Review by vivx.net:

Let me start of by saying that I have USED this for over a year and a half.

A day in the life of my iPod nano – pulling it, throwing it, biking with it, running/jogging with it, roll it up and chucking in the bag, untangling the cord when pulling it out, dropping the ipod and grabbing it at the last moment by the cord, rolling with it in my sleep etc. With such a life style every earphone started to give away after a few months. I needed something which does not tear at the seams, extremely flexible, should not loose shape, tough joint strength (ESPECIALLY at the PLUG) with great audio quality at a good price. This was a tough ask. But after ripping through 5 to 10 different brands of earphones in as many months, this CREATIVE earphone was the answer to all my wants.

Don’t even have to comment on the sound quality, excellent in every aspect as given by the previous reviewers. The BUILD quality is amazing. First off the cord has a rubbery feel to it. If you tie a knot with the cord and untangle it, its all straight again. WOW. Secondly with all the bending and tugging at all the corners, it works just as great as it did the first day I got it. Mind you its going to be close two years. The only reason I happen to be reviewing it is that I was shopping around for a new ipod and came across this trusty companion. This will be the third ipod which will go on this same earphone.

Great job Creative, hope all your future products have the same quality.

Review by An engineer:

I ordered the Sennheiser CX300 earbud headset and the Creative Labs EP630 together to compare, and the difference is night and day. The Sennheisers sound crisp and clear, comparable to a much more expensive Etymotic Research ER6i. The Creative Labs earbuds sound washed out (no matter how I adjust the EQ). Both earbud headsets are new so no burn-in has been done. The price was almost the same for the two.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Sennheiser but am disappointed in the Creative Labs product.

Review by J. R. Croft:

This is the 3rd creative player I have owned. All of them have been excellent. I really like the mosiac the best. The sofware sets up a logical order so I can find stuff like set up the equlizer,turn on speaker ,etc I will say that it did take me while to learn how to navigate the menu options. The speaker is an added bonus. I rarely listen to music mostly audio books. The sound can be addjusted so I can hear the spoken word clearly. I have poor hearing as a result of listening to music to loud when I was younger. Just a word to the younger folks out there. One final thought all of the players Zen nano plus,ZenV plusand the mosiac 300 do freeze up. I just reset the player it always rebulds and goes to where it left off this is annoying nothing more. When I look back to transister radios i listened to when I was a kid this device is a miracle. Jim C PS I would not continus buying creative if I didnot like the product. I did buy a sansa once e140 did not like it

Review by E. A. Brackbill:

The unit shut itself off automatically while I was at the beach. The unit was in a beach bag. Thought it failed but after I got home it worked. Battery was fully charged so I knew it wasn’t that. Few days later, left the unit in the console of my car. When I came out after work and tried to turn it on. It wouldn’t. After I got home, it worked. The only common factor, temperature but in neither case was the unit in the sun. The unit was warm to the touch but not hot. On another occasion the same thing happened when I left it in the car. On a whim, I turned on the air conditioning and held the unit near the vent for less than a minute. It worked again! Obviously, there is a very temperature sensitive component.

Returned the first unit for another one thinking there was a manufacturing defect. The second unit does the same thing. Doesn’t always work at the beach; doesn’t always work in the car. What good is it? Previously had a Zen V Plus. Never had a problem at the beach or in the car.

I really like the unit, its controls and features but they’re of no advantage if the unit doesn’t function. There must be a design or component problem. It’s return time again, and buy the refurb Zen V Plus 4GB available here.

Review by Decolliber:

I have both the older 8gb Zen (2007) and a new 16gb Zen MX. They are basically the same except that the MX has integrated access to the removable SD card directly from the Creative Centrale software that comes with the it. With the old Zen you had to go into a removable card menu on the Zen and then access the card via the computer operating system to add or delete files. Zen MX also does not have the code for some video formats and the software has to convert them before transfer to the Zen MX; on the old Zen you could just transfer the video files directly to the Zen. Finally, the Creative Centrale software that comes with the new Zen MX does not seem as intuitive and user friendly as the older software that came with the Zen. If I had to do it again I would have bought the older Zen rather than the new Zen MX, but the older ones are becoming hard to find and are a lot more expensive. Strangely enough the 16gb version of the old Zen is more expensive than the 32gb version!

