Zen and now

Recently my wife purchased the Creative Labs Zen 4GB Digital Media Player. Having owned an iPOD in the past, I already knew what to expect in an MP3 player, and this one is not very different from others.

Except for the price, which is relatively low given the range of features it offers.

It plays MP3s of course, but it also plays WMV, AVI and most MP4 formats as well. This model will play music, movies, photos, and even FM radio (although I have not been able to pull in a signal despite there being an abundance of reasonably strong radio stations in this area).

Coming in at around $80 for a brand spanking new 4GB Zen player, this is somewhat cheaper than Apple's 4GB offerings.

The display is in full color, and the graphics are surprisingly crisp. Since the 4GB model does not employ a hard disk to store media, running it does not drain the battery anywhere near as quickly as, say, Apple's 20GB iPod, which I've owned in the past. The Zen entertains me for an entire shift at work, much of it at full volume, without any danger of running out of juice. When I get home in the morning, I plug the thing in even though more than half the battery-life meter is full.

The interface is simple and clean. While not quite as intuitive as Apple's product, the Zen is still very easy to use. It has all the standard media player features -- shuffle play, shuffle all, multiple playlists, etc.

The Zen accepts additional memory cards, thereby allowing users to expand the capacity of the player with ease. It uses standard SD cards, which means I can pop the memory card from my digital camera into the Zen and it will "play" the pictures. Pretty nifty. Since the price of these memory cards has plummeted over the last few years, you can get a >1GB upgrade for less than $50.

It also comes with free software that's much easier to use than Apple's craptacular iTunes application. It's very straightforward and permits nearly everything to be copied from your computer's hard disk to the Zen's RAM with simple drag n drop or point n click commands.

My wife bought ours online at Walmart.com. It came with the USB cable and headphones. We also got a wall charger and upgrade earbud phones by JVC (because all these media players seem to be mighty hard on the earbuds).

A media player could be the coolest looking, easiest to use player in the world, but none of that matters if it doesn't sound good. We're in luck here, because Creative Labs is a premium name in the digital audio universe. Most of the best sound cards have traditionally been designed and produced by that company. So, you might expect big things from a media player made by Creative Labs -- and you would not be disappointed. The sound is great. While there is no EQ function by which to boost bass or cut treble, it's not really necessary if your MP3 files were recorded on a good quality sound card.

The sound is sharp, clear and loaded with nuances that you typically don't hear when listening to music on traditional media such as radio. For example, did you know that the Beatles used a cow bell in their song "Tax Man"? Me either. But I heard as clear as...well, as clear as a bell, when I listened to the song on my new Zen. That's pretty cool!

I highly recommend the Zen to anyone who's looking for a slick, easy to use media player, without mortgaging the house to buy an iPod.

Update!  As several commenters pointed out, the Zen does in fact have an EQ feature, and it's a decent one.  It also does pull in the strongest radio signals (apparently I live in a radio-crappy valley and you need to get up on the highway to get to a decent signal the Zen will pick up).  Once I got ahold of a signal, I got even more use out of my Zen than before, as I now listen to the FM radio at work on my Zen even more than I do the MP3s.

Also, the thing doubles as a voice recorder, with its built-in microphone.  Recently, I needed to record myself singing a song parody for some friends in an email group, and I was having trouble because my computer won't play a song and record me singing along with it simultaneously.  That was a pain in the butt until I remembered reading that the Zen had a built-in mic.  I didn't expect much, but I gave it a shot because we had nothing to lose -- and it worked surprisingly well.  The sound quality was a LOT better than I expected, better by far than those old condenser microphones on the casette recorders back in the day.  I was able to record the novelty songs with minimal editing afterwards because the quality of the Zen's recording was plenty good enough for what I wanted.  Pleasant surprise!

The Zen is one of the nicest pieces of electronic hardware I've bought in a long time.  Forget iPod!  Get yourself a ZEN!