Hardware:
Creative Zen 4GB (Paid £54.95) & Creative EP-630 Earphones. Already had the earphones.
Sound:
I don't really have much to compare it to as I am no audiophile but I was happy with the sound. My only quibble is that the player was not that loud, even on full blast, but maybe its because I have bass boast on or because I am using these earphones. I didn't try the earphones that came with the player, but I suggest you get a decent pair anyways as they didn't look too good.
Clarity was pretty decent.
Video:
You have to re-encode your movies/videos down to 320*240 before they will play on the device. A 20minute episode of scrubs took 5minutes to re-encode via VirtualDub. I was quite impressed with the quality of the video and sound for such a small device and I, personally, found it perfectly watchable and would definitely be using this in future for watching tv episodes on the go.
Menu system:
I was very impressed with how customizable this is, you can remove things you don't use etc and it seemed to be very fluid and wasn't slow (don't have much media on there at the moment).
Although I haven't tested the SD slot, apparently you have to go through a seperate menu to access the things on the SD card which is a downpoint, but I believe Creative have (or are going to) release a new firmware to fix this.
Features:
The one feature I was very impressed with was the "Album of the day" button, which will randomly choose an album and start playing it for you everytime you press it. Even better, you can assign a different function to this button if you want - like to go to the videos page for instance.
Look, Feel & Buttons
I quite like the look of it, but I guess its all down to taste. It doesn't weight that much. The screen and device as a whole is very prone to fingerprints and scratches though so you may want to get a silicone skin.
I thought it might be a bit awkward to use due to it being landscape but I thought it was decent enough to use. If you don't lock the device the buttons would get pressed when it is in your pocket, so remember to put the lock on.
Conclusion
Overall, for the price, I am very happy and would recommend it. But then again I am no audiophile and someone else might be able to pick more faults with it. As said, the only quibble is that it doesn't go that loud with the earphones I use.
Can't really comment on the battery life at the moment - but it hasn't ran out yet
Never done a review before as you can probably tell - but if you have any questions - do ask
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