To answer those who said the Zen MX will not play DRM protected files. Not true. It will play DRM9 protected files, but they have to be put on the Zen via the transfer function in the software, not through drag & drop, because the former also carries over the license info and the latter technique does not. Creative notes this on their web site.

Review by Michael X. Watman:

After hanging on to a Zen Micro for a few years (due to a stingy character), I picked up this “update” and have been so pleased. It has easy to operate button/rocker switches rather than the erratic touch controls of its ancestor. Transferring my old library and playlists was a snap. Having the chance to store a few photos also ups the pleasure of the device.

Although others may wish for a combo camera-phone-music-whatever piece of hardware, if you’re interested in any easy to handle mp3 player at a reasonable price, this is definitely something you should seriously consider.

Review by MassiveAttack:

Under ‘Creative audio control panel,’ be certain that ‘high speed’ (2.0) is checked, and not ‘full speed’ (1.1). This may or may not solve lag and other commonly cited audio issues. That said,

I do not like this sound card. In fact, it’s not really a sound card at all. More truthfully, it is a (large) software suite connected to a big volume knob. As far as I can tell, and from what I have read and seen in task manager), all of the real work is done with your computer. Well, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem on modern machines, right? I mean, aren’t the days of needing external chips to alleviate workload on the CPU long gone and irrelevant?

Maybe. But the fact is that I feel that I could have attained the same, cheap audio tricks via any number of winamp plug-ins, equalizers, et al. What I wanted was a superior external DAC than the noise coming from my onboard RealTek ‘high definition’ audio. The truth is that I can tell no difference between the two outputs until I turn on the effects of the x-fi, which are really annoying to a music purist. They produce listener fatigue and unwelcome distortion (music was not meant to be heard in simulated surround, and ‘crystalizer’ can get downright ‘screechy’).

The simulated surround or EAX is fine for watching movies and playing games, though. But if you are primarily a music buff and have decent speakers, I advise looking elsewhere.

There is good news, though. While Creative has a history of not supporting older cards on a newer OS, there is a functioning beta driver for Windows 7 already at their site. You won’t be experiencing what thousands of people did when trying to use their XP cards on Vista, etc. However, the overall performance of the card is sluggish both on my XP install and my Win 7 beta. Adjustments are cumbersome and opening the severe bloatware of sound options is unacceptably slow even on fairly well-equipped hardware. I’d consider this a fluke of my install, but on two separate disks, and with two different OSes (XP and 7)? No. It’s just bloated.

I got this new for virtually nothing, but I’d still not buy it again because I can honestly achieve the same effects by using the EQ of the iTunes, Mediamonkey, etc. Again, this is nothing but a ton of sound software that happens to have a physical body. You can do better for not much more money. However, as a solution for a broken onboard chip / output jack, this is an economical solution. But even then I’d almost recommend one of those USB thumb drive-type cards as they won’t take up unnecessary desktop space or clutter your install with a ton of software that, btw, takes 20 minutes to install).

If the x-fi surround were anything but a fancy software suite, I’d rate it higher. Sorry. Just trying to save someone the grief if they are looking for a music solution. That’s what these reviews are for.

Review by Homepro:

I purchased this Creative Labs X-Fi 5.1 external sound card to watch movies on my new laptop based on Creatives reputation, past creative products and the reviews that I read here.

The good:

Playing music is awesome. Mp3 files trully do sound great.

The bad:

The previous reviewers must not have been running Windows Vista. (I’m running the 64 bit version). After plugging the card into my USB port, installing the the software, and plugging in my Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker system, I sat down to watch a movie. There is a terrible sound lag that makes watching a movie seem like you’re watching a baddly dubbed foriegn film. The actors speak and the action happens before you hear the sound. I have tried to reinstall the software and drivers numerous times and the only way to correct the sound lag is uninstall the Creative software and drivers and go back to the Vista drivers. Unfortunately without Creatives drivers you loose the mp3 fuctions that make the music sound so good. Also, when using creatives software / sound card my cpu is really being worked hard sometimes up to 100% cpu usage when watching a dvd (it averages about 30 – 40% with music and nothing else running). I’m running a 2.0 ghz dual core processor with 4 gigs of ram???

I contacted Creative support over a week ago and have yet to get a reply. I am very unhappy with this sound card and with Creatives customer service. If you want to read more about the sound lag just check out creatives public forum, theres over 9 pages about this issue.

