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Hit 7 - Creative Zen 32 GB Portable Media Player (Black)
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List Price: $299.99
Our Price: $239.99
Your Save: $ 60.00 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Batteries Included: 1
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Creative Labs
Color: Black
Display Size: 2.5
EAN: 0054651156227
Feature: Enjoy all of your media on a device that's about the width of a credit card
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Creative Labs
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
Model: ZEN 32GBBK
Publisher: Creative Labs
Size: 32 GB
Studio: Creative Labs
Warranty: 1 year warranty
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Features
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Enjoy all of your media on a device that's about the width of a credit card
Watch 120 hours of videos, enjoy up to 8,000 of your favorite songs, or share hundreds of photos with your friends
2.5-inch TFT color display with 320 x 240-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors
Clock and alarm function, volume restriction, eight equalizer settings, and a USB hard drive mode
Weighs 2.1 ounces and measures 3.26 x 2.16 x .44 inches (W x H x D)
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Editorial Reviews:
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ZEN puts a world of entertainment at your fingertips. This amazing, credit card-sized digital media player, with its incredible screen, is the ultimate choice when you want to enjoy your music, movies and photos, whether downloaded from your digital library or from web sites around the world. It also includes an SD card slot, so you can add extra memory or more entertainment whenever you want. If you're ready for a world of enjoyment, then you're ready for ZEN!
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Forget about it!
Comment: i love it. everyone else rating this product pretty much said it all but ill give you my experience with it
32 Gigs of flash memory
-most flash memory ive seen in a compact player
-flash memory is more resistant to falls, faster, but supposedly can burn out after repeated writing and erasing. my experience is that it is faster than the ipod classics but i havent fiddled too much with them to really be an expert. it can definitely handle falls.(about 1.7 meters inside an acrylic case and works perfectly). i havent used it enough to burn out the memory
SD player
-awesome and the only player to have this feature to my knowledge
-YES it can import pictures directly from the sd card. must import all and not one at a time, though.
-along with a 16 Gb sd card your zen can hold up to 48 gigs of songs!
-SD cards are getting bigger! not sure if the future cards will be compatible but if they are the zen will hold 1 million gigs, muahahah.
-one problem is that it never reads the card when i put it in the first time, i take it out and put it in and it works perfectly.
-not great sd interface but it gets the job done.
its small!
-twice the thickness and a little longer than the ipod nano, but small. the ipod nano is amazingly tiny so the zen being a little bigger shouldnt bother anyone. and with 32 Gb along with a 8 Gb SD card vs ipods 8 Gb, forget about it.
Software compatability
-you can use software of your choice(i use mediamonky which seemed like the most common)
-Big Problem: ive only synced a handful of times but my unit has frozen 3-4 times while syncing with media monkey. not sure if the problem lies in mediamonkey or in the zen firmware but it has happened and for me would be the only real deal breaker. get that paperclip ready, when this happenes you must reset the unit, which doesnt delete anything,you just have wait a few mins to boot up. i decided to delete everything on the zen and resync everything to get it to work, which it did. doing this with 32 gigs is a real pain. hopefully it wont happen again like this. next time i sync ill update my review. and if it proves to be a pain ill take off a star or two.
Accesories
-there arnt very many!
-all the cases kind of suck. i definitely recommend the creative screen protector, and tentatively recommend the acrylic cases, (see my other review)
-google searching yields all creative products and is a pain to sift through.
-cant output video like the ipod. it would be nice to have but outputing video is not why you buy something like this.
Sound quality
-everyone seems to say it sounds better than the ipod with the proper headphones. and everyone seems to be an expert hearer person. all i can say it does sound great, but i cant really tell the difference. but i can say when my portable speakers were running out of batteries, the ipod nano was very fuzzy on the bass and my zen sounded much better and handeled the low batteries better.
screen
-screen is quality and big. no problems here.
interface
-its good but not as good as the classy ipod
-the buttons are buttons and not a spin wheel. lots of clicking and scrolling through the songs is not the best, but believe me, its nothing you cant deal with.
-you cant see the video while you fast forward. its not essential but it makes things easier and the ipod does this.
-no cover flow, i could care less about this but i thought i should mention. it can, however, show cover art, but not very impressivly.
-over all the interface works, and please dont let the shortcommings of the interface alone convince you to buy something without the things that really matter. a car may look fast(ipod) but what really matters is whats under the hood. and the zen has lots under its hood!
Overall
-great player for obvious reasons.
