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Creative Zen Touch Comprehensive user review

What's good
In this review I will be concentrating on things that are irritating to me
or are obvious errors in software or wrong design. I assume the reader
generally knows the device from leflets, advertising information but would
like to know how it really works.

Before I will go to 'BAD' I will say what is good or excellent for me:

.. Generally Excellent analog part. Good earphones which is not so
obvious among competitors. Much better sound than many competitors.

.. Very fast copying operation (USB 2.0)

.. Battery really lasts ages. When you load it fully it really is
working and working. You can forget taking the loader with you when going
for a weekend.

.. The ability to load the battery from any usb port. Very usefull
feature.

.. It's working and it's usable.

Now let's skip to wrongs and errors

What's bad: summary (if you don't have time to read all)
a.. Music quality: very good analog part, good earphones, but ruined by
DSP distorting the music when EQ is on, and MP3 decoder eating endings of
recordings. You cannot gain suficient bass from the device despite good
analog part. Despite that: much ahead many of the MP3 competitors but much
below for instance sony's discmans. Also MP3 decoder is eating the endings
of the recordings.
a.. Touchpad is a good idea but fulfilment results in very painfull
operation and generally does not work . Probably great hardware but there
could be more work done in software to make the hardware work as expected.
b.. Keys - very well placed with vol+ and vol- on the side, but with one
useless button which is pain when you press it by accident (I mean the
'random' key)
c.. Storing music - the music storage filesystem is completely flat. You
have to group the music by using the 'genre' 'author' and 'album' grouping.
You have to prepare it using ID3 tag editor on PC.
d.. Bundled software - crashes instantly, seems to be prepared in a hurry,
lot's of small weird things but the worst of those are instant crashes.
e.. Databank - needs separate, huge drivers, it is not really visible as a
hard disk but it is in reality a standalone drag&drop application.
Now time for detailed explaination:

Sound Quality
.. Lacks mega bass, or especially loudness function. The the music is
rather flat, and lacks space. Especially on low volume.

.. Built in equaliser can be set from +12 to -12dB in each band which
theoretically seems to be more than sufficient even without 'mega bass' or
similar features, there is however one very large 'BUT': over +6dB SOUND IS
OBVIOUSLY DISTORTED so in reality the build in EQ can be used in reality
only on '-' side and only a bit on '+' side if at all. So foget nice bass
anyway.

.. The built in MP3 decoder seams to be mis-calculating the length of
recordings created by LAME 3.6x VBR (variable bit rate). I didn't test it
with CBR and also did not test it with other encoders. As a result the
player is eating out ends of MP3 recordings. What I mean is that it is
skipping to the next recording before the end of previous track (my rough
guess is about 5-10sec from the actual end of a recording). A bit annoying
when listening to normal songs but very irritating and unacceptable when
listening to operas, symphonies etc. where division into tracks is placed in
the middle of the music.

.. When you display the properties of a recording it is giving
now-current bit rate rather then overall bit rate/quality and no information
on VBR/CBR. Every time you press 'ok' you have a different number.

Device usage ergonomy
Touchpad: this was supposed to be the strongest marketing point of the
device. It's name is 'touch' isn't it? The reality is more brutal.

a.. Touchpad is excellent when scrolling large distances but pain in the
ass when you want to scroll one recording/option down or one up. You just
can't make it scroll one song down from the currently hilighted one. It will
skip a random between 0-3 songs up or down. You need a few retries. (Even
with touchpad sensivity 'low').
b.. Often when the user removes finger from touchpad one extra move down
or up appears and upon pressing the 'ok' button you land in a different
place than you thought. This happens even when touchpad sensivity is set to
'low'.
c.. The 'fast up' 'fast down' fields too large compared with the middle
working field. For general operations it takes much more time than it would
with up & down keys.
Keys: First impresssion: lack of 'stop' button but later I begun to
understand the idea and get used to 'pause only' operation.

a.. There is a key wasted for an operation which is definitely not widely
used. I mean the 'random' button. The only function is to go to 'play random
ALL tracks from ALL albums and ALL genres'. I don't think many people are
pressing the button with 20gig of music on the device. Instead of 'random
all' this should have been 'play mode' button switching play mode from one
to another like in all other civilised devices, or at least browse through
'eq setting' presets.


