Creative Zen Nano Plus 512MB - Black

Positive points:
• It looks good – very small, easy to carry around and can be protected from the elements in your hand.
• Sound quality seems excellent, the headphones are good.
• Lots of functions. The ability to record radio is very useful. I can now record weekend shows that the kids normally talk through and listen to them to and from work. Can also record from a built in microphone and a line input (for an analogue source) though I haven’t tried these yet.
• Works with both wma and MP3 formats.
• Screen is excellent and shows all relevant information. This is important given the number of functions possible.
• Good storage capacity. I ripped to wma format at 64kbs, which is the recommended rate. This seems to compress music to 5% of its original size (makes you wonder why music companies charge so much if you can’t hear 95% of their product!) so I can fit approximately 150 tracks plus 3 ½ hours of radio into the 512Mb (actually memory available is 490Mb, presumably the rest is used for the software).
• Download speeds are fasts. Music can be organised in a series of folders.
• Battery life is very good. I suspect that I get close to the specified 18 hours from one alkaline AAA battery (much better than my old CD player which consumed 2 AAs every 8 hours).

Slight negative points
• The jog wheel looks slightly flimsy but is positive in operation.
• Radio quality can fluctuate when moving about. This is probably a result of the aerial moving and is likely to be a problem with all small radios. When leaving the unit to record from the radio it is very easy to position the headphone leads to give a good signal however.
• Player comes with a short multi-language printed manual which gets you going but doesn’t cover many of the functions. Probably need to print out the more comprehensive manual on the CD. This is still a bit vague in places but playing with the player for an hour or so makes most functions clear. Operation is very intuitive and the screen is very helpful.
• CD contains a number of programs for ripping, downloading and organising music. Would be helpful if some documentation explained what software was useful for what! However it is relatively easy to use the software to rip music from CDs but some explanation of more advanced features would be useful.
• Recording from the radio seems to drain the battery and eventually the level drops below that required to continue recording. With a new alkaline battery the player will record for about 2 ½ hours. If the player is then switched off the battery recovers and can be used for many more hours (although continuous recording time will be reduced). This seems to be related to the properties of alkaline batteries whose voltage falls quite rapidly during initial use. I have recently switched to rechargeable batteries which do not seem to show this problem.

None of the above negative points are serious however and the player is excellent in terms of quality, features and value for money. I would certainly buy it again although I might go for the 1Gb version next time now I know how good it is.