By Carlo S. Suerte Felipe
Being an owner of the Creative Zen V Plus for three months now, I can’t believe how Creative was able to put everything in such a small gadget. The Zen V Plus may not look high-tech but you just have to use it and see for yourself. At Creative’s website (www.creative.com), the Zen V Plus is categorized as an MP3 player and not a portable media player (PMP) just to make things clear.
The first time I saw the box, it did made a good impression, but seeing the player just made me say "cute." It measures 2.65 inches long, 1.7 inches wide, and .62 inch thick. The Zen V Plus is small enough to fit in the palm of your hands.
The Zen V Plus has that piano-gloss finish that covers even the 1.5-inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display making it scratch resistant. Below the display is where the 5-way joystick, play/pause and return button is located. At the right side is where the dedicated volume buttons are placed, and beneath it is the record button. The power and lock switch is located on the left side. On top is where the USB port, headphone jack, line-in jack, and microphone is located. Battery is internal and it is charged via USB.
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| Creative Zen V Plus | |
The package that I got included the 1GB Zen V Plus, USB cord, earphones, a velvet pouch, CD Installer, and some documentations. Currently there are three versions of the Zen V Plus and it is color coded with the unit. An orange accent would give you 1 Gigabytes storage capacity, the green accent has 2 Gigabytes, and the blue accent has 4 Gigabytes. My Zen V Plus has an orange accent. Creative revealed in their launch last week that they are coming up with an 8GB version some time next year.
So what does the Zen V Plus offer? Well, almost similar to the Zen Vision M which is quite a big gadget. I haven’t actually used the Vision M but portability-wise, I’d prefer the Zen V Plus. It can play MP3, WMA, IMA ADPCM, and WMA DRM files, has an FM Radio with 32 presets, can play videos, view photos, and can do voice recording.
Surprisingly, it also has an organizer in it which can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook. Also, the Zen V Plus also has an alarm setting which will be useful if it is connected to a Creative docking system or portable system (sold separately). With that setup, it can become a portable radio system with alarm function.
I’ve tried setting the alarm once and turned off the player. Like a mobile phone’s alarm, the Zen V Plus did turn on although I forgot to connect it to a speaker so I didn’t actually hear it went on. But it did drain the battery when I checked it in the afternoon (I thought it was still off).
I really like the way I can record interviews with the Zen V Plus. It’s clear enough to get the important details and it is also easy to do transcriptions with it. As you rewind or forward, it is done, at first, via seconds compared to other players that skip about five or ten seconds.
Another nice thing about the Zen V Plus is it’s capability to play videos - a feature not found in the Zen V (along with the FM radio feature). With regards to video playing, the file you will be storing in the Zen V Plus will be re-encoded using the accompanied software. The display, even though it is quite small, you can actually change its orientation from normal to 90 degrees, 180 degrees and 270 degrees counter clockwise.
Battery life is said to last up to 15 hours, which is perhaps true. I was able to make a recording of more than three and a half hours with the battery level almost full. And the Zen V Plus’ battery still wasn’t drained after that.
So far, what I don’t like about the Zen V Plus is the way you have to charge it. It seems that USB charging has become standard with most MP3 players. It would have been better if the package included a adapter head that you can connect to the USB plug. But Creative would suggest that you buy their Universal Power Adapter, in case you prefer charging through AC outlets.
I would also comment on the small display. Yes, it’s too small for videos as other people have also said. But Creative might have intentionally made it small because, as I’ve said, it’s not a PMP. And I think the display is enough for short video clips. On the other hand, there’s also the problem of video conversion. What happens is than when I converted an MTV clip, it’s file size grew bigger. I can’t understand why that happened since the resolution of the original file was 640x 480 (the output was reduced to 128x96 and it became a DIB or device-independent bitmap file). If you love video clips, the 4 Gigabyte version would be ideal.
Overall, I would recommend the Creative Zen V Plus is a good alternative to PMPs and is ideal for people who need a small mp3 player with photo and video playback. This would make a good Christmas gift since it’s not as expensive as other mp3 players with the same features. Actually, most mp3 players of the same size don’t have photo and video playback (unless it’s a mobile phone).
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