Creative Technology ZEN Nano Plus (512 MB) MP3 Player

What Is It?
I read an article a while back that talked about how the modern generation has never owned a vinyl record or an 8 track tape. We are rapidly heading to a time when portable cassette players and now portable CD players have become the new kids on the technology extinction list. The rush toward small, reliable portable music players has now given birth to the latest from Creative Labs: the Zen Nano.

What's In The Box?
In the typically difficult to open clear plastic case, you get the player itself (either the 512mb or the 1 GB version), a setup disk, earbud headphones, an armband and a soft case, a USB connector, a mini-plug and a AAA battery. There is also a brief instruction manual that covers the basic functions.

How Does It Work?
If you are familiar with the process of ripping CDs and transferring music to portable players, you can skip this section and move on to the next.

If this is your first venture into portable MP3 players, don't worry. The process of getting music onto the player, though it takes a few initial setup steps, is no more difficult than dragging and dropping files from one folder to another. There is an excellent review of this product on Epinions where the reviewer didn't find the Creative Zen Nano Plus Media Explorer all that useful. To give another take on that, I personally think that for new users, it is a very nice interface.

It is true, you can of course just use Windows explorer, but what I like about the Nano interface is that it isolates all of the media files in your library for you. To me, it makes it even easier to do the dragging and dropping, but to each his own. If you don't like the utility, you can also go into the Windows control panel and un-install it.

Now, as to the process. In its simplest form, open either the Creative Explorer or Windows media player, insert a disk into your CD drive, and select the "rip" option. Unless you change settings, you will typically find that it will use a setting of 128kbps, resulting in approximately 57 mb per CD. That translates to roughly 18 hours of music. This provides what can best be described as "near CD quality". As with most MP3 players, they are designed for on-the-go listening. Critical listening is typically not something you'd be doing with these. If you do want a higher quality, you can use less compression, but that increases the file size, and therefore the amount of music you can get onto the player.

Next, connect the USB cable to your PC and the Nano. Drag the songs you want from the hard drive to the player. That is basically it. Personally, however, I would suggest that you create folders on the Nano for the different types of music you enjoy. The reason for that is due to the way the Nano functions. When you turn it on, it will start playing from the first song. However, if you have organized the music into separate folders, you can use the settings button to skip to a desired folder quickly.

Player Controls
Although with a little experimenting you could probably figure out how the player works, you may want to read the few pages in the manual which explain the basic functions.

The main button is the "scroller". It is used to enter the setup menu, access additional functions such as the FM tuner and voice recorder, change the EQ settings and the orientation of the LCD display.

There are 2 volume control buttons, and a play/pause button. It should be noted that to "skip" a song, you need to first press the pause button, then use the scroller to skip ahead (or back for that matter).

I find the controls on the Nano far superior to the ones on the Creative Zen Micro I used to have. I absolutely hated the touch pad on that one. It was very tricky to use. By contrast, the Nano just works as designed, and once you are familiar with the layout of the controls, operation is a breeze.

How Does It Sound?
Given its limitations, plus the medium quality of the supplied earbuds, the sound is remarkably pleasant. I found that I didn't' care for any of the pre-set equalization settings, so I was glad to see that it is possible to create a customized equalization setting.

Is It Worth The Price?
In my opinion, there are a surprisingly large number of features in so small a package. You are getting an FM tuner with pre-sets and autoscan, an MP3 player, a flash drive (you can use this to transfer data files if you desire) and a digital voice recorder in something about the size of a BIC lighter.

Rechargeable Versus Disposable Batteries
One of the things I really like about the Nano is that it uses regular AAA batteries. I had the 5 gb Creative Zen Micro for a while, but eventually wound up giving it away. Among the things I didn't like, I found that the internal battery just wore down too quickly, and required frequent re-charging even when I wasn't using the player.

With the Nano, you can either just keep a supply of fresh AAA batteries around, or just buy some rechargeable ones along with a recharging unit.

Hard Drive Versus Flash Drive
If maximum storage is needed, then the Nano may not be for you. However, I find that having approximately 18 hours of music available more than meets my need. In addition, whereas the larger players are typically hard drive based, the Nano is based on a flash drive. The main advantage to that is that it is rock solid. Under the right conditions, you can get the hard drive based systems to skip. If you are going to be jogging or doing other activities, the Nano has the advantage.