Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71433 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: ZenTouch40
• Released on: 2005-04-05
• Dimensions: .44 pounds

Features

• Creative Zen Touch - style, size, capacity and an extra long battery life make it the ideal digital audio player for music fans. Its innovative Touch Pad supports easy, fingertip navigation through your library of songs, while the 20GB hard disk can also

Manufacturer's Description
Palm-sized and pocket-friendly, Creative's Zen Touch digital music player is a treat for your eyes as well as your ears. And--with features like touch-sensitive navigation, 24-hour battery life, light weight (under half a pound with battery), and a staggering 40 GB/16,000 song capacity (64 kbps WMA)--the tiny unit leaves little room for wondering if it's right for you.

The Zen Touch is compatible with both MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) music files, and its super-fast USB 2.0 PC interface loads your music in record time. Use the player's search function to locate music by song, album, or artist, scrolling quickly and easily through your library with the handy touch pad while viewing your playlists and song selections on the Zen Touch's 160 x 104 blue EL (electroluminescent) backlit LCD. You can create and customize your playlists on-the-fly, or listen in random order at the touch of a top-panel button.

The unit's 4-band custom equalizer and preset EQ curves help you tailor the sound to your preference or environment. If you're delving into the world of digital music for the first time, supplied Creative Mediasource software readily converts your CDs to MP3s or WMAs, while Creative's AudioSync seamlessly updates the Zen Touch with your latest music on your PC at the touch of a button. Creative Explorer (also included) permits drag-and-drop transfers for data and music files to and from the Zen Touch.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

simply brilliant
My wife bought me this for Christmas- I am very pleased I married her!
In summary:

The 40g version is the same as the 20g, maybe 1 or 2 mm thicker, but even then this is small enough and looks pretty cool. Unlike the iPod I've had no problems with scratches.

The machine sounds superb, better than iPod, and after all you buy these things to listen to music (don't you?), as good as a portable CD player, and through my car stero sounds great, even fed through a casette adaptor.

Unlike some I've had no problems with the software and no crashes of the unit except when trying to load tracks when the battery was low. It's all very easy to use. The only glitch is that it will occassionally go into "random" mode- this may be me being clumsy and catching the random button before I lock the unit. No matter, menus are easy to navigate back to where you want to be.

The battery life (a big reason for buying this over iPod) is excellent and as good as claimed. No problems there at all.

The random button is a great feature- you can choose random on the whole library, on specific genres or on individual artists or just an album. This is a fun way of rediscovering your collection although I never put it on the classical genre- hearing just one aria or a single movement makes no sense to me but for jazz and pop it's great.

The built in EQ settings are extremely useful although I tend to use the custom setting, especially for use in the car, the main time I use the machine, and I can get the sound just about perfect.

I've also played it through PC speakers and the Sony SRS T-70 portable active speaker system, again it sounds great (quite impressive speakers incidentally) when I've been away.

Only gripe is the touch sensitive pad for navigation is way to sensitive and behaves erratically when battery power is low- the rest of the time it's fine and works well.

Capacity is huge, enough even for a musophile like me. I've got >4000 tracks on and used well under half the memory.

For years Apple have been seen mainly as secondary to Microsoft, and have attracted customers on the back of their "alternative" slightly off-the-wall image (as well as producing excellent machines and software). The boot is on the other foot now that the iPod is seen as the mainstream mp3-type player, particularly when the competition is better than their own product.

As Australian TV ads are wont to say: Buy this. It's brilliant.

Creative Zen vs Apple iPod - The battle is finally over!
Firstly, hats off to Amazon for making shopping online a breeze.

I have been deliberating for ages about which MP3 player to buy, to make my decision harder, there seemed to be an ongoing battle between ipod and Zen. After searching many forums and reading LOADS of discussions, I was even more confused!

But I can now confirm that (in my humble opinion) the Creative Zen 40GB knocks spots off the iPod; and here's why:

Firstly, and foremost, the battery life is Amazing - I have listened to my Zen for 3-4 hours a day for over 6 DAYS without a charge!

Next, the capacity - 16,000 plus tunes in the palm of your hand I have converted my CDs into WMA format (64 kbs) and I have managed to store over a quarter of my CD collection on the Zen (some 65 CDs!) and the Zen isn't even bothered! I checked remaining space and its still empty!

I could go on for ever here giving you more and more examples, but then I don't want to confuse anyone who is in the same position I was in!

So in a nutshell, You get excellent battery life, store 16,000 songs, still have a MP3 player that looks 'cool' and for £'s less than the iPod - I really recommend this MP3 player and after looking and listening to my friends iPod - I know I made the right choice.

You will not be disappointed.

Initial feedback...very good!
So far, so good - the 40GB Zen Touch has done everything I've expected from it and more:

- Long battery life
- Great sound quality (especially when played through a decent Hi-Fi)
- Great disk space
- Easy to use
- Small

One slight grumble is the software provided - it's not as simple to use as hoped... I also own a Zen Micro (main reason for moving up to this device) and synching that is a piece of cake - just let XP do it's thing... The Zen Touch software isn't half as user friendly.

Having said that, I'm getting to grips with it and starting to love it.

Final point - if you're blessed with a large CD collection, random play reaquaints you with some great lost tunes. Enjoy!