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Creative Zen V Plus
Page 1 of 3 If you read my recent review of the iPod shuffle 2G, you'll recall that I wasn't very impressed with the overall value of the product considering how many features it lacked compared to other products in its price range. Today we'll be looking at one of those competing products, the Creative Zen V Plus. We tested the 2 GB version which can be found online for around $85 shipped. When compared to the iPod shuffle the Zen already has twice the capacity at a price that is nearly identical. We're not doing a head-to-head comparison between the two products, but it is interesting to see how much of a price premium you pay for an Apple branded product just in terms of capacity, not to mention the many features the Zen V Plus can boast of as well. Let's take a closer look and see if the Zen's features and performance can make for a well-rounded product. First Impressions The Zen V Plus isn't the smallest portable media player I've seen, but it may be the smallest that supports video playback. The screen is tiny at only 1.5" (128x128 pixels) and since it is an OLED display, it also isn't the brightest, but it does maintain good viewing angles as long as you're not outdoors in bright sunlight. The controls for the Zen are pretty intuitive, although depending on how large your hands are and the orientation of the device in your hand, some of the buttons may not be the easiest to manipulate. For example, in its default configuration (I say default, because the screen can be rotated in 90 degree increments by changing the screen orientation settings from the Zen's "system" menu option), the Zen's "play/pause", and "back" buttons are on the right side of the device, while a right-handed user's thumb will naturally be on the left side, making it difficult to access these buttons without sacrificing some grip. The remaining controls include a mini-joystick/button which is used for navigation, volume buttons and a "record" button on the right side of the player, and slide bar on the left, which is held down in order to turn the Zen on or off, and also "lock" the device so inadvertent key presses aren't registered during playback.        The Zen V Plus houses all of its I/O ports on the top of the device. There's of course the headphone jack, and USB port which doubles as both a synching and charging mechanism, but the Zen also includes a line-in jack, and a built-in microphone for recording. The location of all of these ports makes sense since any of the connections could still be used even if the Zen was placed in the included draw-string carrying bag. The bag doesn't allow for much functionality since it's just meant to provide some minimal protection while in transit, so if you're looking for something like an armband to secure the Zen while exercising, you'll have to buy it separately. The Zen comes with a standard pair of in-ear headphones that aren't spectacular, but provide sound quality that's comparable to the one's that come with the latest iPods. Aside from documentation and a few vouchers for some free audio downloads, the only other items that come with the Zen V Plus are the USB cable and the Creative software on CD.         The software included on the CD consists of a number of different programs, some of which perform many of the same tasks, and all-in-all, just make things more confusing than they need to be. As a side note, this is one of the reasons why I understand that some people like the relative simplicity of the iPod because you just use one program, iTunes, and it does pretty much everything all within that one program, or at least "everything" as in "everything that Apple wants to let you do." Getting back to the Creative software, the funny thing is that you really don't need to install any of the programs included on the CD to make use of most of the features that the Zen V Plus has to offer. Synching music can be done through other programs such as Windows Media Player for example, and you can just drag and drop data files to the device in Windows Explorer if you so choose. Of course, some things are easier with the Creative software, and if you want to play videos on the Zen V Plus, you'll need to use either the "Zen V Series Media Explorer" program, or the "Creative Media Source 5 Organizer" in order to re-encode the video into the format used by the Zen and transfer the file to the device.
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