Creative Zen Touch 20GB MP3 Player

Creative Zen Touch

Zen Touch 20GB MP3 Player Review, by Tom Mainelli April 12, 2005

Show More Show Less

0 Comments | 0 Topics | Print Only This Review

• Reviewed by: cah11705

  Strengths: Great sound quality, easy to use, separate volume, power, and hold buttons, simple interface, easy to install, great battery life for a hard drive player

  Weaknesses: its huge! screen died on me after for great years of use, lack of other features, customer support

  Overall: This is a very good player. It has the best sound quality of any player i have owned. I also like the touch pad which makes it easy to scroll through music. This player lasted 4 years with great battery life the whole time, but the screen just recently stopped working. I am very upset at this, but liked the player so much that i might even replace it with another Zen Touch!

• Reviewed by: skgrimm

  Strengths: excellent sound quality, easy to use, touch scrolling is handy, very rugged

  Weaknesses: doesn't do all the other things more highly priced players do

  Overall: I was looking for a quality MP3 player and I didn't care if it had a touch screen or a video player or a web browser--I just wanted something with lots of room for my MP3s and this thing sure delivers. It's very easy to use, I like the fact that it's a little bigger and more solid than other players, I think the design is very attractive, and the sound is excellent. All the other things that other players do my laptop does better--I wanted something to make long flights and cartrips go faster, something I could take on a workout or use for an afternoon of fishing. Creative has always been a great company for me, and this just keeps up their tradition of value for money. I just bought two more for my sons, and I highly recommend this player for anyone that just wants their tunes with a minimum of fuss!

• Reviewed by: z11111

  Strengths: Great sound quailty, easy interface, easy to use, very very durable, great battery life, etc

  Weaknesses: Not too many extra features, somewhat chunky and thick

  Overall: If you're looking for a no-thrills "just play my music" MP3 player, this one is your best choice. I got mine in early 2005, and it still works after being carried around and beat upon for 2 years (I upgraded to the Zen Vision:M however). It has great software and great user interface, and works fantastically. This player TOTALLY knocks the iPod down on the ground. It's incredibly durable and will survive a 10 foot drop onto concrete (tested, by me, by accident :-) ). It plays both MP3 and WMA formatted music, and can store many more songs than a 30GB iPod. It has amazing sound quality, and great personal EQ. It is very simple to use also.This is by far the greatest MP3 players (not "multimedia/video+photo+music players") out on the market, and if that's what your looking for, this is the choice for you.

• Reviewed by: candid

  Strengths: The product as a whole is wonderful; Works very well with Microsoft Software

  Weaknesses: It is bigger and heavier than most MP3 players; The case it a little awkward

  Overall: I have had my player for one year and I love it. The battery life is wonderful. It can hold over 10,000 songs when the songs are downloaded in WMS format. I only have 200 songs right now. One day I left it playing all day from 9:00am to 3:00am the next day and still did not have to charge my battery until two days later. As far as the headphones, I would buy new ones anyway because usually when you buy any type of music device the headphones are always terrible. Oh yes, and the price was very nice. It is bigger than most MP3 players but that is because of its memory size. The bigger the memory size the bigger the device. My suggestion to the buyer is to research the different products to find what is right for them. I researched and found that the Creative Zen Touch 20GB was perfect for me. I made an excellent choice.

• Reviewed by: tverskoiparnisha

  Strengths: Incredibly tough, loud, great sound quality, beer-proof

  Weaknesses: A little on the large/heavy side, but not too bad. No built in FM radio.

  Overall: This is a great MP3 player. The most notable exceptional quality (at least for me) is that it is literally unbreakable. Most of my friends have ipods which broke quite often after they dropped them. Well, my creative is covered in dents from me dropping it, and still works almost great. Im 17 and quite active. During the summer i went to Russia for 2.5 months and had this player on me all the time. It has been dropped on the cement floor of my friend's garage( about 3 foot fall from a ledge) at least 30 times, it was soaked in beer and other alcoholic substances multiple times, and was once left under the rain for a few hours. This thing just wouldnt give up. The creative also has great ways of getting to the music u want (as most other mp3 players but still). You can search by title, artist, album, genre, and playlist. There is shuffle, shuffle repeat (which for example shuffles all songs withing a certain album or artist and then starts over once it played all songs), repeat, and a bunch of others. The only thing for the playlist that i dont like is that the player is a bit lazy and sometimes you would get 3 songs in a row of the same artist from like 250 total songs in the pl just cuz those ones are close to each other on the hard drive. The LCD is very bright and you can see it the dark and direct sunlight perfectly well. The only thing i have against the display is that despite the fact that you enter the time and date, there is no way to display it. I just think thats retarded but it doesnt detract that much from the player. Everyone also bad-mouths the touchpad, but i dont think its too hard to get used to... a few hours max. Also i really like the Creative software just because it is really easy to use. Now what i didnt like so much: First of all when i got this player, it broke within 2 days. It was partially my fault plus Creative replaced it relatively quickly (got it back exactly a week after sending it out) no questions asked. Also the played is a bit too big and heavy. Its nothing horrible - just a bigger than the ipod. Its not that compfortable to put in your pants pocket, but the belt clip and inside jacket pocket work great for me. Also to be very unoriginal im going to say that the belt clip isnt that great because there are no openings to directly access the buttons. However since all you really need is 3 buttons (forwad, rev, and sometimes "random") you can get by. Those buttons arent located right next to eachother and unless you are slow you can figure out relatively where to press to get those buttons. By the way also get ready to buy some new headphones - this is the same with any player you buy. Recently, after much additional abuse, my touch started messing up. Sometimes if you try to scroll up, it will scroll down. This happens randomly and is a big inconvenience, but you have to consider the fact that this player has been through hell and back in the year+ i had it. Thats about it. To sum it up: Great player which you can use to throw at people if you want or for self defense. Will not break and provide you with hours of music. Dont forget that it really DOES have a 24 hour battery life. Sometimes it lasts me upto 3 days without a recharge which is much more than any other player can provide. By the way i took it apart and saw that is has shock resistant plastic bars on top and bottom which protect the hard drive which is also protected by the battery from the top. BUY THIS