Creative 8GB Zen X-Fi MP3 Player

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Showing 124.99 when I click the link - what am I doing wrong? A big factor in my purchase is the armband and the one for this model got pretty bad reviews. Does anyone know an armband for this not made by creative? I'm guessing there isn't one...

too bad no wi-fi and browser

too bad these things suck.
wish i never bought one back in the day.

cwins,

How do they suck? Give us a review.

I agree, with Wifi at this price I would have concider buying one.

i think the user interface is pretty terrible. just trying to navigate around is a pain. they had a good idea to let you hide the main menu options that you don't want, but still trying to do something simple like turn shuffle on and off requires more button presses than i liked. also, i still havent found an easy way to actually delete a file from the unit. sure it can be done, but you have to exit your current playlist...

it bugs me that the thing is always lit up. after a few seconds most of the backlight turns off, but the screen is still on. pain in the ass when trying to listen to music at night. the only way to turn it off is to turn hold on. the hold switch is flush with the back of the unit and isnt all that easy to turn on. i'm not a fan of enabling hold jsut to turn the light off, as well.

the buttons on the front of the unit all feel exactly the same so it is very difficult to find the button you want without looking at it. you can use the buttons at the top of the front as a reference and go from there, but its stupid to go searching for the buttons.

the battery life on this thing is quite pathetic, even if you keep the hold on to keep the screen off. I might be spoiled by some past MP3 players with great battery life, though.

i never found a good use for the wifi. there may be options with it that i never explored, but it just didnt seem worth it to me. in my admitted quick once over of it, it seemed to only allow you to listen to streams from the local network. i didnt see any internet browser or anything like that on it. i'll admit that i didnt try very hard here. of course, enabling the wifi would make a short battery life even shorter...

i hate using bundled software to load music to my devices so i had to find one that was mass storage compatible. you can do that with this, but only if you have WMP 11 (or was it 10?) installed. Windows 7 RC doesnt even recognize it.

the headphones seemed to be pretty decent, but i used another pair that i already had.

when changing songs i often get an annoying screen flicker/flash. no idea what the deal is there. probably fixed in a later FW version.

it does have pretty good sound. you have plenty of options to adjust it to your liking as well. the xfi settings make a pretty big difference.

thats all i can think of at the moment.
i decided to go big and buy the 32gb unit with wifi in the hopes of future proofing myself. i really wish i had went with something else. i'm still trying to find an MP3 player that i really like. oddly enough, the best i've found is an older sony unit (as much as i dislike sony these days, it hurts to say)...

wow, probably the best review I've seen on this site. thanks cwins, I'm probably not going to buy this now. my old favorite was the iriver clix. I might have to stick with them, although I was hoping to give creative another chance. maybe I should try the zen?

i remember seeing the zen, not the zen xfi had different buttons, some kind of square shaped d-pad type deal just 9 individual buttons. i would certainly like that much better.

i dont know what else changed with the zen vs the zen xfi.

this was my first try with creative. some friends had used creative players in the past and i liked them so i thought id give it a try.

i know im sure as hell gonna try these out in store before buying one again.

bonus: not apple

#10 based on the review by cwins, i'd much rather have an Ipod than this thing... <_<

I had the Zen. It's a nice unit and it acepts SD cards, a few of which most of us have lying around our house. And it had a good quality pair of packaged earphones.

It reads your SD card separate from its' internal memory though. So you have to poke around the SD card on a file explorer in order to play anything on it. Also, the quality felt a little cheap and plastic-y in hand.

I switched to the Sansa Clip. I don't really like watching video on anything less that a 7" screen and I don't really have a need to carry around more than 4 to 8 gigs of music anyhow. And the clip is drag-and-drop, and charges via a mini-USB port - if only the mini-USB were standard on everything from Cameras to MP3 players, I'd be a happy guy. I travel a LOT and dragging a tangle of cables with me all around the world is a pain in the arse.

Thanks for the good review cwins

+1 for the sansa clip. Though it doesn't have an sd expansion and 4gb is a bit tight, it has great sound, supports lots of formats, is really small, and has really great battery life. It can also be had for really cheap.

nice filling review cwins, thanks.

thanks, i was thinking about getting one, now im not

i'd echo what #12 added as well. thanks for the input on the sansa clip. i'll check into those. if theyre as cheap as you all say, it might be worth the money just to give it a try.

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