I’ve heard that if youre running Windows XP there is no lag. So if you are running XP or just want to listen to music this might be right for you. If your running Vista don’t waste your money. Creative should not advertise that this is Vista compatable until they figure out this lag issue!!!

Review by Edgar Mertins Pappa:

I’m not what I would call a hardcore audiophile, but I like my music sounding strong and rich. I had an ASUS Xonar before this one, and I swapped it because the Xonar was not very good at games, which is the second use for the PC. I was afraid the X-Fi wouldn’t live up the hype and I would lose music quality for games quality.

I was wrong. I cannot believe how incredible everything sounds. Music quality is perhaps the same or slightly better than with the Xonar, but gaming is just incredibly immersive.

The only two things I don’t like very much of the product is 1. the “Modes” are just exactly that. “Entertainment mode” truly makes music sound incredible, but deactivates some gaming features, and “Gaming mode” reactivates all those, but music doesn’t sound as well. Switching back and forth isn’t my idea of fun. 2. It’s Creative. I’m probably one of the most anti-Creative people around since I can’t agree with most of their business decisions, but sadly, they have way to many sound patents that won’t allow the competition to rise. Although I still hate them, it’s just that sadly it’s the best product around.

Overall I’m very impressed with the card.

Review by A. Harper:

Let me preface my review with a little bit of background information: I was interested in this card because I was looking to upgrade my old Sound Blaster Audigy 2 on my Win XP desktop for two reasons. One was that I could tell my card was clearly outdated in terms of gaming features because the sound would not work at all for some games (Call of Duty 4) and I could tell a lot of sounds were missing from others (Far Cry 2) even after updating the drivers and editing all of the game settings that I could. The second reason was because I now have my desktop hooked up to my living room’s HDTV and I wanted to have the capability to run my computer sound on my TV’s 5.1 receiver by using the card’s optical out (TOSLINK) feature. By searching around, it seemed to me that this was one of the only card’s that had the optical feature within a decent price range.

So, in terms of what I was looking for, this card has excelled in both areas. After installing it on Win XP SP 2 (where I did not run into any of the driver issues described by others in their reviews…perhaps Win 7 capability was the main issue there), I booted up Far Cry 2. Let me tell you I was VERY impressed with this new card. The EAX 5.0 clearly made a huge difference. Playing this game with the X-Fi Titanium made it a whole new experience. I then checked out Call of Duty 4. Great surround sound as well. This card honestly blew my expectations out of the water for how much better Far Cry 2 could sound.

The optical out feature has also been great. To refute another reviewer’s post, the optical out DOES output in 5.1 surround sound. You simply need to switch on the “Dolby Digital Live” feature within Creative’s provided software console. When you first hook your card up to your receiver, it will only push out sound in 2.1. You will need to switch this setting on to get 5.1 surround, a process which takes all of about 5 seconds.

Another aspect that I would like to refute from a previous reviewer’s post is that switching between the sound modes (entertainment, gaming, etc) is some kind of difficult, annoying, or tedious task. Actually, I think it is so easy and a nice little feature to have. To switch the sound modes, all you have to do is click “mode” in the software console and then click a picture for one of the three different modes — and that’s it! Compare it to the amount of time you spend clicking between two browser window tabs, two IM windows, or two Google chat windows. It is seriously so easy.

Finally, another great feature is the “X-Fi Crystalizer”. Since I didn’t see it on the Amazon product description, I figured it’s a worthy mention. When you switch this feature on, your mp3 music becomes much cleaner and clearer. Using it with iTunes, I could hear a noticeable difference. I only listen to music with this feature on now! From Creative’s site: “The X-Fi Crystalizer(tm) analyses your audio file, identifies key elements that were lost or damaged during the compression process, and re-masters them using selective audio enhancement. The mid-range and high-end (treble) becomes cleaner and clearer. Low-end (bass) frequencies are richer and more defined.”

Review by D:

First, an introduction: Recently I’ve owned and used and liked an iPod 4th gen 80gb, zune 80, iPod 5th gen 80gb, creative zen vision: m 30gb AND 60gb versions (the holy grail to so many mp3 player fans), and I am a power user with a music library of 35gb, all tagged using the free Media Monkey software. I know what I’m talking about. (If you’re curious, the two ipods were returned, the ZVM30 was given to my cousin when I got the 60, the ZVM60 was destroyed in iraq and so was the Zune80)

Looks extremely sexy, definitely on the iPod and Zune level of sexiness.

