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winneganfakeOk, review time:
Creative Labs: Zen media Player (4gig) Review.
The Hardware: 4/5. It's honestly a great player. Downright shiny. It's a small player, but the heft of it is definitely enough to make you feel like you're not going to be dropping or losing it it anywhere. Buttons are well placed and easily reachable- I was able to manipulate it in a pocket on the first day without having to think to myself "Is this the play button?" Controls are fairly intuitive.
The OS: 4/5. Fast boot-up- about twice as quick as my old player, which didn't do full color or anything near as slick. Very nice. The basic menus are split up by media, with a sub-menu within each group. It's not bad, except that there's no way in the settings to remove unwanted options from the sub-menus.
Sound Quality/Music: 4.5/5. Clean and crisp. The equalizer (only a five-band, but that's better than most) actually does a decent job. The low-end sound isn't quite as much as I'd like, but then again, I'm also one of those guys who usually likes the bass rattling out his eardrums. Music loaded quickly and smoothly, nary a beat dropped or a file glitched.
Visual Quality/Video/Pictures: 3/5. The picture quality itself is great, and the display handles color with no distortion whatsoever. The screen's not quite bright enough for viewing stuff in full daylight, but sitting on a bus or anything similar is no problem. Glare, on the other hand is an issue. The Hi-gloss plastic of the player turns into an excellent mirror when the light hits it just wrong, which means viewing stuff gets a bit problematic at times.
Media Control: 3/5. While setting up a playlist in Creative's own software on your desktop is easy as pie, Setting one up on the go via the player's menu, is an utter bitch. And in neither case is there a way to listen to tracks while you're making the playlist- the desktop option has no player all, and in-player will let you listen to your "now playing" track but will save everything in your "now playing" queue when saving the playlist. Also, no playlist function for video. Which is fine, unless I'm doing something like stringing together a series of clips, at which point it again becomes a little frustrating.
Synching: 5/5. This part they definitely got right. Media can be transferred by Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player, Winamp, and Creative's own software, all with no difficulty whatsoever. Conversion on video files worked well in both WMP and Creative's software (didn't have the chance to try it with winamp yet), though of the two, I'd recommend Creative's ware more for the conversion- it's a good bit slower, but the aspect ratio was better handled, and the resolution came out a lot cleaner.
Final Rating: 4/5. It's a good one. Definitely a keeper.
Creative Labs: Zen media Player (4gig) Review.
The Hardware: 4/5. It's honestly a great player. Downright shiny. It's a small player, but the heft of it is definitely enough to make you feel like you're not going to be dropping or losing it it anywhere. Buttons are well placed and easily reachable- I was able to manipulate it in a pocket on the first day without having to think to myself "Is this the play button?" Controls are fairly intuitive.
The OS: 4/5. Fast boot-up- about twice as quick as my old player, which didn't do full color or anything near as slick. Very nice. The basic menus are split up by media, with a sub-menu within each group. It's not bad, except that there's no way in the settings to remove unwanted options from the sub-menus.
Sound Quality/Music: 4.5/5. Clean and crisp. The equalizer (only a five-band, but that's better than most) actually does a decent job. The low-end sound isn't quite as much as I'd like, but then again, I'm also one of those guys who usually likes the bass rattling out his eardrums. Music loaded quickly and smoothly, nary a beat dropped or a file glitched.
Visual Quality/Video/Pictures: 3/5. The picture quality itself is great, and the display handles color with no distortion whatsoever. The screen's not quite bright enough for viewing stuff in full daylight, but sitting on a bus or anything similar is no problem. Glare, on the other hand is an issue. The Hi-gloss plastic of the player turns into an excellent mirror when the light hits it just wrong, which means viewing stuff gets a bit problematic at times.
Media Control: 3/5. While setting up a playlist in Creative's own software on your desktop is easy as pie, Setting one up on the go via the player's menu, is an utter bitch. And in neither case is there a way to listen to tracks while you're making the playlist- the desktop option has no player all, and in-player will let you listen to your "now playing" track but will save everything in your "now playing" queue when saving the playlist. Also, no playlist function for video. Which is fine, unless I'm doing something like stringing together a series of clips, at which point it again becomes a little frustrating.
Synching: 5/5. This part they definitely got right. Media can be transferred by Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player, Winamp, and Creative's own software, all with no difficulty whatsoever. Conversion on video files worked well in both WMP and Creative's software (didn't have the chance to try it with winamp yet), though of the two, I'd recommend Creative's ware more for the conversion- it's a good bit slower, but the aspect ratio was better handled, and the resolution came out a lot cleaner.
Final Rating: 4/5. It's a good one. Definitely a keeper.