-only thing id really be worried about is the syncing problems i encountered. it was my first time learning the software and syncing anything so it could be user error, i cant be sure. it really upset me when this happened, and later on i read that the zen freezes a lot in many situations. for me, this is the only time i had this problem and i use my zen a lot. the only thing i dont do very often is update my music so this hasent affected me much. and with 32 Gb you shouldnt have to update often.
- if you want a player with flash memory, forget about it! the zen takes cake. if you want something with TONS of memory while being relatively cheap then youd be looking more towards the ipod classic, but the zen with 32 Gb even competes with that! overall, i am happy with my purchase!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Recieved broken player from seller -- Amazon Refurbished
Comment: I bought this player from Amazon Refurbished and my player was broken when it arrived. I then had to send it off to Creative to get fixed (which they did for free, thank god) but since I bought it over a month ago, I still haven't been able to really use the player because it has been under repair the entire time. Which sucks.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not As Good As It Seems
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Replacement for My Toshiba Gigabeat S 30GB
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So near and yet so far....
Comment: When this player works, it is very hard to beat. Compact size, easy navigation, user-configurable menus, and excellent graphics and sound, as well as accomodating SDHC cards up to at least 16GB, are great features, but.... mine had the white screen of death when I received it, and, though it would be normal for several hours at a time, would eventually get the white screen again, and be unusable for unpredictable amounts of time.
So, despite the fact that this is a very good player, when it works, it has serious problems that Creative, IMHO. should have addressed before continuing to sell it. If they are replacing all their older HD players with flash players, and the Zen 32GB is their flagship, why not get it working right instead of putting the burden of return, repair or replacement on us, their customers? Creative forums mention that the "white screen of death" is a hardware problem that affects about 1% of Zen players, not a problem that can be fixed by firmware updates.
And here the problems really began. I emailed Amazon to get a replacement, and, after a few days of runaround, was told that they would give me a refund instead, and that I could buy one for the same price from "BuyNow Incorporated". I had never heard of this company, and could find no info about them online. Today, Clicking on their name on Amazon's page, I see they say they have 97% positive reviews for the last 30 days as well as for their lifetime.
I bought the player from them, and they turned out to be Buy.com, a company that some sources online say is owned by Amazon, and that has the disinction of receiving some of the worst online reviews of any company I have ever seen. ResellerRatings.com gives them a 6 month rating of 2.41 out of 10 and a lifetime rating of 4.27. Buy.com say that their goal is to be the "best place to buy on the internet" but in fact they make no pretense of providing any customer service at all. They respond infrequently and very inadequately to emails, and, as far as I could determine after ten days of searching, do not even have a telephone number to call for support. Today I read on another site that 800-800-0800 is their customer service number, but I have not confirmed this.
Why should I put up with doing business with a company that won't even talk to me after I buy a $240 item from them ?
They shipped my player using UPS Mail Innovations, which is about the worst free shipping "service" that I have ever seen. My package has been sitting for three days in Springfield, Ma. without moving. I bought it 8/7, it was shipped 8/9, and today is 8/15! Almost all the reviews of UPS Mail Innovations report the same kind of thing - long delays in shipping and delivery, poor tracking information, etc. Avoid this company at all costs, and if you are getting free shipping, make sure it is via a reliable carrier like UPS or USPS.
As far as BuyNow Incorporated / Buy.com. and UPS Mail Innovations, I would not recommend them to my worst enemy. Amazon should be ashamed of having such companies as partners or associates, and especially ashamed of trying to foist off Buy.com as "BuyNow Incorporated" a nasty little piece of deliberate deception.
In light of the awful reviews of this company online, and my confirming personal experience, I am now afraid to do business with them. I am most likely going to cancel this order and buy from another source. I would only buy the Zen with an extended warranty, but I shudder to think of the problems that I might encounter if I needed and tried to get warranty service from Buy.com.
I have so far been a slow learner, but now I am going to change my way of doing business online. After days and weeks of poor service and slow delivery times, from this and other "bargain" online stores, I realize that I would much rather pay 10% to 20% more for a product brought from a trustworthy, reliable, and honest company, than to try to "save money" by using companies that have no interest in customer satisfaction or service, and whose idea of "customer service" is to employ some poor devils in Sri Lanka, Manila, or Bombay who barely speak English, and train them to say how "sorry" they are for the inconvenience that I have experienced. But who cannot, or will not, do anything to help me.
I do want to make it clear that my experience in buying direct from Amazon.com has been excellent. Shipping has been fast, and customer service, though far from perfect, has been adequate.
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