Creative Zen V Plus 1GB (Black/Orange)

I purchased the 8GB Creative Zen V Plus player during the first week in February. Today, March 6th, I am returning it and this is why: The package arrived from Amazon. I loaded up the software on my computer, then hooked up the player through the usb cord. I let it charge for 6 hours like the instructions state. Then I proceeded to load some of my music onto the player. So after the music was loaded, I disconnected the player from the usb cable and started to listen to the music. The sound quality was good, the player is easy to navigate in the menus, etc... The problem was about half the music I uploaded was not on the player. I could see the folder and menu option for the artist or genre but the actual file was not there. So I plugged the player back into the usb cord, and pulled up the file location on the player through the computer. The file was there and I could play it just fine through Windows Media Player. I tried to access it again through the player and it was not there. Then I accessed through the computer just fine. All my songs, all 4,500 of them, are in MP3 format from 56kps for my audio books to 192kps for the songs I ripped from cd's. The player just wouldn't read about half my songs. There was really no rhyme or reason on whish songs it would recognize. I would load an entire album of 15 songs and I could only play 6 or 7 tracks. This happened with my entire music collection. So I thought maybe the firmware was out of date so I uploaded all the updates from creative which did include a firmware update. It did not solve the problem. I then uploaded some of the same songs that would not play on the Zen V Plus onto my 3 year old Rio and original Ipod Shuffle and they played just fine. I was frustrated at this point so I called the Creative Customer Service. It is strange because they do not post the number for there company anywhere on there website and now I understand why. They have the worst customer service/tech department of any computer/electronic company I have ever spoke with. After three calls, never speaking to someone who I could fully understand as English was definitely not a first language, more like a 3rd or 4th language, I arrived nowhere. They kept telling me they were emailing document to me on how to resolve the problem. No email ever came, checked the junk folder and every other possible place. So I tried a fourth call. This guy basically called me stupid from what I could understand, saying "I can't believe you Americans" and then mumbled something in another language. I asked for a supervisor. He told me that he would escalate my call and someone would call me in 2-3 days. Then he hung up. I was really amazed that a company would treat its customers in this nature. They really have to respect for there customers and do not want to help them in any way. So I am returning the Creative Zen V Plus player and I also don't plan on buying anything from Creative again. By the way, after all this, the problem never was fixed. Also, when doing research on this product, I came across a couple articles and reviews that stated this player would play DIVX files. This is not true. This player will not play any files without being converted first. I took an AVI video that was 100MB and it converted it into a 1.2GB file. The format they use is absolutely a waste of space. If you want to upload an entire movie on MPEG or AVI format, it will end up taking the entire 8GB of space if not more. I converted the movie Cars for my son on a short road trip thinking I could have my music plus his movie. I was wrong, the movie took up 7.1GB after being converted. I would not recommend this product to anyone. As much as I don't like the IPod, I would recommend it over the Zen V Plus because: 1. It plays all my music 2. They have a customer service/tech support that helps you and cares about its customers. I hope this helps anyone looking at this player. Jeff

It is a nice little package - if you like small packages. The problem I have is the little toggle button in the front - They make it look like a dial in the pics - but do not be fooled it is a flimsy black toggle button. that is easily broken. The toggle is a two piece button that should not have been used. Spend a little more and get the bigger Zen or IPod

my husband gave this Creative Zen for my Birthday and I was very happy because I needed music to exercise. So the first 2 weeks worked great, no problem at all, but then just suddenly out of the blue the music will pause itself so I had to push the play button in order to keep listening to it, other than that it works well, and the sound quality is great, but I am an aerobic teacher and this is not fun when you are in the middle of a class and the music just stops. I stopped using it and now I am just using my blackberry for my class and to listen music. I hope this does not happen to you. Jes

The Zen V Plus is a great mp3/video player for the price, the only reason I didn't give it a 5 star rating is that display is a bit to small.

This little MP3 player was exactly what we were looking for. It downloads very easily and you can download both music and videos. It is an impressive player and for the money, it was perfect. I was looking for something for a pre teen and he was very impressed, but in the process other kids and adults who saw this product were equally impressed.

I thought this product had a great price and excellent features, and when it worked it was actually pretty excellent. My complaint though, was that it crashed very frequently. With each firmware upgrade things sometimes got better and sometimes got worse. I had to carry a paper clip with it so that I could reset it when this happened (which happened every day). The worst part of this is that it crashed most often when seeking, which I would want to do after the previous crash to get back to the part I was listening to. It was very frustrating. Finally, a few days after the warranty expired the system simply ceased functioning. It won't turn on, no response from plugging into the computer, nothing. It's dead. I was very sad to see it die, because I hoped they might eventually fix the crashing problem with firmware upgrades, and despite the crashing everything else was very good (good sound, pleasant interface, even had a line-in recording and built in microphone).

It worked great for two day's & then the screen went blank. I returned it for a full & quick refund. I then purchased a different brand(SanDisc)works great!

The only drawback would be that if you really want to add videos to it,make sure you get one with at least 2G of storage or more.The videos are not compressed and therefore take up more space.The file size doubles when converted. I have had to reset the unit a couple of times but overall,I'm cool with the Zen V Plus.I like Creative's products and will likely buy another Zen V Plus player but I will get one with more storage.