastic vacuum-packed stuff. This lets you see the product before you buy it, but you have to cut the stuff open with scissors, thus spoiling any chance of long term storage. Included in the package is the player, a pair of decent headphones, a carry case, charger, 2.0 USB cable to connect it to your computer and a software disc. The user manual is divided into language sections and contains very little useful info - most of the stuff you need to know has been put on the CD instead. There is some Creative Zen software you can install, but there is also Windows Media Player 10 whihc most people use instead. I found WMP easy to use, so I've stuck with that.
I have absolutely no problems with the sound quality or the volume or anything - in that respects the Zen Touch is an excellent machine. The sound is clear and sharp - in fact I've picked up background lyrics on songs I didn't even realise had background lyrics!
However, nothing is perfect, and I do have some gripes with the Zen Touch.
First off, Windows Media 10. Since I installed it, I can't get it to find track information on the internet for new ripped CDs. This is a real problem, because without the name or artist it is very hard to find a song you want on the MP3 player. In connection to this - I wrote out the title, artist and album name of a particular album I wanted to upload, saved it on the computer, but when I uploaded the tracks it still said Unknown Artist etc on the player.
Secondly, there doesn't seem to be a way or renaming tarcks once they are actually on the player. at least, I can't find one. This seems silly to me, as you are able to enter a 'name' for the player in the Settings, but not for the tracks!
Thirdly, the playlist feature is messed up. I may not be dfoing right, but the idea seems to be that you assemble your playlist in Media Player beforehand, then upload it to the player. When I tried this, it didn't work, and the tracks were all sorted into different album folders.
And finally, the carry case is a bit lacking. Support-wise it is great, but there is no see-through cover, so to change a track or lower the volume you have to take the player out of the case - this can get extremely tiresome and it's not good for security reasons.
However, because Creative have just brought out their new model, the Creative Zen Micro, which has a 5gb memory, many places are selling the Zen Touch very cheaple. I bought mine from PC World for £149.99 - bargain. The general price is now about £150-£200 online, which is not bad for a 20gb player.
SO...THE VERDICT. It's got it's faults, but that may just be my ineptitude. All in all, a heartily recommended player.
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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