Ipod v's Creative Zen MP£ player

moneysavingyvonne

I'm looking for some advice really.

My mum is wanting an ipod for Xmas so she can listen to it in the car. She would not use it for anything else. Only problem is, her husband has an ipod with ITunes that all his music is on. They have very different taste so sharing the itunes account is not an option.

Mum's eyesight isn't the best, so the bigger the screen the better - was looking at Ipod classic

So i am looking at getting her a Creative ZEN 16GB MP3 Player. Only problem is i am not sure of what these can do? I.e. can they play in the car? Are special cables needed for this? Is this easy to use? i.e. playing the tunes and importing the tunes?

Also, how many albums, roughly does 16GB hold?

Any advice would be great

Thanks

Yvonne

littleemmie

I have a creative zen and it is fantastic, much better than OH's ipod in my opinion. You can use it in the car with an adapter thing (can't think what they are called right now!) which you plug into the headphone socket of the zen and sync it with the car radio.

Putting songs onto the zen is much quicker and easier than itunes as well - it takes a number of different music formats. The screen is very clear and the machine is just overall excellent . Again this is in my opinion though and I'm sure you will get a lot of people telling you Ipods are better!

Bellydancer

I agree with littleemmie - Creative Zen is great. Dixons were trying to talk me into buying an iPod, but I made sure I got advice from different places first. The guy in HMV pointed out how fragile the iPods are, and told me how much more easily they are broken if they get dropped, as opposed to the Zen.

You can play your music through the car speakers either via a little radio transmitter such as littleemmie described, or if your car has a cassette deck you can get an adapter (I got one in Poundland) that attaches to your Zen, and has a cassette shaped end which goes into your cassette deck. Either way works fine. You can also play the music via any radio using the transmitter method - just tune the transmitter and your radio into the same frequency

The Zen feels quite robust, and is very easy to use. The screen is very clear and the sound is excellent, too.

You can also use an SD or SDHC card in the Zen to increase the capacity if required. I only have the 4GB version of the Zen, and have SDHC cards with different styles of music on, so I can keep them separate. Those same SDHC cards can also slot into my netbook, allowing me to play music from them on there, too.

superstylin

Hi Yvonne

If your mum's car has an aux point (some have them on the radio, some have them in the storage space between the passenger seats) then she would just need an aux lead, they're only a few pounds. If not then you would need an fm transmitter which plugs into the mp3 player and the radio tunes into it. they're around £15.

I had a 20gb creative zen sleek that i put about 50 albums on and i used hardly any memory. 16gb will allow you thousands of songs, probably around 3000.

My OH has an iPod and i find the itunes store and the method of file transfer really long winded after using the drag and drop method I had with my Zen.

The only thing that would entice me towards an iPod is the sheer number of compatible ie made for iPod, accessories you can get. But if your mum is only going to use it the car then i suppose accessories aren't important.

famous.last.words

i have a 40gb zen vision w and i absolutely love it. 100% better than an ipod in my opinion. I think Ipods are all about the style, whereas creatives have the substance.

I got mine last xmas and its still as good as new. If your mum needs a big screen, the w vision has a massive screen (its MP4 and the screen is big enough to watch and enjoy films on) For an idea of storage, i have around 100 albums on it, and 8 full films! Your mum will have bags of space with this (and it takes flash cards if for any reason she needs more)

I am biased because this really is my baby, but i love it. Couldnt recommend it enough.

saintscouple

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PJB9000

The zen is good and is cheaper, but it does not sound as good as an ipod. I auditioned a zen, an archos, a sony and an ipod not too long back, with my own headphones (I'm a bit of a hi-fi saddo who always wants the best sound possible), and the ipod won for sound quality hands down imo. I bought it and I am very happy with it.

The hi-fi boffs at What Hi-Fi also rate the ipod as the best MP3 player on the market.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

If the player is going to be used primarily in the car then you aren't going to get the real benefits of the superior sound quality of the ipod in any case, due to background noise such as the car engine, wind noise and general road noise.

So although I don't necessarily agree with those posters who say the zen is a better listen - I do agree that for the purpose you will be using it the zen would be the more sensible buy.

In fact if it's only going to be used for in the car even the zen is a bit extravagent, as you won't get the sonic benefits from it that you would through personal, headphone listening.

One thing you do mention is (I assume) that your mums eyesight isn't (you have put "is" though) the best. If that is the case then an ipod touch might be a better buy, as the screen is a lot bigger than that of the zen and much easier to read from.

finbow

moneysavingyvonne wrote: »

Only problem is, her husband has an ipod with ITunes that all his music is on. They have very different taste so sharing the itunes account is not an option.

If using windows I believe having different user accounts allows you to have a seperate itunes account on the same computer, although not 100%

Although I think the Zen is very good, I wouldn't buy anything but an ipod atm. My last one was virtually indestructable surviving numorous spins in the washing machine and tumble dryer and being stood on, dropped, you name it.

The main reason to get an ipod for me is the huge range of accessories (different cases etc) and docks that go with them. Which is unique to the ipod E.g my dock adaptor in my car radio plays and charges it, my clock radio wakes me up to it and charges it and like wise with my hi-fi system.

I would definately consider the touch if your budget stretches that far like the other poster suggested as the screen is very clear for someone with poor eye sight.