If I've been a little quiet lately, it's the fact that I continue to be consumed with the sheer amount of work involved in updating my music library, categorizing everything, and then selecting the 8 gigs worth of songs to put on my new Creative Zen V Plus MP3 Player. I feel like my right arm is about to fall off. I'm more than halfway there though, with 907 hand-selected songs already chosen to be part of the soundtrack to my trip of a lifetime!
Among the lucky artists set to accompany me....
- AFI
- Allen Ginsberg (reading "Howl")
- Ben Harper
- Bob Dylan
- Bob Marley
- CKY
- Dinosaur Jr
- Frank Sinatra
- Green Day
- Guns 'n Roses
- Iron Maiden
- Jay-Z
- New Found Glory
- Orbital
- Paul Oakenfold
- Sublime
- The Pogues
- Ween
- ....and many, many more
For those in the market for a new MP3 player, I am extremely satisfied with the Zen Plus. I felt a little blind buying it, as they don't really let you get your hands on them in the retail stores. It's super light weight, easy to operate, and fun to use.
The screen is a seemingly small 1.5 inches, however video plays pretty well on it. To (ahem) test it out, I transferred my TV interview. The odd part is that while the file was 30 megs, the compression increased the file size by almost 3x (to about 80 megs). Perhaps someone can help explain that to me? Otherwise, the FM tuner works well, it has line in recording (to get tracks direct from CD's), photo storage, on the fly playlists, and the ability to store data files (documents).
The only downside I can see is that it recharges based on a USB connection. Luckily, I have my eye on a power converter which includes a USB interface. Still, I could easily use up the whole 15-hour battery life on my first flight to New Zealand.
Dan says
I need to get an MP3 player myself and I was thinking of going with a Samsung (Z5 I think) because it has a 35hour battery life but yesterday I found just how cool the Ipod nano with Nike+ is and I'm leaning towards that now even though it means taking a cut back to 25hours of battery and having to stuff about getting my music onto it and playable.
Dave says
The Samsung Z5 was one I looked at as well. It sounds like the players you're looking at have far superior battery lives than my Creative Zen's measly 15 hours.
Dan says
I need to get an MP3 player myself and I was thinking of going with a Samsung (Z5 I think) because it has a 35hour battery life but yesterday I found just how cool the Ipod nano with Nike+ is and I'm leaning towards that now even though it means taking a cut back to 25hours of battery and having to stuff about getting my music onto it and playable.
Dave says
The Samsung Z5 was one I looked at as well. It sounds like the players you're looking at have far superior battery lives than my Creative Zen's measly 15 hours.