Creative Zen 4GB
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Navigation System
You may have noticed from the previous page that the user interface looks somewhat different from Creative's previous DAPs. The navigation system itself still works the same. However, Creative jazzed the user interface with some eye candy, so you get the familiar navigation style, but with a nicer, modern look. The following video showcases the navigation system, and was provided by Creative.
Playing music with album cover art.
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Viewing photos on the Zen.
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The zoom feature is rather limited, and only zooms slightly into the photo. We would have preferred to be able to zoom further. Also, you cannot zoom when viewing photos from the SD card.
Overall, we see that this is the result of a mature navigation system, with some eye candy thrown in, that makes the Zen very pleasant to use.
Software
We were surprised to find that the installation CD only came with the Zen software and Audible Manager. There was no MediaSource, Creative's proprietary media manager software, or Windows Media Player.
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Transferring Files
In our past reviews, we have always noted how Creative offers a variety of methods to manage and transfer your media. Taking out MediaSource is definitely an improvement. No one needs another bloated, proprietary media manager, especially with the functionality of the Zen Media Explorer.
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Our preference was to simply use the Zen Media Explorer, which allowed standard Windows Explorer "Copy & Paste" and "Drag & Drop". A dialog will prompt whether to skip files that are not supported, or to transfer them to the proper location, for example, if you paste a directory containing pictures into the "Music" section of the Zen. If you transfer video files that are not supported on the player, you will be prompted to convert them.
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To make it even easier to transfer media to the Zen, Creative added a few commands to the Explorer context menu. You can right-click on folder or files in Explorer, and choose "Copy to Creative ZEN". As with all Creative DAPs, you can also use Windows Media Player to sync with the Zen.
Note that for video files, you can only transfer compatible files of not more than 320 x 240 resolution. In addition, video podcasts meant for Apple iPods also need to be converted.
Transfer Speeds
To measure the transfer speed of the Zen, we chose 201MB of MP3s. Transfer speeds of the Zen V and Zen Vision:M (a hard disk-based DAP) are included for reference.
| Device | Time taken | Average write speed |
| Zen 4GB | 1:03mins | ~3.2MB/s |
| Zen V Plus 2GB | 2:54mins | ~1.2MB/s |
| Zen Vision:M 30GB | 0:33mins | ~6.1MB/s |
Transferring a large file allows us to measure the actual transfer rate. In this case, we chose a 700MB video file to transfer.
| Device | Time taken | Average write speed |
| Zen 4GB | 2:21mins | ~5.0MB/s |
| Zen Vision:M 30GB | 1:25mins | ~8.2MB/s |
Transfer speed has increased a lot over the Zen V and Zen Stone, Creative's previous flash memory-based DAPs. The overall rates are not as fast as we would like, but are acceptable if you are copying a handful of songs at a time.
Previous DAPs like the Zen V and Zen Vision:M, among others, had a removable disk mode, which allowed partitioning some of the free space to be used as a USB mass storage (UMS) device. Although such an interface was "clunky", it worked, and has been a standard on most of Creative's DAPs since the Zen Micro. In the Zen, this feature back, but with a variation. Instead of partitioning the storage, the removable disk mode works on the SD card that was inserted in the Zen. This means that the Zen works like a SD card reader. In a quick test, we found that the Zen was able to read from our 1GB and 2GB Kingston SD cards at approximately 6MB/s, which is an overall decent speed.