creative zen with x-fi

[vainster]

http://asia.creative.com/produ...gory=214&product=17811
It's true, creative has just announced a new player, zen x-fi wi-fi and x-fi differentiate it from the rest, good to see the bundled earphones is of better quality too. Will check it out once it's available in the store to see how good it is

 

[pontifex]

newegg has the x-fi on their site for sale. it says it has wifi in the description but does it really?
are there 2 versions of the x-fi, one with wifi and one without or is there only 1 unit?

 

[pontifex]

looks like it's 1 unit based on creative's site.

just ordered one. because my Zen Xtra doesn't seem to work with Vista 64 now. It seemed to at least show up before, whereas now it doesn't show up at all. plus I can't use my notmad software with it on Vista either.

 

[pontifex]

it came today.

holy shit it's tiny!!! it is about the size of a credit card and maybe 1/3" to 1/4" thick. I'm used to my Zen Xtra which is about 3.5" long, a little over 2" wide, and about 1/2" thick. It's very light also.
The screen is nice and clear, although a bit small. I got it mostly for MP3s anyway.

I don't like it not having an external volume control though. gotta go through a menu to get it.
The external speaker isn't all that great imo, but I have only tried it for a few seconds & in a noisy room.

Haven't tried the Wifi stuff yet.

The menus are pretty basic and easy to navigate. One thing I don't like is that when you get to the end of the menu list, it doesn't roll over to the beginning. you have to scroll back up. If they fix this it would be nice.

The supplied USB cable is only like 4" long so it sucks unless your USB port is near something you can lay the device on. Luckily it's just a USB mini cable and I can use one of the various cables I have from other devices.
Charging is through USB only, which is nice in a way. One less cord to worry about but if you don't have a PC handy, you can't recharge it. Not sure if they make an AC charger for it like some cell phones have or if one of those would work.

I think I'm going to pick up some kind of small case for it too.

Haven't used the supplied earbuds but I hear they are pretty decent.

 

[pontifex]

the centrale software that comes with it sucks ass so far.

trying to create playlists and it won't create them or it takes 3-5 tries to create it...


deleting files from the player itself is slow too. it keeps telling me it can't delete sometjhing because the device has stopped responding or has been disconnected too.

looks like it's easier to delete the stuff from within the player itself than through windows explorer. not too fast though.


I think I liked my old player better...isn't newer stuff supposed to be better? WTF?

Sent an email to Creative's support. This is ridiculous. I'm seriously thinkign about returning the damn thing.

 

[imported_Section8]

Thanks for the mini review. I have the regular ZEN (8 gig) and it works great. I was thinking about the x-fi version so I will wait a bit for the bugs to be sorted out. Oh, if you have a mini usb charger for your cell phone it will work with the ZEN. The one for the Razor does anyway.

 

[pontifex]

Creative gave me a few thigns to try so I will see if that does anything. They said to reformat it and also run disk cleanup. not sure why this would need to be done on a brand new unit though.

 

[pontifex]

good news...the format seems to have helped with the slow deleting via windows explorer. still pretty slow to do it via the unit though.
centrale software still sucks ass though. half the time it locks up on me and won't respond.

looks like Notmad might work for the X-fi even though it doesn't say it's supported or works under Vista.

 

[pontifex]

notmad doesn't work

 

[QueBert]

I actually like it, if I didn't own a iPod Touch I'd probably be all over it. As for a charger, Belkin makes a USB wall charger that you just plug the USB cable into it and it works in any wall outlet, very cool gadget. I used it to charge my Mototola Q worked good.

 

[pontifex]

My problems seems to be a lack of quality software to use with it. I'm using a trial version of J. River Media Center 12 and it seems to be the best so far and actually works like it's supposed to. Sucks that I'm going to have to pay $40 for it, but I guess if I need something that works I'll have to deal with it.

Now that I am using that, everything is so much better. Still not quite as easy and fast as Notmad (PLEASE RED CHAIR, MAKE A NEW VERSION OF NOTMAD THAT WORKS IN VISTA AND WITH THE ZEN X-FI!!!!!) though.

 

[pontifex]

The shuffle feature doesn't seem to work so well. Sometimes it ends up shuffling to songs off the same artist or even the same cd. not a huge deal breaker but something I hope they can fix.

 

[pontifex]

i've been having to reset my zen x-fi quite a bit lately. it seems to lock up every now and then. They just released a new firmware version on 7/29 so I got that last night. We'll see if it makes any difference. It didn't seem like it does much based on the description.