Creative Labs Zen 20GB video and mp3 player, $185 after MIR

[Schadenfroh]

Text

I would jump on it if it were not for the $250 MIR

 

[modedepe]

Damn, that's one hefty rebate. Nice price though if it comes through.

 

[randomlinh]

that rebate is going to be sent insured, certified, next day, hand delivered verification.... heh

 

[WorldTraveller]

what about the player? any thoughts from people who has it?

 

[slackerinabox]

How big is this compared to the new ipod?

 

[Grouchyoldguy]

I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

 

[jalaram]

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

Just curious then since both of you guys own one. What are the pros/cons of the unit in your opinion?

 

[Maluno]

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

Yes, that is true, but Creative has had QUITE a bit of problems in the past, many of them which are simply unacceptable. For instance, their problems with the headphone jacks on their mp3 players are ridiculous. Although they claimed to have fixed the problem with an improved design, someone took apart their zen micro and found that the design was unchanged from the faulty units. And the number of failures did not decrease, either.

Another example was their false advertising of 24bit recording on their audio cards.

I have been screwed over twice by Creative, as have 4 of my friends, and none of us are ever going to buy Creative products again. If you get lucky, and your Creative product does not fail on you, then congratulations, but the important part to remember is that you are LUCKY. This is not the norm in my experience.

This is all just my opinion, of course, but I believe that people deserve to be forewarned about this brand's shortcomings. I don't want to start an argument, so please don't be offended that I disagree with your statement. I instead encourage the potential buyers to visit the forums to see what types of problems they are having with their products.

The bad part is not that there are a lot of failures, as it is a technical support forum, instead, it is that all of the problems are so similar that suggest there are some major flaws in the design. Also, the number of people recieving multiple defective units is frightening.
</rant>

😀

 

[Fritzo]

My friend has one and like it. It's very sexy looking, but it's a bit heavy. If you don't have Windows MCE it's pretty much useless though.

 

[buzzsaw13]

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
How big is this compared to the new ipod?

Its monstrously larger, still a nice player though 😀

 

[mscdex0]

Is this thing about the size of a PSP?

 

[foolish501]

Originally posted by: mscdex0
Is this thing about the size of a PSP?

smaller length wise, but much thicker.

don't bother with this, this was the first video player i had, doesn't play divx movies, everything has to be re-encoded before it will play. Got rid of this one and got a MSI Megaview 566, much better player, and plays most things you throw at it.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Maluno

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

Yes, that is true, but Creative has had QUITE a bit of problems in the past, many of them which are simply unacceptable. For instance, their problems with the headphone jacks on their mp3 players are ridiculous. Although they claimed to have fixed the problem with an improved design, someone took apart their zen micro and found that the design was unchanged from the faulty units. And the number of failures did not decrease, either.

Another example was their false advertising of 24bit recording on their audio cards.

I have been screwed over twice by Creative, as have 4 of my friends, and none of us are ever going to buy Creative products again. If you get lucky, and your Creative product does not fail on you, then congratulations, but the important part to remember is that you are LUCKY. This is not the norm in my experience.

This is all just my opinion, of course, but I believe that people deserve to be forewarned about this brand's shortcomings. I don't want to start an argument, so please don't be offended that I disagree with your statement. I instead encourage the potential buyers to visit the forums to see what types of problems they are having with their products.

The bad part is not that there are a lot of failures, as it is a technical support forum, instead, it is that all of the problems are so similar that suggest there are some major flaws in the design. Also, the number of people recieving multiple defective units is frightening.
</rant>

😀

Thats a bummer what has been happening with your and your friends units. From what I have read (and I am a frequent reader and poster in the creative forums) the largest headphone issues was with the Zen Micro. There are virtually no issues for my unit, the Zen touch, except for a lack of new firmware. They are finally releasing a new one this month after alomst a year since the last firmware!!

Anyway, for the few products I have had from Creative they have all worked very well, except for my old SB live and that anoying bug it had with that SiS chipset on the ECS K7S5A mobo. My zen touch is a freaking awesome player and I love it to death even though it is a bit on the heavy side. I have had almost no exposure to the micro or this video version so I cannot attest to there quality though the headphone jack problem with the mirco is well documented.

-spike

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: jalaram

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

Just curious then since both of you guys own one. What are the pros/cons of the unit in your opinion?

