Creative Zen V

Creative Zen V are technically a sharp outfit that unfortunately have a terrible consumer interface and arrogance.

The Zen V is a perfect example, when this works, its a super bit of kit, not withstanding the limitations of MP3 compression and loss, but with a good set of ears, phones, speakers, up to its limits, it delivers well. Where the problems start are when you have an unstable power supply, like my French one and it keeps "tripping out "okay its easy enough to reset but because of the, in my opinion, crappy technical department and "self help" web site you cannot get a straight clear answer. Secondly try finding out about the "internal battery" replacement, joke!!!! The battery is INTEGERAL and not meant to be a consumer replaceable part!

No problem, except that I was quoted £57.00 by Creative for a return to base factory fitted battery. Do you think this sounds fair?? Anyway trading standards agreed and got on to Amazon.com who supplied the unit and the "Technical description" that included the words, internal battery. Amazon offered me £15 as a consolation, without apology, and when I refused on the grounds that I would never have purchased if I knew the real cost of battery replacement, they refused to make any offer.

Creative distributors Europe, "River of sound" responded to the letter from trading standards 7 months later, and said they knew nothing. mmm, great. Incidentally, have 4 creative products that on the whole I find very good, Pro soundcard, Cambridge 5 point surround, Zen speakers, creative In ear phones, it's just such a poor PR interface company it makes me seethe. And Amazon..........****!!!! Buy Creative if you like to suffer.

I was quite frustrated with the Creative Zen V at not being able to find out why my computer was suddenly not recognising my zen player when I connected it to my computer. Even with the help of the support centre I couldn't make my computer recognise my zen player. After reading various reviews on various sites I remembered that Windows Media Player 11 had recently been installed on my computer and got the idea that via driver manager I needed to update the driver. It worked!! I hope this is a help to all of you who are pulling your hair out trying to figure out why your Zen Player V isn't being recognised by your computer. JC Cyprus

In my opinion, the Creative Zen V is a very good purchase....only if its on sale though...

I am going to give my Creative Zen V away and buy something else - the quality for £90 is just not good enough. I had a 500mb Creative flash player which for the money is great, I just needed more memory. I'm now off to try and find the best 2GB on the market.