Summary:
The Creative Zen Nano Plus Mp3 player (1 gigabyte £43.20) comes in 10 colours and is available in 512Mb of flash memory to store up to 250 tracks and 1Gb of flash memory to store up to 500 tracks.
Camera Usb Micro B 5-pin
This is a feature rich ultra-portable (size of a pen drive) Mp3/Wma movable audio solution in an exciting holder and the smallest in Creative's range and only 32 grams. This is an excellent product and 10/10!
Review:
The sound capability for Mp3 is excellent and even great for Wma encoded tracks, the frequency response is 20Hz to 20,000Hz, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 90dB.
Although plastic, the build capability is of a high appropriate with a durable scratch unyielding casing. The gismo is controlled by 3 responsive and sensibly sized buttons: power on/off (which also acts as the play/pause); volume up; and volume down. The remaining functions are delivered via a scroll wheel which also has a rocker function and acts as the skip and the fast forward/back controls. All controls can be operated one handed by use of the thumb only.
The black on green backlit 3cm x 1 cm Lcd (18 characters) interface is a very intuitive and user-friendly display using 2 lines of text where each of the main12 functions is identified by an icon. The display orientation can be configured to allow reading whichever way up it is held (in any one of 16 languages!).
There are 6 graphic equaliser settings - 5 preset ( Rock, Jazz; Classical, Pop, and Normal) and Custom. The custom setting allows manual configuration of a 5-band filter circuit for tonal characteristics of the mid-frequencies.
Tracks can be placed in memory singularly or in folders as whole albums. There are 12 play modes - play all tracks / particular track / particular briefcase / all folders; either in order or randomly; and even play once, repeat once, repeat continually..
The gismo is powered by one Aaa battery which routinely provides almost 18-hours of playback time, microphone 15 hours and 9 hours of direct encoding. The supplied Energizer battery, however, lasted just over 24 hours. I prefer to use a pair of rechargeable batteries in tandem.
The gismo is linked to the computer using a Usb cable (series "A" plug to Mini-B receptacle on the device) and is recognised as a appropriate mass warehouse drive, powered by the computer when connected. There's a rubber cover over the Usb port on the device.
The computer drivers furnish an highly user cordial Drag-and-Drop style interface with Usb 2.0 support, including Drm copy-protected music, allowing you to well change music, even via a lowly Usb 1.1 Windows 98 Pc.
The driver software is unnecessary for simple warehouse operations as it can be used a like any other flash device; any way unlike some devices this does not have a type A relationship so you need to have the interface cable with you.
For 'Cd quality' playback * a minimum bit rate of 128Kbps is required which equates to 1 itsybitsy of music per megabyte, therefore the 1 gigabyte gives 8 hours worth of Cd capability music which is about 200 songs. Encoding at 64Kbps allows 500 track advertised capacity.
* In acknowledge any criticism from those who should know great I know this is not a true comparison, by 'Cd quality' in the context of an Mp3 player, I mean great than cassette, but not studio, quality, of course.
Good stuff:
1) Built-in condenser microphone recordings in 8 kHz, 4-bit in Mono wave format.
2) A built-in Fm tuner with 32 presets and Autoscan function;
3) Internal Fm recording and synchronised recording, enabling you connect it to a Dab radio and timed recordings;
4) Line-In real-time Mp3 encoding at 96, 128 or 160Kbps for direct relationship and recording from any audio source with Line-in or earphones socket;
5) simple drag-and-drop music and data files. No computers needed which also allows use of audio sources other than Cd;
6) 18 hrs or more of battery life;
7) Works like an industry appropriate flash drive, so can store data files such as photos and presentations;
Bad stuff:
This is an excellent product and the only negative comments I have are quite superficial and it should be noted that we computer science geeks seem to have a genetic propensity for pointless trivialities!
1) From power up takes up to 15 seconds to load and come to be operational, depending on the capacity;
2) The bundled headphones are good enough, but not sufficiently so to do justice to the sound quality;
3) As a flash based player, it might have been nice to have a direct Usb plug - now that retractable ones are appearing there would seem to be no intuit not to;
4) The rocker switch/scroll wheel is a itsybitsy fiddly, over-sensitive and can lock;
5) When browsing by folders the first song in the briefcase is played, rather than offering a chance to browse without playing;
6) I have noticed the odd random 0.3 second "skip"during playback - this seems to occur about every 6 hours of use;
7) I would have liked this to have come with a rechargeable battery that could be charged using the Usb cable;
8) The gismo can not be linked to a computer to furnish power while recording from the microphone or direct encoding;
9a) Folders and tracks being organised by descending alphabetic order according to file names only, and the gismo displays the file name only for a second then switches to the encoded track title which could be wholly different. This can seem quote disorienting with large volumes of files organised with real file names;
9b) While a computer is not required, except for the capability to delete files, there is no interface to organise or name directly captured files which are written respectively to an 'encoded tracks' briefcase and named En001 incrementally up to En999, and to a "recorded files' briefcase named Voic001 to Vc999;
10) Voice recordings are encoded as Wav files, I would have liked the selection to use Mp3 encoding;
11) There is a 1.8 second delay when starting and ending a direct recording;
12) The gismo directly encodes at a maximum of 160bkps, I don't think this a real issue but users are becoming accustomed to batter capability encoding and full Wav Pcm output. :-)
13) Direct encoding requires a non-standard adaptor (3.5mm to 2.5mm Mono plug to plug lead).
Box Contents
Zen Nano Plus;
Earphones;
Aaa Battery;
Usb 2.0 Cable;
Line-in Cable;
Quick Start Booklet (multiple language);
Installation Cd (multiple language);
Neck Strap;
Creative Zen Nano Plus Mp3