Menu/firmware functionality

a.. Annoying: when browsing through music library very often quits to 'now
playing' screen. There is a timeout. Unfortunately the timeout is much too
short and appears before the full title is scrolling into screen. So if you
need to choose between 'Jean Michel Jarre - Equinoxe part 3" and
"(.)Equinoxe part 4" you will never be able to do this looking on screen.
You don't have much time for counting too. Sorry, your time is over and you
are back at the 'now playing screen'.
b.. Generally the timeout of the menu browsing is much too short. I have
to re-browse through menus very often. It is not giving the user much time
to decide while browsing menu options or library entries'
c.. I do not understand the weird idea of timeouts and where exactly will
the 'ß' key bring me. This theoretically should be the last screen that was
on before the timeout appeared but it is not always true.
Bundled software, uploading and handling recordings
This is the weakest part of the whole package.

a.. CRASHES instantly, every few operations. You can copy the music to and
from a device but if you need to change 'genre' 'author' or any other
attributes of more than a few songs - you can be sure it will crash. I have
a desktop and a laptop, the same happens on both machines. I have filled the
appriopriate support claim form but I have received no answer so far. I am
waiting already over a month since I received a confirmation of my claim.
b.. When it crashes - your Windows Explorer dies too and have to be
restarted, you are loosing all open file/folder windows.
c.. The built in filesystem for storing music is completely flat (i.e. no
folders, groups). To organise the music you have to fiddle with
Genres/Artists/Albums (which is the only folder-type file organisation).
After a while you can learn how to use it but it means you have to prepare
ID3 tags adequately to have your music organised. And it needs a bit of
planning. But after all it will work generally if a limit of 3 levels of
directories is enough for you (genre/artist/albums).
d.. Design error: whilst copying music I often see a 'duplicate file name'
warning. What is bad I did not guess what is duplicate: real file name, or
ID3 tag and what is the second file I should rename to get rid of the
message. There is no possibility to rename file immediately. I had to skip a
few files becouse I wasn't able to guess which file is duplicate and what to
change to copy it anyway.
e.. Not implemented functions: some functions which are present in the
menu are not working. For instance a possiblity of changing the 'welcome
screen' didn't seam to work. Suddenly after a few weeks of operation my user
defined welcome screen appeared as the third (not replaced but additional to
the built in welcome screens).
a.. When you start the application you have to browse through:
MyComputer->Nomad explorer->choose which zen touch->choose music or data?.
It doesn't make sense for me to force the user to always browse through all
this steps. I have only one Zen! And probably majority of users too! You
cannot make a shortcut to concrete folder to go directly through 'My ZEN
music' or 'My ZEN data'
b.. Whilst copying music from several folders - you have to confirm
unsupported file type every time with 'ok'. There is no possibility to
ignore all non music files (unrecognised playlists etc) silently.
Databank functionality
a.. Zen is mot visible as a 'mass storage' disk. To make it very clear: it
CAN NOT operate as an external disc. The application (nomad explorer)
installs itself as an extension to windows explorer but it is a standalone
application. You can drag and drop files to the nomad-explorer window but
cannot use it as a target for applications (even WinZip).
b.. To see it at all it needs installation of extra drivers. Ok you say, I
will be having the drivers with me on a separate pendrive. I will reply:
sorry, the drivers are huge. It's not a matter of a few megabytes to carry
with you. It's 10's of megabytes.
c.. The part of the memory used for databank is completely separate from
the music storage and Zen cannot play the mp3 files stored in databank part.
Addendum: music library
I have installed the another music library software bundled. I will start
with no possibility to change ID3 tags on HD (Only view them), large player
buttons which cannot be minimized. Result:

I have dumped the software quite immediately.

So I will not include it in the review.

Contact with an author
You can reach me under email address: marcin.gosiewski(at)gazeta.pl

You just have to replace (at) with an '@' in the address above