[Martin_Thompson]

My wife purchased the Zen XFi 3 with the WP250 BT Stereo Headphones for my xmas gift (2012) I have now been using this set for the past 4 weeks and not impressed, (the cons far outweigh the Pro's) firstly the sound quality of the zen leaves alot to be desired, I compare this with my phillips go gear 4gb MP3 player (note that I simply copied my playlists from the go-gear to the zen). the music sounds weak on basic settings and with the crystalizer activated it sounds over engineered and this is all on the standard wired headset provided, with the bluetooth its even worse it picks up that obvious background hiss. so not impressed with its sound capabilities . as for video play back I cannot comment as I don't see the point of watching a video on a 1. 1/2 inch by 2 inch screen, in my opinion portable devices are for use on the go (cycling running etc). the function buttons are touch sensitive and are basically naff as they 60% of the time do not respond which makes "humans" push a little harder. now to top all this off the headset has decided to unpair itself from the zen and will no longer work, so the obvious thing to do was go to the creative website and look for a fix for this and yes they are there, firstly (a pro) you can acces a clean up / reboot / format funtion by pressing certain buttons on boot up. and secondly you can fully reset the headset by doing similar things. however neither of these fixes worked and I now suspect that the headset has given up the ghost after a couple of hours of use (its still on its original charge). I am now waiting for creative's customer support to reply but I think its gonna be a "send it back senario" considering that their tech support have not got a very good track record with issues I have had in the past with other creative products. (I have always found my own fixes).
so to sum up firstly the Zen was purchase with the WP250 from creative as a sports Pack at a price of £130.00 yes thats right i'll say it clearly one hundred and thirty Pounds sterling.
now in comparison to my Phillips go-Gear and £29.99. and in comparison to performance and reliability then all I can say is DO NOT WASTE YOUR CASH...... look at alternatives , I believe that this is probably the first poor reveiw that this player has received as I have spent hours browsing to see if anyone else has had issues and have found none SO lets hope that this is a one off and all my issues will be resolved.......... I will update when I eventually get this resolved.......

[emptybox]

I've always found Creative MP3 players to have excellent sound quality. I've got a Zen XFi 8GB at the mo (not the touchscreen model). And I had a Creative Jukebox before that.

You say you copied the playlist from your other player. What format and bitrate were the files, as that could make a big difference?
Most of my songs are formatted as MP3s of 200+ Kb/s.

Can't comment about your headphones woe.

[Akane Tendo]

If you're going to be doing reviews Martin then it's best to use paragraphs, because it's not so easy to read a big block of text...

[Martin_Thompson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akane Tendo

If you're going to be doing reviews Martin then it's best to use paragraphs, because it's not so easy to read a big block of text...

I do apologise for the Lack of Paragraphs.
I do tend to wright ( sorry write) as I speak in reviews, did you find the review useful or are you the online English teacher ? (whoops almost forgot the ? )
was it informative ? . if so then it served its Purpose.

[Martin_Thompson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by emptybox

I've always found Creative MP3 players to have excellent sound quality. I've got a Zen XFi 8GB at the mo (not the touchscreen model). And I had a Creative Jukebox before that.

You say you copied the playlist from your other player. What format and bitrate were the files, as that could make a big difference?
Most of my songs are formatted as MP3s of 200+ Kb/s.

Can't comment about your headphones woe.

the Bit rates are varied . some are WMA and only a few are MP3. I do tend to use WMA at the highest Bit rate the Players can handle. I am not saying all creative players are Naff and I do own a XFi Fatality champion sound card with front I/O mod and must say that the sound reproduction of that is excellent as I purchased that to create a bedroom recording studio . But the Zen XFI3 is a bit lame for the price . now if The Missus had paid around half the price I would have been writing a different review but the fact remains for £130 in hindsight I would have opted for an alternative.

[Chris Frost]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin_Thompson

I do apologise for the Lack of Paragraphs.
I do tend to wright ( sorry write) as I speak in reviews, did you find the review useful or are you the online English teacher ? (whoops almost forgot the ? )
was it informative ? . if so then it served its Purpose.

All Akane Tendo said was that your appraisal was difficult to read. I happen to share that opinion.

Congratulations on taking two years to respond though. I'm sure that Akane Tendo is feeling really burned by your zappy retort. [Where's the rolly eyes symbol when needed ]

If you want people to find your posts informative then it's best to make them accessible first. It's much easier to process information when presented in a structured format rather than the 'stream of consciousness' mind-dump posts. This goes for the way people speak too. If your writing style really reflects the way you speak to people then I think most folk would switch off after 30 seconds. Sorry, but it's just human nature.