Resume:

The Creative Zen Nano Plus MP3 player (1 gigabyte £43.20) comes in 10 colors and is available in 512MB flash memory to store up to 250 tracks and 1GB flash memory to store up to 500 tracks.

It’s a feature-rich, ultra-portable (USB drive size) MP3/WMA mobile audio solution in an attractive package and the smallest in the Creative range, weighing just 32 grams. This is an excellent product and 10/10!

Review:

The sound quality for MP3 is excellent and even better for WMA encoded tracks, the frequency response is 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 90 dB.

Although it is plastic, the build quality is of a high standard with a durable scratch resistant casing. The device is controlled by 3 sensitive and size-sensitive buttons: power on/off (which also acts as play/pause); Turn up the volume; and lower the volume. The remaining functions are delivered via a scroll wheel that also has a rocker function and acts as a skip and fast forward/rewind control. All controls can be operated one-handed using just your thumb.

The 3cm x 1cm (18 character) black on green backlit LCD interface is a very intuitive and easy to use display using 2 lines of text where each of the 12 main functions is identified with an icon. The screen orientation can be set to allow reading from either side facing up (in any of 16 languages!).

There are 6 graphic equalizer settings: 5 preset (rock, jazz, classical, pop and normal) and custom. Custom setup allows manual configuration of a 5-band filter circuit for the tonal characteristics of the midrange.

Tracks can be placed in memory individually or in folders as entire albums. There are 12 play modes: play all tracks/single track/single folder/all folders; either in order or randomly; and even play once, repeat once, repeat continuously…

The device is powered by a AAA battery which routinely provides approximately 18 hours of playback time, 15 hours of microphone, and 9 hours of direct encoding. However, the supplied Energizer battery lasted just over 24 hours. I prefer to use a pair of rechargeable batteries in tandem.

The device connects to the computer using a USB cable (Serial “A” plug to Mini-B receptacle on the device) and is recognized as a standard mass storage drive, powered by the computer when connected. There is a rubber cover over the USB port of the device.

The computer drivers provide an extremely easy to use drag-and-drop style interface with USB 2.0 support, including DRM copy-protected music, allowing you to easily transfer music, even via a humble USB 1.1 Windows 98 PC .

Driver software is not required for simple storage operations, as it can be used like any other flash device; however, unlike some devices, this one does not have a Type A connection, so you must have the interface cable with you.

For ‘CD quality’ playback * a minimum bit rate of 128 Kbps is required, which is equivalent to 1 minute of music per megabyte, therefore 1 gigabyte provides 8 hours of CD quality music, which equals about 200 songs. 64 Kbps encoding allows an advertised capacity of 500 tracks.

*In response to any criticism from those who should know better, I know this is not a real comparison, by ‘CD quality’ in the context of an MP3 player I mean better than cassette, but not studio quality , of course.

good material:

1) Records from built-in condenser microphone at 8 kHz, 4-bit in Mono wave format.

2) A built-in FM tuner with 32 presets and auto scan function;

3) Internal FM recording and synchronized recording, allowing you to connect it to a DAB radio and timed recordings;

4) Real-time Line-In MP3 encoding at 96, 128 or 160 Kbps for direct connection and recording from any audio source with Line-in or headphone jack;

5) Simple drag and drop music and data files. No computers are needed, which also allows the use of non-CD audio sources;

6) 18 hours or more of battery life;

7) Works like an industry standard flash drive, so you can store data files like photos and presentations;

bad things:

This is an excellent product and the only negative comments I have are pretty cursory and it should be noted that us computer geeks seem to have a genetic propensity for nonsensical trivia!

1) From power on it takes up to 15 seconds to charge and become operational, depending on capacity;

2) The included headphones are good enough, but not good enough to do the sound quality justice;

3) As a flash-based player, it might have been nice to have a direct USB connector; now that shrink wraps are showing up, there seems to be no reason not to;

4) The rocker/scroll wheel switch is a bit fiddly, too sensitive and can get stuck;

5) When browsing folders, the first song in the folder is played, instead of offering the ability to navigate without playing;

6) I have noticed a strange random 0.3 second “skip” during playback; this seems to happen about every 6 hours of use;

7) I wish it came with a rechargeable battery that could be charged with the USB cable;

8) The device cannot be connected to a computer to provide power while recording from the microphone or encoding directly;

9a) Folders and tracks are arranged in descending alphabetical order based on file names only, and the device displays the file name for only one second and then switches to the encoded track title, which could be completely different. This can seem disorienting with large volumes of files organized with actual file names;

9b) While no computer is required, except for the ability to delete files, there is no interface to directly organize or name captured files which are respectively written to a ‘encoded tracks’ folder and named EN001 incrementally up to EN999, and in a “recorded file folder” named VOIC001 to VC999;

10) Voice recordings are encoded as WAV files, I would have liked the option to use MP3 encoding;

11) There is a 1.8 second delay when starting and ending a direct recording;

12) The device directly encodes at max 160 bkps, I don’t consider this to be a real problem, but users are getting used to better quality encoding and full WAV PCM output. 🙂

13) Direct coding requires a non-standard adapter (3.5mm to 2.5mm mono plug to breakout cable).

Box contents

Zen NanoPlus;

headphones;

AAA battery;

USB 2.0 cable;

input wire;

quick start booklet (multiple languages);

Installation CD (multilingual);

Neck strap;