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The Creative Zen X-Fi, what an amazing little player. The Zen X-Fi has nice features such as FM radio, voice recording, SD card expandability, an external speaker, and premium earphones. The X-Fi also has wireless chat, but this needs to be improved with future updates as it is clumsy and not very intuitive. The interface itself is VERY intuitive. You can pick up the player and pretty much know how to use it!

Sound quality wise, the X-Fi sounds GREAT. And this is just with the earphones, not with the X-Fi feature turned on. In fact, I felt that the X-Fi actually muffled the sound a bit--it did not improve sound quality in my opinion. The $60 noise-isolating EP-830 earphones are sufficient for one of the best sounding MP3 players out of the box, way better audio quality than a typical iPod's.

Design wise, I thought this was a nice little improvement over last year's original Creative Zen. Creative Labs made the player less toy-like with the metallic paint on the back and the "chrome" surrounding the player. The only thing that bothered me was the nine main buttons--you only need four of them to navigate the player! The corner buttons are only there to help you move diagonally when you are typing using the chat function or for quicker scrolling down your music library. The player is about 1 mm thicker than the original Zen, which had the thickness of a CD case. Still pretty thin and light, though.

The screen itself is the most impressive thing on the player. IT HAS 16.7 MILLION COLORS! The Nano, for comparison, has 262,000. Pictures come out clean and crisp. Videos are bright and colorful.

So how do you get everything into the player? Keep in mind that the software that comes with this player is OPTIONAL. For music and pictures, you can just drag and drop files into the player. I use Windows Media Player 11, and it gives me no troubles. For video, you will probably need to download Creative's Video Converter, which will convert pretty much any video file into a MP4 file that is compatible with the player. I converted a few videos, and I liked how the videos had decent quality and only used up a little space. One 20 minute episode took around a few hundred megabytes.

Now for the cons. First off, as with the previous Zen, the new X-Fi still does not have SD card integration. This means that if you were to purchase, say, an 8GB SD card (which I did,) you would only be able to access the files you put into the memory stick from a specified "Memory Card" section--it does not integrate into your player's pre-existing library. But I guess that if you aren't big on expanding memory, then this should not be a problem. Another drawback is the online chat function. I have not yet tried this out extensively, but chatting seems rather clumsy. The keypad is arranged similarly to a phone's, but instead of designating each of the NINE buttons to three or four letters, the buttons act as a directional pad for you to navigate across and diagonally along the keypad on the screen.

So to sum it up, despite some minor setbacks, the X-Fi's great price, awesome design, and plethora of extra features sealed the deal for me. In this day and age, the iPod has a lot more legit competitors who seem to improve every year. Creative Labs has come a long way with their MP3 players, and I feel that this one is a true alternative that will do its job and save you money. Hope this review helped! If you need to see some specs or technical stuff about the player, check out Creative Lab's website for more info!

UPDATE: I transferred some videos into my 8gb SD card (simple drag and drop,) and I have to say that playing files from the "Memory Card" section exceeded my initial expectations. Contrary to what some people have said about video playback, you CAN pause, fast forward, and rewind the videos in the SD card. I recommend purchasing an SD card primarily as extra memory for all your videos. My 16gb X-Fi now has 24gb of memory, all for about an additional $20!

I am a big fan of Creative Lab products and the customer support I've received in the past from them. My requirements from an MP3 player are pretty simple, I want my music to sound good, I want to be able to listen to audio books, and if I can watch a movie on it I want the movie to look good. You'd think every MP3 player would be able to do at least two out of three. I find the sound quality in Creative products to be exceptional, even the modest Zen stone with its very limited features has great sound quality. The x-fi series goes a step beyond. Crisp and pristine high range, subtle and pure mid range, and faithful, clear bass, even without customizing the EQ, the presets play exactly as you'd expect from your higher end home theatre.
I agree with the reviewer who didn't like the software, but I don't really like the software with any MP3 player. As much as I have respect for Apple as a company and have rooted for them since the late eighties and groaned when they've sunk money into a product that tanked (like their early PDA) I really personally don't like the iPod and in a large part because of the proprietary software, and though I appreciate that unlike their ill received PDA the iPod is priced to make a profit, I think it's too expensive at each price point. In that respect I am willing to suffer through the clumsy software with Creative Control center, clumsier than the media center that came with the other Zen I have. The video converter, however, is excellent, intuitive and quick.

In this price range I have yet to hear any other mp3 compare favorably to the faithful sound reproduction or exceed the quality of the video. I worked for the doomed Circuit City for eight years, was fired for being a good salesman (the first time they got rid of commissioned sales they fired their top twenty five percent for making too much money) and have had the opportunity to test drive a great number of MP3's, prior to 2002, then worked for Dell for a while, again with the opportunity to test drive mp3 players, and have owned several. I cannot stress this enough, for the money, the features, the sound quality, compatibility, limited proprietary issues this is the best product on the market imho.

I realize this review is all personal, but that's the point for these reviews. If you're interested in tech specs go to creative's web site. I find all the specs in the world don't compare to a test drive. Ohm impedance for instance never looks like a good stat on an MP3. My opinion is that the x-fi series is incredibly faithful in sound reproduction and for the consumer is a great value.

I just got the 32 GB version of the X-Fi to replace my previous Creative Zen Vision M 60 GB which died after a year and a half of hard and very satisfying use. The X-Fi is a gem: small, sturdy, fast and feature rich. I love the sound of the X-Fi Crystalizer and Expand sound quality enhancements and the small speaker is surprizingly good though I usually listen through the great ear buds or a JBL On Tour portable speaker (which I also highly recommend). I was able to quickly reconstitute all my music and audio books from backups I had made. The flash memory seems somewhat faster to load than hard drive models. The screen is nice and bright if you set it high brightness, the radio works very well with good reception when the ear buds are installed (they are used as antennas), and it has the built in microphone record feature which I have been using to capture my mothers life story in instalments in her own words. Since I always have my MP3 player on me, I always have a recorder and am ready when she is in the mood to talk. Creative seems to be able to improve their players again and again and I must say I am delighted with this model. I hope it eventually comes out in a 60 Gb or 160 Gb version, but for now I don't know why anyone would by an IPOD when they could get this Creative.