Home > Consumer Reviews > Creative Zen V+ 1GB MP3 Player with Video Playback & FM Radio

This is a truly great piece of technology. Everything just works as you expect it to, and want it to.

I owned an original Zen which I very much liked, but sadly lost. I then owned a Sony NWHD 40GB MP3 player. I hated this from day 1, because everything about it was all so unintuitive. Sony are a great brand but sadly they seem more concerned about DRM than actually making the device usable. Sony also force you to use this terriblly clunky software to load tracks onto your device (and you cant retrieve them from device to PC).
Words cant describe how utterly moronic this whole process is.

But not with the Zen V Plus!
Use Creatives own software which intergrates into explorer, or even better, simply drag and drop MP3s into explorer without even installing Creatives software.

The interface on the device is a breeze, and video quality is also good, but as the maximum storage is 4GB on upper end models, I find youll just use it as an MP3 player because of the storage limitations, and play a few videos when you first get it just for the novelty value.

Another great thing about this device is the minute size. The images rarely depict how really small it is, but its about the size of a box of tic-tac sweets. Brilliant!

Take note of the image on this Amazon page. The device comes in three colors, 1GB is orange, 2GB is green and 4GB is blue. This page relates to the 1GB model, which ought to be orange (but the pic shows blue). Hardly a showstopper, but its worth noting.

Id love to see the ZEN V plus with larger capacities, but since its based on solid state storage, rather than hard drive, this may be some time.
If an 8GB model came out tommorrow Id buy it there and then.

Creative are a great great brand and I was a fool to ever try Sony. As for iPods: follow the masses if you want, but realise they arent as good as people would have you believe.

So Im clearly a fan, but does it have any downsides?
Well, the headphones that come with it are pretty poor. Youll want to replace those as theyre a bit tacky and not very good.
The only other thing is that the device looks a bit cheap and plasticky. It doesnt have the slick look of the iPod, Zen have clearly made it look fun rather than 'sexy'. Since its in my pocket most the time this doesnt matter to me. Id love to see a pure polished chrome version though, that would be superb.
Finally, Im a windows user. I dont know what support is like for Linux or Apple, But I guess if youre an Apple user, you wouldnt hesistate to buy an iPod anyway.

Summary: A 5 Star product, without hesitation.

Very small and very cool. As an mp3 player, audio quality is great. Colour screen is bright but tiny; not the ideal for viewing photos unless you had miniature viewing in mind when you framed the shot etc. Don't get me wrong: I like it, but I do have two gripes.

Gripe number 1 is minor: the player comes with 200 MB of rubbish loaded on it - really terrible audio tracks composed by someone on a cheap Casio keyboard, by the sound of it! Plus video adverts for the player... erm, I've just bought one, so really no need to advertise to me, thanks. Also, somewhat bizarrely, while plugged into your USB port, the player goes active every time you type a new address into the web browser on your PC. Call me paranoid, but what is it doing?

Then there is the transcoded video format. Yes, you can convert pretty much any video clip format into the format required for the player using the software provided. But the file size typically becomes much larger, even though the video itself gets shrunk to 128x96 pixels. An example: I have a 4-minute wmv video clip at 640x480 that is 10 MB. Converting it to play on the Zen V+ creates a 50 MB avi file - five times the original file size, even though the video is now 128x96 pixels, i.e. 1/25th of the original frame size. This is just dumb! And there are no options to reduce the frame rate or audio quality used in the transcode conversion. So as an audio player, great; for videos, perhaps wait for the next generation. Or maybe Creative can come up with better software for the video conversion?

Bought this as a small present and very impressed with just how easy it was to use, in about 5 minutes I had worked out how to navigate around all the menus and another 5 minutes to work out how to upload music onto the player. You don't have to install the software either, its detected by WinXP straight away as soon as you plug it in a USB port and then you can access it just like any other device

I left it playing a repeat loop with some music I uploaded to it after charging the battery to full straight out of the box, and it was still playing the next morning over 7 hours later with headphones connected sp left it playing until the battery was totally discharged and charged it back to fully charged in less than 2 hours via the USB port

Well worth it, and better built than an iPod without using the clunky software that must be installed, you do not have to install ANY software with this player, just plug it into any USB port and thats it, assuming you have WinXP or above that is, Win98 will need drivers installing

My husband bought this item for me for my birthday last year. Looks good, but could only be charged via pc and so useless for holidays. I bought the docking speakers to use with this item so that I would get more use out of it as it charged whilst docked. After 1 month of using the docking speakers the player would not work. I paid £60 for the speakers and now have not got a player that works! Bit of a rip off if you ask me. I also have noticed how many of these players are for sale on Amazon "refurbished" which leads me to believe this is happening a lot.

I have had two "stick" MP3 players before, one of which broke. This player is way better than both of them. The menus are easy to use, the sound quality is great, the headphones are decent, it is cool to be able to have pictures/videos (though the videos are converted to a huge, ridiculous size) and the capacity to fit hundreds of songs.
I think this MP3 player is great value for money. My only regret is not buying the 2 or 4 GB versions because the 1 GB rather restricts space.
This MP3 player is small, sleek and, perhaps most importantly, has NEVER broken, after a total usage time of probably several hundred hours. It is very resistant to bashes and scratches, is simple yet sophisticated and I am really glad I bought it. Compared to an IPod, it feels less likely to break or scratch, is 1/5 of the price and does everything an IPod does. The FM Radio, microphone and Line-In recording have been added bonuses. One other problem is that

To summarise: It is a pleasure to use and you can be 99% sure it won't break. A great product!

N.B. - With the reviewers who gave it 1 star, one wrote a completely identical review for about 10 Creative products, so I didn't pay attention to it. Hopefully, as the product is good, you should never need the customer support/warranty/the need to upgrade firmware anyway. It is a perfect player as it is.
This product also keeps changing in price - I bought it for £44, the week after it was £55 and now it is £47. The 2 GB is also more expensive than the 4 GB (at the moment). I would highly recommend this player to anyone who wanted a new music, video and photo MP3 player.