It’s ridiculously lightweight and weighs just a bit more than a nano and about half as much as a harddrive bearing zune or ipod.

Video transfer/conversion does not apply to me, so I will not be reviewing it.

IM chat gimmick is worthless, move along.

wifi connect works and is easy to set up, but there is no link to shoutcast or icecast directories. Instead, creative “media box” will show up with internet access, but has a very limited selection of podcast streams, and almost no streaming music.

Streaming music from a local wireless network is very cool, but chews up the otherwise good battery life, limiting its usefulness.

SD card support is hardly seamless, and has a limited set of browsing functions, but this may be nitpicking as most players don’t bother to include ANY expandable memory.

x-fi sounds “different” but not unanimously “better”, and uses more battery, not really a selling feature then

The headphones are awesome and while they’re compared as worse than the zune 80′s included headphones, the zen’s fit more comfortably (to me) and sound just as good.

The built in speaker is very cool and sounds surprisingly good for its size, there is never any distortion even at maximum volume (distortion is what makes speakerphones and other bad+loud audio sources sound so horrible). It is perfect for showing a song to a friend or friends or playing a little background music in a quiet room.

No line out, but using the headphone jack at full volume sounds just fine on my car stereo and home stereo, with no distortion.

Software:

A lot of people complain about the Creative software but you really never need to use it except for video transfer. I use Media Monkey to sync my music and it works flawlessly. Everyone has Windows Media Player and that syncs just fine with the player. It’s an MTP device and that means that a lot of different programs can sync with it. So except for video issues, you really have no reason in the world to complain about the creative software.

Buttons:

The nine button grid is 4 directions and a center “select” button, and on many menus and lists the diagonal four buttons act as home/end and pageup/down, but on many screens they are useless. If they were customizable they could be very powerful! Faster seeking, view toggles, many possibilities, if they were customizable. Firmware update maybe?

I have long fingers and big hands and the player is comfortable to hold, but the buttons are small and indistinct, you have to concentrate a little to be sure you press the correct one if you are fishing for the next/prev track or the volume up/down buttons in your pocket. The pause button is unmissable though, and that is most important.

The zen vision:m’s vertical slider with side to side rocking and touchpad tap for select was really perfect for an audio player, and I find myself missing it a lot (but I don’t miss that player’s poor battery life, large size or ogreish looks)

A disappointment: On no screen are the grid buttons used to refer to a specific function on a grid on the screen (which would have opened some very quick and intuitive menu options), they are ALWAYS arrow buttons with a center select, and sometimes other use diagonal buttons.

Creative have dropped the ball a little by adding four new buttons and not using them to their full potential. The most notable example is that the IM chat function could have used a cell-phone style text entry, but instead uses a very obtuse method that keeps the buttons as arrow keys. Once you’ve moved past the chat function and removed it from the main menu, you’ll then notice that on the ‘now playing’ screen, the most common and important screen, the four diagonal buttons don’t do anything at all.

The customizable shortcut button is still here and still awesome, easily settable by simply holding it down. It comes preset to the x-fi settings screen, which should have been integrated into the EQ screen anyway. Mine is set to jump to ‘now playing’, perfect for changing volume or next/prev track quickly from any menu, and then you can press back to return to wherever you were.

The menu button (or “right click” button as I call it) shows the list of options for most screens, but the list sometimes runs off the top and bottom by just a few lines and could have been scaled down to fit them all. Would have been nice to enable the ‘diagonal’ buttons to be shortcuts for some of the common menu items, while the menu is open.

The Interface (the most important part of any mp3 player):

It may sound like I’m pointing out a lot of flaws in the device’s usability, but let me assure you it really is fantastic to use. The device interface is the same as the venerable ZVM, and is powerful, attractive, and simple. The ‘right click’ menus offer a lot of functionality while being intuitive to any computer user; rather than hide a cluttered pile of settings in the main menu settings screen, many settings are accessed from the screen they’re related to. I’m a big fan of the ZVM interface and am glad they didn’t change it. On the Zen the graphics have been given quite a boost since the ZVM days, and the gui really is pretty.

