Story: Hard disk-based MP3 players

Posted by: Marc Roberts (Tuesday 16 March 2004, 9:08 PM)

Well I did a lot of surfing around on the web and concluded that the best option if you wanted lots of space and sound quality for a reasonable price was the Creative Zen Xtra with 60Gb of size for £288 incl delivery from Dabs its not bad considering they dont make i-pods that big and imagine the cost if they did.

The plus points of the Zen is that you can replace the hard drive yourself and also the battery, the two most fragile parts of any hard disk based mp3 player so far as i can work out. The only problem with replacing the hard drive is it does invalidate your warranty.

The only problem I have had so far is that the EU firmware restricts the output volume so much that even on a stomping amp its really quiet. This can be resolved by reloading the OS and flashing the firmware with the US version, so it isnt the end of the world.

Overall I am 90% happy with the product. A good improvement would be it having the option of putting every artist in its own directory and being able to browse the tunes that way. Handy if you have 30Gb of tunes with bad meta information ;)