Kevin Zak

Just before Christmas I decided that I needed a bigger mp3 player. My music collection was growing and my 8GB Rio Carbon just wasn’t cutting it anymore. With this in mind I set out to find a ridiculously cheap player with nice battery life. I needed no special features like video playback (that’s what my laptop and PSP are for) nor a nice LCD screen (it just needs to play my music, not look pretty) nor did it need to be tiny (it would sit in my lap or in the cup holder of my car, not in my pocket). Unlike the vast majority of the population, I do not support overpriced iPods (or other equally overpriced Apple products) and thus was not ready to purchase one.

I began reading reviews on several major brands. While all of them had unique features that made them appealing, only one brand had the thing that caught my interest: battery life. Supposedly Creative destroys other mp3 players’ battery life by a wide margin. The only problem was the price. While they were reasonably priced for their caliber, they weren’t quite in my price range. Then I stumbled upon the Creative Zen Touch. It was not nearly as pretty as Creative’s other models, yet it had an interesting concept with it’s vertical scrolling device and it had amazing reviews on battery life. Best of all, I could get a factory refurbished 20GB model for only $49.99. I convinced my parents to order me one and they ended up buying one for my brother, as well.

Size Doesn’t Matter After All

It came via UPS four days later. I quickly opened up the box and was slightly surprised. This thing was by no means small. When I researched it, I didn’t pay much attention to the dimensions or weight. I was more interested in the things I cared about (battery life and capacity). I expected it to be a little bigger than normal mp3 players, but this was a bulky, beast of an mp3 player and that bothered me a little at first. When I held it, though, I found that it fit my hand perfectly. It did fit into my pocket (as well as my car’s cup holder), and although it was bulky, I liked the feel better than my friends’ skinny iPods. I knew that if I dropped this thing, it wasn’t going to break. It’s as solidly built of an electronic device of its size as I’ve ever seen.

<3 Storage

With 20GB of storage, it can hold my entire music collection with plenty room for growth. This was nice, since at about 12GB, I had to carefully choose what I wanted on my previous mp3 player and what I did not. With my entire library on it, I can fire up Winamp, head to the portable devices section, and hit the nifty sync button whenever I buy a new CD. It’s nearly a flawless process.

Firmware should be more Soft

My initial reaction to the firmware was that this was going to suck. I despised the menu layout. The vertical scrolling was either too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Then I read the manual. It turns out that different parts of the scrolling area are for different speeds. This made all the difference. I could now navigate through menus flawlessly. It turns out that the menu schema Creative designed was actually very nice once people understood how to use the scroll pad.

I <3 My Zen

Overall, I couldn’t be more satisfied. I can get 24 hours of battery life while continuously playing music, which is great for me because I forgot to recharge things every night. It syncs flawlessly with my Winamp collection. 20GB of storage is great for me, and this way I can keep adding music to my collection. Once I got used to the scroll pad, the firmware was great. It’s a great mp3 player. It’s not for people who desire these tiny players that are as small as memory cards, but it’s great for what I use it for. It fits in my cup holder while I’m in the car, on my desk while I’m at home, in my pocket when I’m at the mall or walking elsewhere, and in the stuff-holders that my workout equipment all use. I would definitely recommend it to anyone not obsessed with iPods. The one bad thing I could find about it is that the headphones that come with it are terrible. Luckily I still have my $70 noise canceling ear buds from my old mp3 player.