Creative Zen Touch 20GB MP3 Player

Reviewed by: tverskoiparnisha

Duration of ownership:

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 Evaluation: 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