For my Zen Touch 40gb they go somthing like this:

Pros:
Cheap for tons of space ($220)
WAY long batter life (26 hours continuious, 18-20 for normal use)
Great sound quality (something like 98 dB SNR)
Touch pad is a good navigator, though not quite as nice as the scroll wheel
built like a tank and won't scratch easily

Cons:
Heavy and a little larger than ipod (see tank comment in 'pros')
No plug and play support, must install drivers*
The included software is ok, the $10 I paid for notmad explorer from red chair is worth it
equilizer is not quite accurate*

*- both of these problems are supposed to be fixed in the firmware that is due out this month. The player will have MTP support which means it will show up as a device if you have Win XP and WMP 10 installed without any drivers.

Those are my pros and cons. As I have said before I love the player. This and the Muvo's are my favorite MP3 players though I like alot of iRivers offerings. Again, all the above comments apply to the touch, not to the media player that the op is talking about.

-spike

 

[Maluno]

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Maluno

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: Grouchyoldguy
I have one... Go to Creatives website, click on support and then forums to read about the problems from owners.

Thats like saying go to the AMD, ATI, Intel or whoever elses forums to read about the problems. Every product has issues and thats why the makers setup forums, for those problems to be discussed. I have a Creative Zen Touch and it works wonderfully yet going to the forums show lots of people with problems.

If someone were to just go to the support forums to read about a product before making their decisions they would never get anything.

-spike

Yes, that is true, but Creative has had QUITE a bit of problems in the past, many of them which are simply unacceptable. For instance, their problems with the headphone jacks on their mp3 players are ridiculous. Although they claimed to have fixed the problem with an improved design, someone took apart their zen micro and found that the design was unchanged from the faulty units. And the number of failures did not decrease, either.

Another example was their false advertising of 24bit recording on their audio cards.

I have been screwed over twice by Creative, as have 4 of my friends, and none of us are ever going to buy Creative products again. If you get lucky, and your Creative product does not fail on you, then congratulations, but the important part to remember is that you are LUCKY. This is not the norm in my experience.

This is all just my opinion, of course, but I believe that people deserve to be forewarned about this brand's shortcomings. I don't want to start an argument, so please don't be offended that I disagree with your statement. I instead encourage the potential buyers to visit the forums to see what types of problems they are having with their products.

The bad part is not that there are a lot of failures, as it is a technical support forum, instead, it is that all of the problems are so similar that suggest there are some major flaws in the design. Also, the number of people recieving multiple defective units is frightening.
</rant>

😀

Thats a bummer what has been happening with your and your friends units. From what I have read (and I am a frequent reader and poster in the creative forums) the largest headphone issues was with the Zen Micro. There are virtually no issues for my unit, the Zen touch, except for a lack of new firmware. They are finally releasing a new one this month after alomst a year since the last firmware!!

Anyway, for the few products I have had from Creative they have all worked very well, except for my old SB live and that anoying bug it had with that SiS chipset on the ECS K7S5A mobo. My zen touch is a freaking awesome player and I love it to death even though it is a bit on the heavy side. I have had almost no exposure to the micro or this video version so I cannot attest to there quality though the headphone jack problem with the mirco is well documented.

-spike

One of my friends that had the failed unit had a zen touch, and the headphone jack was what broke on it. 😀

 

[mrSHEiK124]

A friend of mine had a Zen Touch go bad on him after 4 months, stopped working normally. It'd display weird characters whenever it was turned on, then after a while it just started freezing at the Creative boot-up screen with a mini 1.8-inch click of death 🙂. Another friend's Nomad.......um, the chunky USB2 Nomad, I think it was called the Nomad Extra, also had its hard drive crap out on it. Guess having a chunky case didn't help the hard drive from having an electrical failure.

EDIT: But I'm willing to overlook Creative's QC problems for the Zen Vision, damn that thing is NICE.

 

[Maluno]

I can understand why you would be tempted with this Zen vision, as it DOES look attractive. I just hope that you realize that all of Creative's products are brilliant on paper, but they break in RL. If they were reliable, I would jump now and buy the vision. Unfortunately, my experiences and those of my friends has turned me off to the brand.

 

[Ichinisan]

Where is the rebate?

Dead?