Useful things the Zen players do that ipod and zune do NOT under any circumstances support:

- [zune] sync with 3rd party software

- ‘now playing’ playlist access

- creation/saving of playlists on the fly

- ability to add a track to the ‘now playing’ list allows you to build a playlist and not interrupt currently playing track, great for playing music for others

- bookmark track positions (great for podcasts, audiobooks, long music mixes)

- switch between view of albums, artists, or track in the music menus

- rearrange items when you customize the main menu

- “dj” menu with options like “play popular” and “play highly rated”

- delete actual tracks from within the player

- record voice

- hide photos/video easily, obviously to hide porn when showing off your player to your mom

- actual usb port, no proprietary connector

- built in speaker

- wifi network access

I see this player is squaring off against the ipod and zune, and is already going above and beyond them both, feature by feature.

PS:

Nitpicks:

- no rapid way to seek in a track

- no “go to album” or “go to genre” for a track, only “go to artist”

- pageup/down buttons stop working when you move “right” to the list of letter shortcuts on a long list, and they don’t work on the ‘right click’ menu

- speaker should have been put on the left side, your hand ends up covering it up sometimes, when you hold it right handedly

Review by Jesus Hector Fernandez:

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MT954C8FQVXL Hi.

This is the Zen X-Fi in action, player seems very good (for me at least) its got many features which I like, the only downside for now has been the software that is bundled with the player which for me it is not a very good software, anyway if you want to see it in action check out the video.

Review by Decolliber:

I have both the older 8gb Zen (2007) and a new 16gb Zen MX. They are basically the same except that the MX has integrated access to the removable SD card directly from the Creative Centrale software that comes with the it. With the old Zen you had to go into a removable card menu on the Zen and then access the card via the computer operating system to add or delete files. Zen MX also does not have the code for some video formats and the software has to convert them before transfer to the Zen MX; on the old Zen you could just transfer the video files directly to the Zen. Finally, the Creative Centrale software that comes with the new Zen MX does not seem as intuitive and user friendly as the older software that came with the Zen. If I had to do it again I would have bought the older Zen rather than the new Zen MX, but the older ones are becoming hard to find and are a lot more expensive. Strangely enough the 16gb version of the old Zen is more expensive than the 32gb version!

To answer those who said the Zen MX will not play DRM protected files. Not true. It will play DRM9 protected files, but they have to be put on the Zen via the transfer function in the software, not through drag & drop, because the former also carries over the license info and the latter technique does not. Creative notes this on their web site.

Review by Michael X. Watman:

After hanging on to a Zen Micro for a few years (due to a stingy character), I picked up this “update” and have been so pleased. It has easy to operate button/rocker switches rather than the erratic touch controls of its ancestor. Transferring my old library and playlists was a snap. Having the chance to store a few photos also ups the pleasure of the device.

Although others may wish for a combo camera-phone-music-whatever piece of hardware, if you’re interested in any easy to handle mp3 player at a reasonable price, this is definitely something you should seriously consider.

Review by J. Li:

I have done extensive research on numerous computer speakers, everything from the simple 2.0 to 5.1 surround sound configurations for the past 6 months. I ended buying these Gigaworks Series II 2.0 speakers. Why? Because I couldn’t have spent my 0 on anything else better.

Delicated tweeters for your high notes, midrange drivers for your mids, and the BasXport on top of the speakers for them lows, and all in a small 2.0 system! A lot of speakers do not allow the user to adjust their treble and bass, these do. Not a bass person? Dial it down to 0 and turn up the treble, or max out on both and anything in between. That’s what the dials are there for, because not everyone is content with preset one-off factory settings.

There are users who complaint about the bright blue light glaring at them when it is on, I don’t think it is that bad unless you are sleeping with them on. Some users also said that the speakers don’t do too well at high volumes, as in the sound start to become unclear/muffled. I say it is true somewhat, just try not to turn it up past 75% and you should be good. Even at that level it is loud enough to be heard in my entire house, you’re not running a nightclub in your house afterall.

Review by D. Frost:

I had to move my computer to a small setup/desk and my 4.1 speakers just did not make sense. So, I decided to get smaller desktop speakers. I listened to a number of cheaper speakers and it was hit or miss. Some sounded downright awful while other were decent but a bit tinny.

Since I really liked the “Creative” branded 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks speakers I decided to give Creative a second shot. Turns out it was a good decision. These speakers are loud enough for a small setup or small room. I would not expect them to fill a room like bookshelf speakers and a 80watt amp . But these speakers make good use of the 28watts they have.

