Creative Zen V plus 8Gb

I bought the Creative Zen V plus 8Gb to replace my Zen Micro and refused to fork out so much cash for the over rated iPod Nano or Classic. I was impressed at first with the size. Unboxing it I was astonished at just how small and light it was. It's perfect to slip into your pocket while your walking along, and, after owning my Zen for over year, still shows few signs of wear and tear, with almost no scratches at all.

I also found the sound quality to be very good. I would say it is on a par with the Zen Micro in terms of sound quality, which had a very good sound quality indeed. This, when buying an MP3 player, should be the deciding factor - the sound quality.

The screen leaves a lot to be desired. I would have liked to have known that getting videos on this player would be a very irritating process. The player only take AVI formats, which doubles the size of the file while still reducing the resolution to fit onto the miniscule screen. The video capabilities of this player are poor, but video is not what this player was designed for. If you want video, I recommend the Creative Zen or an iPod classic. The OLED screen of this player is impossible to see in sunlight, and the resolution is poor, and the tiny size does not help matters.

The battery life is quoted at around 5 hours. I found my V plus as being capable of running for nearly double that. I have managed to still find it going for a month of very heavy use on just one charge.

However, it does feel a bit cheap and plasticy. This is not down to bad build quality, I have found my player to be working perfectly after a year after being dropped many times and even stepped on. The casing creaks when you push buttons, and the plastic casing makes it feel a bit like a toy. But you will quickly get used to this.

Other features such as a microphone and radio come in as handy bonuses, and the software never ceases to impress me with it's ease of use. I do warn you, however, that you have to pay for the MP3 codec, so if you have an older version of the Creative software that you keep it and use it for the MP3 codec for ripping CDs.

Aside from these one or two let downs, I highly recommend that you buy this player. It is definitely worth every penny.

Fantastic value at £49.99 from Argos for a device that will store around 2000 tracks. The FM radio and line in options are good too

Returned player to the supplier who then forwarded it to Creative. That was over 3months ago - I'm still waiting for it to be returned.

I bought this player to replace my aging Zen Micro. What struck me immediately was how small this player is. It has around 15 hours playback, double that of the Zen Micro but you can't replace the battery. This extended battery life appears to be principally due to the fact that the new player has solid state storage. The unit has an OLED colour display that can be tailored with various colour schemes. I'd sooner they had left an LCD as this is so much easier to see in sunlight and probably uses less power. However this colour display does assist the Zen V Plus in playing back video and photos. Neither of these functions seem worthwhile as the display is a mere 1.5 inches but some may find this useful. There's a built in Mic and line-in jack. You can encode analogue audio via this jack so you could connect another player etc. and make your own files without a PC. There is a built in FM tuner that actually works quite well, not a great strength of the Zen Micro. You can store and name 32 presets. The player has the ability to record from the radio but not at a very good quality and only in WAV. The various menus are pretty similar to that of the predecessor, and again, these can be tailored to your taste. Charging is by way of a mini USB port and a lead is supplied for charging from a PC. I use my old Zen Micro wall charger too and it is worth noting that the optional wired remote control of the Zen Micro is compatible with the Zen V Plus. Navigation is by a tiny joystick in the centre of the player. At first it seemed fiddly but you soon get used to this. Unlike it's predecessor's touch pad, the Zen V Plus does not really need to be key locked when carried. Volume is now adjusted on a rocker switch on the right hand side of the player. There is a key lock switch to the left but I find I don't use this much now. When you press the play or return buttons, the case creaks in a rather cheap and nasty way but this is not indicative of poor quality construction, it's just a characteristic of the single piece casework. As the casework is now a high gloss black, I do tend to find myself continually polishing off all the greasy marks that continually appear. So not a good colour for perfectionists like me! I was a little disappointed with the sound compared to my Zen Micro, although it is more than acceptable. The older player seemed to have more "oomph" and vibrancy, certainly it has a more weighty bass. The volume output can be preset so that it does not exceed a user predetermined level but I found that without this feature, the sound pressure level often doesn't go loud enough at full volume anyway, when used on the train with in-ear headphones. I use the same Etymotic Research ER6i's earphones as I did on the previous player but the difference is noticeable. I also use Sennheiser HD480's. Whilst bass is improves using these, volume is attenuated considerably, given the size of the Senheiser's drive units, this isn't a big surprise! I make the assumption that the engineers have restricted output and frequency range on the Zen V Plus in the quest for extended battery life. The player has a graphic equalizer with a number of preset profiles, plus one user definable custom setting. I found that these tone settings do not have the same amount of gain control as with their predecessor's. Again this may be to do with conserving power. I found that the advertised 8Gb storage was in practice actually around 7.5Gb, which was a bit of a disappointment. Unlike the Sansa E280, the memory cannot be expanded using Transflash (Mini-SD). This 2Gb extra capability would have been useful but manufacturer's marketing research probably shows that their main audience is young people who carry a limited collection of music with them. I chose WMA at 64Kbps some years ago before iPods were even a twinkle in their design engineer's eyes and find that this low loss compression is more than adequate for the vast proportion of the 3500 odd tracks on my player, 4Kb tracks capacity is achievable. WMA 64Kbps has the same quality of sound as an MP3/AAC at 128Kbps, thus affording you twice as much capacity for your music. I like the fact that this player syncs with Windows Media player with DRM disabled and is "Plays For Sure" compatible. In summary, this is a great little payer that performs pretty well. I am not so excited about this as I was about my Zen Micro but technology often looses it's novelty factor. If you want extra storage and a replaceable battery, the slightly bigger Sansa E280 may be worth a punt. I may well have purchased a Sansa, but at the time, the European versions were not available with an FM Tuner, something I use a lot. What about iPods I hear you say. These are very sexy items with a beautifully tactile interface but they lack compatibility with anything but iTunes, don't support WMA, don't have a tuner or the ability to record. As soon as these issues are addressed I might give the market leading product some consideration but I shan't hold my breath! I respect the fashion conscious iPod user for their good taste in style and ergonomics though.