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After two flawless years of service, my Toshiba Gigabeat S 30GB went through the laundry. Even after all that it still tries to start up, but the hard drive is toast. I was crushed to find out you can no longer buy a Gigabeat S. Why Toshiba would discontinue such a great product is a mystery to me.

After a few days of research, I realized the 32 GB Zen was the closest I was going to get to replacing my old friend. I ordered it and am glad I did. It's a great product that offers more features than the Gigabeat and is about 20% smaller as well as being lighter.

The controls are very intuitive. I was operating it right out of the box without needing to read first. It does everything the Gigabeat did, and also has a calendar feature, clock radio type alarm, voice recorder and more. It also has an SD slot in case 32 gigs isn't enough. The FM radio setting works great, and is a must have for any mp3 player I will ever own. Reception is good and the Zen has an auto-scan feature for finding your station presets that the Gigabeat did not have.

The only con I can think of is the scroll speed through the tunes. The Gigabeat had a fast scroll mode that I'll miss. If you fill up the 32 gig flash drive with tunes, that feature is needed, IMO.

I've seen negative comments about the included earbuds in other reviews. They really aren't that bad. They have a bit of pseudo-bass, but I've heard worse. I plugged my studio grade Sennheiser 280s and they didn't sound much better.

Overall, a great product. I would definitely buy another if this one ever goes through the laundry.

I do not own this product but a friend of mine does. This worked great as a mp3 player but the video aspect of this device (what it is marketed as) is subpar. It does not accept all formats in its conversion and worst of all when you can get something to convert there is a time lapse between the video and the sound.

My friend bought this because he travels a lot and wanted to watch movies on flights. With a long Video (over 30 min) the sound gets about 1 second off for every 30 mins or video. You may not notice it at first but by the end of the movie you will be tearing your hair out in frustration.

The picture viewer is one of the finer aspects of the Zen. It works well for showing off your pictures and the slideshow viewer works pretty good. You can also use it as a giant flash drive if you want to.

I am giving this device a 2 out of 5 stars because even though it works well as a picture viewer and mp3 player you can buy other creative products that do the same thing for $200 less. The fact that the video does not sync up with the audio and the poor file format support makes it not as good as its predecessor the Zen Vision W.

I love the capacity, I like the interface, and I don't mind the separation of the SD card from the internal memory.
I do not like the slow startup time. It is ridiculous at times. If I am able to anticipate using the player though, I just start it up a few minutes before I want to use it. It starts decently fast if it has been on within the last 30 minutes or so. Another trick I use if is to turn it on and leave it plugged into my USB hub all night. That lets it start up fast in the morning and it is fully charged.
The ONE thing I do regret about this is that a few weeks after I bought this they released the new Zen X-Fi Creative Zen X-Fi 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black). I was torn between returning the player and using the credit to get the new one, but the new features are not very necessary to me.
All in all, great sound quality, good storage capacity, decent battery life (I average around 16 - 18 hours), and an amazing screen make for a good MP3 player. Not perfect, but I like it a lot.

Overall, a very good mp3 player.

Positives:
- Lots of flash memory for a good price. Which means no worrying about a hard drive skipping or failing when it's bumped, longer life, etc.
- Good sound, if you get good headphones (the ones that come with it are poor)
- Lots of options for customization.
- Simple, easy to use Windows Explorer integration.
- Simple, easy to use interface
- Buttons are tactile and can easily be used without looking at it.
- Plays videos
- Lots of play modes, sleep mode, customizable menus and graphics, custom function button, etc, etc.

Negatives:
- Locks up frequently. You have to stick a pin in the reset hole. At the rate this happens, they should have made a reset *button* as I'm stuck looking around desperately for a small paperclip every time this happens. I actually ended up taping one to it. If this happens at night, when I'm falling asleep, it stays on all night and the battery runs out.
- Creative is a company in Singapore, apparently, and has practically zero customer support. The Zen Vision apparently had the same tendency to lock up and they've never fixed it.
- Buttons were actually better (and unit was smaller) on the Zen V Plus - these have a tendency to be pressed by accident when you're trying to press something else. But the Zen V Plus was only briefly made in 16GB and 32GB sizes - I've never actually seen one in person.

Overall, if you're trying to save money and/or avoid iTurns/iPods, I'd recommend it - as long as you don't mind the lockups and don't need customer support... :)

Admittedly, to begin with I was a bit anti-iPod. After all my family members have purchased Creative mp3 players (the Vision M and Vision W) I too wanted the freedom to enjoy a player with more options and less branding.

Creative's newest player, simply "Zen", lived up to my expectations and then some.

On the positive side, light as a feather, small and compact, GREAT storage for its size (32 GB with no HDD? YES Expandability? YES), amazing sound quality, beautiful colors in both still pictures and video, pretty good quality voice recording (helpful in recording lectures, though works better sitting up close obviously), customizable FM radio (even worked great picking up FM stations internationally on my recent trip abroad), good Equalizer...and best of all for me, works with my PC player of choice, Windows Media Player.

On the negative side, as a WMP user, I found the options in sorting and playback a bit lacking. It isn't a database powerhorse that can sort music by ratings, language, sub-genre, Folder, etc. compared to the huge list of sorting options available in Windows Media Player, where I can play a desired set of songs without even making a playlist using those sorts. However, playlists are fairly easy to make on your computer (a bit more tedious to do on the player) so planning for your listening/workout/whatever experience that way is one option.

Also, compared to previous ZENs, no A/C adapter charger comes with the player, meaning you have to charge it through USB by default, which didn't help for my trip abroad without computer access... In addition, by default it does not come with a cable or jack to output video to a monitor, an option I greatly enjoyed in the Vision M and W players. Finally, the buttons do feel a bit cheap to touch, though I haven't had a problem with them yet. And although the image quality is amazing, it's very easy to collect dirt or smear oil stains onto the player, so a protective casing is very much recommended.

I still highly recommend this player for those looking for an iPod alternative. For those looking for a bit more of a versatile alternative, maybe check out the older ZEN Vision models (though W is out of production) if you're willing to compensate the lightweight and small size for those other options.