Creative ZenNano Plus 1GB Review

Overall Rating

It's not an iPod. Take forty percent off the price for name brand recognition. It's not an iPod. Save yourself fifty to one hundred bucks when the rechargeable battery reaches the end of it's service life. It gets remarkable life out one AAA battery. It's not an iPod. You can always buy a new battery whenever your rechargeable ones die and you're nowhere near a receptacle for your charger. Lot's of features, included software is easy to install, use, and works well. Especially like the built in MP3 from headphone jack ripper. FM radio reception is decent. For the money it just can't be beat.

Sound quality is mediocre, but I believe this is as much the fault of compressed formats as anything else. That said, even with my Sennheiser home (i.e. big and silly looking so I won't wear outdoors) headphones, I can't tell the difference from 128kbps and 360kbps format conversions on very fine classical recordings (and I can certainly tell the difference from CD format to compressed format). I suspect this might be player related, but that is just an opinion. The Creative Zen Nano Plus is prone to occasional failures requiring reinitialization, Creative does provide software for this on their website, but it is not easy to find.

It is shocking how fast these things become relics. I bought my 256Mb version for $80cdn, and within less than a year the 1Gb version was the same price. Such is modern computing I suppose. Though, in this disposable world that I am still using mine must be a testament to the product... or maybe just my parsimony.

I recommend Creative personal audio products to anybody.

Yeah, it's not an iPod!