The overall sound is good for the size, power, and price. The base and highs end are good while the mid range is a bit weak but not too bad. If you want really great vocals, these may not be enough. Of course if you really want full, accurate midrange, you probably need to spend a bit more on speakers in general. My previous 4.1 (Cambridge Soundwords) did a bit better with midrange but they were about twice as expensive. One tip to help with the weaker midrange is to simply turn down the bass and treble in your PC sound setup.

The hardware itself is very solid and there is no vibrations even when you turn them up to 100%. That is rare with the cheaper speakers which just don’t hold up at full volume. Basically, the speaker feel very solid and well build (and heavy) which is a good thing when it comes to speakers.

The cables also are good quality but a few of them could/should have been longer. The power cord and PC (line in jack) are both much too short. I was lucky and the line in jack just barely reached my PC (on the floor). The power brick is nice and small but the power cord also just barely reached the power strip. Its too bad they did no fix this with this, the second edition, of these speakers. So, if you’re PC is right at your feet (right side) it will be easy to setup but you may find these cords too short. Thats really a shame when the fix is so easy. You can get standard, longer stereo jack to replace one and maybe even find a longer power cord but Creative should simply add 2 or 3 feet to the cables so they easily fit most installations.

So, other than the cables being much too short, they really have a quality product here. Worst case, you may need to hunt down a speaker jack for 3$ at Radio Shack Overall, I would recommend these speakers and I feel the price is reasonable given the overall good quality of the sound.

UPDATE: After more listening of these speakers, I find the lack of good midrange more disappointing. For some material and music, this is ok but for others (talk and movies) it can be pretty muddy. They are still better than having cheap speakers and the bass is good but if you are looking for good multi-media speakers you may want to spend a bit more. Due to this lack of good midrange, I lowered the score to 3 stars. They are still decent sounding but something is just missing in the full range of sound.

Review by C. Andersen:

I bought this specifically for a Windows 7 system. Win 7 automatically recognizes the card and installs associated drivers. I made the mistake of attempting to install the disk that came with it and it caused a reboot and required a repair to windows startup followed by manual uninstall of the portion of the software which installed; don’t do that. The card works just fine when you let windows detect it and install its own drivers, just don’t bother with the software disk.

Review by J. Geeo:

I would rate this card higher, but it’s not the latest and greatest card.

The reason I bought this card, and the reason I like it so much, is that it’s pretty much a workhorse card, and has no problems. I’ve used this exact card in other machines, and it does the job, when it comes to gaming, etc.

Installing a dedicated sound card is always a good idea; I’ve found that just adding a dedicated sound card improves overall system performance, and this one definitely handles the business!

Review by D:

First, an introduction: Recently I’ve owned and used and liked an iPod 4th gen 80gb, zune 80, iPod 5th gen 80gb, creative zen vision: m 30gb AND 60gb versions (the holy grail to so many mp3 player fans), and I am a power user with a music library of 35gb, all tagged using the free Media Monkey software. I know what I’m talking about. (If you’re curious, the two ipods were returned, the ZVM30 was given to my cousin when I got the 60, the ZVM60 was destroyed in iraq and so was the Zune80)

Looks extremely sexy, definitely on the iPod and Zune level of sexiness.

It’s ridiculously lightweight and weighs just a bit more than a nano and about half as much as a harddrive bearing zune or ipod.

Video transfer/conversion does not apply to me, so I will not be reviewing it.

IM chat gimmick is worthless, move along.

wifi connect works and is easy to set up, but there is no link to shoutcast or icecast directories. Instead, creative “media box” will show up with internet access, but has a very limited selection of podcast streams, and almost no streaming music.

Streaming music from a local wireless network is very cool, but chews up the otherwise good battery life, limiting its usefulness.

SD card support is hardly seamless, and has a limited set of browsing functions, but this may be nitpicking as most players don’t bother to include ANY expandable memory.

x-fi sounds “different” but not unanimously “better”, and uses more battery, not really a selling feature then

The headphones are awesome and while they’re compared as worse than the zune 80′s included headphones, the zen’s fit more comfortably (to me) and sound just as good.

The built in speaker is very cool and sounds surprisingly good for its size, there is never any distortion even at maximum volume (distortion is what makes speakerphones and other bad+loud audio sources sound so horrible). It is perfect for showing a song to a friend or friends or playing a little background music in a quiet room.

