Creative ZEN X-Fi 2.5" Black 16GB MP3 / MP4 Player With Wireless LAN

incredible audio quality

Reviewed By: steiner666 on 1/29/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: The sound quality, with the included headphones, is definitely the best that I've ever experience on a set of headphones... even beats out my home stereo system at times. Most of my mp3s were ripped to 192kbs, some are higher. With the crystalizer and 3d expand on, almost all of my music (primarily death metal) sounds very crisp, the instruments and everything sound very distinct from each other. The smart volume management helps with having to constantly adjust the volume when i have my library on shuffle. The internal speaker is actually louder than i thought it would be, and makes it convenient to show videos to friends without them sticking your nice new canal headphones in their dirty ears.
The interface is pretty nice and easy enough to navigate.
Battery life so far has been good.
The thing just looks sweet, from the black mirror faceplate and chrome trim to the very nice lcd screen.
SD card expandability.
doesn't have a partially-eaten piece of fruit anywhere on it.

Cons: The software. Creative Centrale was ok to use at first, but then it stopped recognizing parts of my music library on my PC, even after removing and re-adding all the music, some of it still won't show up on the list, so therefore i can't transfer it to my zen. I originally planned on just copying and pasting my music onto the zen, as i have with previous mp3 players. But unfortunately the album art is not displayed on the tracks when transferred that way, even though all albums have proper album art assigned to them according to both winamp and even creative centrale. The good things is that windows media player can sync w/o the stupid problems of Centrale. Another problem with Centrale is that it takes over twice as long to transfer as doing so in windows explorer.
The video converter creative offers is a laugh, i have yet to find a video that it is capable of converting.
faceplate/screen smudge easy. You'll def want the silicon skin if you're an obsessive person like me.

Other Thoughts: As a previous gen (zen vision:m 60gb) owner, and a creative x-fi sound card (x-fi xtrememusic), and a buyer who researches products thoroughly prior to purchasing, i knew that this would be the right player for me.
The are some problems with the included software, but you dont HAVE to use it. As mentioned, WMP works for syncing, and there are plenty of video converter programs, free ones at that (i.e. Handbrake) that are actually capable of converting a variety of videos to a compatible format for the player. So I don't really see these software gripes as being a reason to deduct an egg from an excellent-sounding mp3 player... Sure the wifi isn't that useful, but i knew that going into it, and dont plan on using it.
I only wish, like many owners of this product, that Creative would release a firmware allowing media on SD card to be integrated with the players music/video library... but with 16gb cards costing so little... who would dish out for the higher capacity models?

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awsome product

Reviewed By: drew on 7/18/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: the mp3 player is awesome.... it can do more than than the ipod and it is smaller too. the sound quality is out of this world because of the xi-fi crystallizer, especialy when its played through my giant car stereo. the eq is good too it even supports volume leveling so that i dont blow out my speakers... its also cool because it is recognized by windows without using the install disk and syncs to wmp11. i just love this player.

Cons: the wifi is a bit confusing but after playin with it for a bit it gets easier.

Other Thoughts: love the sd card reader on it and the integrated speaker is good too.

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Reviewed By: Steve on 11/22/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: Good sound quality. SD card expansion

Cons: Wont charge properly. Screen scratches just looking at it.
Cant use standard usb wall charger. Creative says that is normal. You have to purchase their charger for 23 bucks! If you plug it into standard usb pc connector it takes 12 hours to charge the unit and then it only lasts 3 hours then dead.

Other Thoughts: Like an idiot I purchased a refurb directly from Creative because I wanted a second mp3 player just for the gym. I noticed that it would not charge correctly and did not return it right away, my fault. 90 day return for refurb products. I have purchased "anything but Ipod" for a long time but have seen cases where Apple would make an exception. Wont purchase Creative again.

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Great Sound!!!

Reviewed By: Nete88 on 10/23/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: best sound quality out of an mp3, good bass lotsa storage space, looks nice and once u get used to it everything is actually pretty user friendly. also i like how u can make playlist on it while on the go. also comes with great headphones and its pretty loud to, i think its the first mp3 ive had that i cant really listen to the music full blast 24/7 but to me thats a plus, and the speaker on it is really nice to its a bit louder and better sounding then the ones on the ipod touch's

Cons: takes a lil getting used to but no biggie, if u have trouble getting used to it your just being lazy or ur an ipod fanboy that hasnt even touched it

Other Thoughts: i love it, it was a great buy and newegg always keeps me happy unlike comp*sa, really there just terrible there sometimes

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Solid little device

Reviewed By: InMSWeAntitrust on 10/5/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: The SD slot could be viewed as a pro or a con, I go with pro because you get an 8GB SD card for music, then the 16GB for video and you've got a decent setup going. The device is solid, the included headphones are phenominal, the UI is configurable, and bearable (see cons), great price for a great device.

Cons: The included software is extraneous, just connect the device, it'll be recognized by windows fine; if you want videos convert them to a resolution smaller than 320x200 in AVI/WMV format, windows movie maker might work fine for it; I use AVI ReComp.

The UI is by far the worst part about the device, for a few reasons. First, it takes forever to access SD cards (at least 15 seconds to view a filelist, and then another 15-20 to play one song). Also, you would think a device with 9 buttons in a configuration like a cell-phone could work exactly the same as one when chatting. There are two input schemes, each unlike a cell phones and each incredibly slow, making WiFi and MSN/Yahoo support kind of useless.

Other Thoughts: Someone said that it needs Creatives software to stream from a PC; I found that setting up media sharing in Windows Media Player on Vista got the device to recognize and play music from it. Your mileage may vary.

The only reason for 4 eggs and not 5 is because of my frustration with the UI specific to playing files off SD cards and when chatting; playing files off the device and navigation is very solid--I just purchased this device with MSN support in mind and was disappointed when the input methods were so backwards and slow.

This device is still, however, worth the money I spent because everything else about it is brilliant; check out the ZEN touch that Creative is coming out with soon as well.

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