Creative Zen 16 GB Portable Media Player (Black)

This Zen locks up all the time. It freezes up a few times a day when listening to an audio book. I keep a paper clip handy to push the little reset button which is the only way to knock it loose. Nothing quality about the build or feel. Feels like a 12.99 kid's toy. I wanted to like it, but just can't seem to find a very good reason.

Excellent MP3 Player. I am able to carry almost all my music plus photos and video whereever I go. Even purchased one for my wife. We both love them.

Coming out of the box, Creative Zen 16GB MP3 Player puts on quite an impressive show. This model is complimented with a brilliant color screen, crystal clear sound, SD card slot, FM radio, voice recorder and user friendly EQ. Like most models in this line, it only comes in black.

This unit supports a vast array of WMA, WAV, ADPCM, Audible, MP3, AAC. In video mode battery life clocked in at about 5 hours. Audio lasted for about 20 hours. PIM function will allow for the syncing of calendar, appointments, etc; via Outlook. FM radio offers auto scan with 32 preset slots.

All in all this WAS the perfect and probably the most complete player on the market. If it had not been for other problems raising their ugly head I could have easily overlooked the sticky and very cheap control pad. In short, after a few months of perfect sound and video the system simply locked up. No video, no music, no nada.

Phone tech support with Creative Labs is not what it is cracked up to be. Sending in the unit for diagnostics and repair was a month long ordeal with limited results at best. Once returned, the player worked for a awhile until the same evil gremlin raised its ugly head.

After repeated attempts at resolving this problem with an almost non-existent customer support center, I was informed the item was no longer under warranty and that I would have to foot the bill for any future repairs. The Creative Zen 16GB Mp3 Player would have been an outstanding purchase if it had only operated for at least one year before biting the dust. Bottom line is, I am left with a very overpriced paper weight.

Nice look, nicer quality, good picture.
Nice size memory, and then it fails ....
The player has and awesome expansion slt how cool?
No it not its pretty useless as you can not use any option on the flash drive just the click and play.
Look like a tad more work is needed on software, if they had nailed
that for the money know one would have come close.
Stupid careless thing to do make and expanding drive thats pretty useless.
For that it lost a 5 star to a three pity.

I wanted one of these for quite awhile before finally deciding to buy one. I was quite disappointed when I got it home. While it claims to support "subscription" services and protected WMA files, it would only sync to about 10 songs. So I tried to contact Creative about this, only to find out that they don't have a tech support phone number listed anywhere. Not listed in the manual, not on their website. They want to force you into email tech support, which from previous experience with other companies, sucks. They never actually read your email and understand the problem. So once you wait 3 days for a response, they tell you to do everything you already tried. On and on it goes, for weeks. No thanks, Creative. I returned the Zen and will stick with Sansa who I have never had a problem with.