No line out, but using the headphone jack at full volume sounds just fine on my car stereo and home stereo, with no distortion.

Software:

A lot of people complain about the Creative software but you really never need to use it except for video transfer. I use Media Monkey to sync my music and it works flawlessly. Everyone has Windows Media Player and that syncs just fine with the player. It’s an MTP device and that means that a lot of different programs can sync with it. So except for video issues, you really have no reason in the world to complain about the creative software.

Buttons:

The nine button grid is 4 directions and a center “select” button, and on many menus and lists the diagonal four buttons act as home/end and pageup/down, but on many screens they are useless. If they were customizable they could be very powerful! Faster seeking, view toggles, many possibilities, if they were customizable. Firmware update maybe?

I have long fingers and big hands and the player is comfortable to hold, but the buttons are small and indistinct, you have to concentrate a little to be sure you press the correct one if you are fishing for the next/prev track or the volume up/down buttons in your pocket. The pause button is unmissable though, and that is most important.

The zen vision:m’s vertical slider with side to side rocking and touchpad tap for select was really perfect for an audio player, and I find myself missing it a lot (but I don’t miss that player’s poor battery life, large size or ogreish looks)

A disappointment: On no screen are the grid buttons used to refer to a specific function on a grid on the screen (which would have opened some very quick and intuitive menu options), they are ALWAYS arrow buttons with a center select, and sometimes other use diagonal buttons.

Creative have dropped the ball a little by adding four new buttons and not using them to their full potential. The most notable example is that the IM chat function could have used a cell-phone style text entry, but instead uses a very obtuse method that keeps the buttons as arrow keys. Once you’ve moved past the chat function and removed it from the main menu, you’ll then notice that on the ‘now playing’ screen, the most common and important screen, the four diagonal buttons don’t do anything at all.

The customizable shortcut button is still here and still awesome, easily settable by simply holding it down. It comes preset to the x-fi settings screen, which should have been integrated into the EQ screen anyway. Mine is set to jump to ‘now playing’, perfect for changing volume or next/prev track quickly from any menu, and then you can press back to return to wherever you were.

The menu button (or “right click” button as I call it) shows the list of options for most screens, but the list sometimes runs off the top and bottom by just a few lines and could have been scaled down to fit them all. Would have been nice to enable the ‘diagonal’ buttons to be shortcuts for some of the common menu items, while the menu is open.

The Interface (the most important part of any mp3 player):

It may sound like I’m pointing out a lot of flaws in the device’s usability, but let me assure you it really is fantastic to use. The device interface is the same as the venerable ZVM, and is powerful, attractive, and simple. The ‘right click’ menus offer a lot of functionality while being intuitive to any computer user; rather than hide a cluttered pile of settings in the main menu settings screen, many settings are accessed from the screen they’re related to. I’m a big fan of the ZVM interface and am glad they didn’t change it. On the Zen the graphics have been given quite a boost since the ZVM days, and the gui really is pretty.

Useful things the Zen players do that ipod and zune do NOT under any circumstances support:

- [zune] sync with 3rd party software

- ‘now playing’ playlist access

- creation/saving of playlists on the fly

- ability to add a track to the ‘now playing’ list allows you to build a playlist and not interrupt currently playing track, great for playing music for others

- bookmark track positions (great for podcasts, audiobooks, long music mixes)

- switch between view of albums, artists, or track in the music menus

- rearrange items when you customize the main menu

- “dj” menu with options like “play popular” and “play highly rated”

- delete actual tracks from within the player

- record voice

- hide photos/video easily, obviously to hide porn when showing off your player to your mom

- actual usb port, no proprietary connector

- built in speaker

- wifi network access

I see this player is squaring off against the ipod and zune, and is already going above and beyond them both, feature by feature.

PS:

Nitpicks:

- no rapid way to seek in a track

- no “go to album” or “go to genre” for a track, only “go to artist”

- pageup/down buttons stop working when you move “right” to the list of letter shortcuts on a long list, and they don’t work on the ‘right click’ menu

- speaker should have been put on the left side, your hand ends up covering it up sometimes, when you hold it right handedly

Review by Jesus Hector Fernandez:

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MT954C8FQVXL Hi.

This is the Zen X-Fi in action, player seems very good (for me at least) its got many features which I like, the only downside for now has been the software that is bundled with the player which for me it is not a very good software, anyway if you want to see it in action check out the video.