MP3 Players Review

Creative Zen 20 GB Portable Media Center

Customer Reviews

price OD high

this is more than 400 bucks. i rather buy the psp which i already brought for 200. it has better waity media then psp i heard but i dint know.

Absolutely do not buy this device

I have owned Creative products before, and have generally been happy with them: I have a MuVo I have been using for about five years, and have Soundblaster Audigy cards in my machines at home. The Portable Media Center is a bad effort by Creative, and for several reasons: 1) It has a nice screen, and if you play WMA files with album art, the art displays. However, if you have MP3s with album art, forget it. I tried to get Creative's help with this, and got nowhere. 2) Some MP3 files will not play at all. You get the message "The item is missing or damaged. See Portable Media Center Help on your computer." 3) Some MP3s play, but with weird glitches in the first ten seconds or so. It sounds like pieces of the file are skipped over at high speed. This is repeatable (when a file has this problem, it always has the same glitches in the same places.) Creative was no help with this. 4) Periodically the machine forgets it has an internal speaker (pull the headphones out of the jack and you hear nothing.) If you reset the device then POOF, the speaker works again. 5) Though the PMC is VERY expensive ($500 for a 20Gb device that can only play Windows Media Video files?), Creative has never released an update for the buggy software. I have been checking the Creative web site for a year and a half (since I got the player as a birthday present from my wife) and they have not put anything on there since 2004. They released half a dozen updates for the Muvo firmware for my other player, but nothing for the PMC. Apple updates their iPods, why can't Creative update their expensive clunker? 6) Creative will not help you with any problem after 60 days, unless you either buy their Support option or pay them $13 for a half-hour call. They tell you to check the web site for information, but they don't even admit to the problems I have been having on their FAQs. (I know they are aware of these problems, because I have read other people's complaints about the player, but they pretend the problems don't exist.) One comment about the player itself. The ergonomics are strange. The rocker switch on the left only works when you are in the menu system; you cannot use it to skip from track to track while playing something. The rocker switch on the right is not a "wheel" type rocker, though it is circular. There is no "up" or "down" on it, though it would have been trivial to use that for volume, which would have reduced the number of switches (and the cost of the product.) Because there is a special button to escape to the menu system, you could have got rid of every button on the right, and had exactly the same functionality. Maybe they needed a box big enough to hold the battery and hard drive, so they decided to fill the space with buttons. There are preset buttons on the top of the unit. If you press and hold one, it will "bookmark" a song or video. Pressing the button later will return to that content. I have never had a use for this feature, and fail to understand what having four song or videos available by pressing one button is useful for. (Maybe you need theme music when you enter a room?) The video iPod is smaller, the Archos players play all kinds of formatted video, and virtually every other player in the universe can display the album art from an MP3 when playing it. There is no reason to ever consider buying this player. I am surprised Creative is still selling it.

Owned this for 2 years now - still works great

I bought this for my autistic son for christmas two years ago. I wasn't sure about it then but it still works fine two years later. My son is rough with this player and it can take a licking and keep on ticking. He loves music and I've loaded disney pictures and family pictures on it as well as a favorite video on it. (getting the video on it was the most difficult). Keith has been able to manuever through all the different songs and he figured out how to get the picture slide show to play while playing music. This player is a bit on the heavy side but it has been such an enjoyment for Keith. It is the best $500 I've ever spent on him. He has an ipod shuffle I bought after this but he prefers the Zen. He has dropped it and tossed it aside when the battery has died. I recharge it and sometimes have to reset it (it is computerized). But it is hardly scratched at all. The only downside is that it shows fingerprints but even that is not so bad.

Excellent product

Terrific product. I recently bought one on eBay and I love it. I read a lot of the reviews here to help make the decision and found them very helpful. It hooks up very easily with Windows Media Player and is simple to use. I tried out a lot of programs to transfer DVDs and I found the best one to be the CloneDVD Mobile program. I have been transferring a lot of my DVD collection to a format of 320x240 and vary the size of the file to around 700MB. I've also put a lot of the videos I have downloaded from the web on the the PMC. Like people have said, the best thing to do is just set it to transfer and just go to bed. I don't understand the complaint about it not having a kickstand for easier viewing, the carrying case can also double as a kickstand, so problem solved. I highly recommend the PMC, after reading the reviews here, I was left unsure at just how good the picture quality was...would it be grainy? pixelated? not sharp enough? All my worries vanished when I watched the first video, amazing quality, crystal clear, sharp, and very impressive. Do some research like I did, go to creative.com and look at the PMC, read reviews on this site or at CNET.com. CNET even has a video clip showing the PMC. PCWorld.com has some good reviews.

Very good product

I own a Media Center and I added this to watch programs. The product works great: excellent battery life, outstanding sound and nice screen output. Software is easy and user friendly and sync seamingless with my desktop Media Center. Easy to send audio to other devices (cars, home teathers, etc.) The Cons that I found on this product are: 1. Unable to program your own playlist or to create them inside the PMCE. If its possible...not so easy to find out how. 2. You need third party software to convert video like Tv shows (mpeg) and DVDs...it is not expensive, but not included. 3. Device somehow thick. I think this is going to be an issue on the next generations. Also it is a little heavier than other products. Overall is a great product and I am really satisfied with it. Much better to carry a protable DVD player. If you want a really cool device to hold your music and have a couple of movies to have some fun, this is for sure a great buy. Doesnt worth to pay the "list price".

Keyword : creativelabs