Zen Nano Plus

Kim and I have been wanting to get small Digital Audio Players (DAPs) for a while now, mainly to listen to while running.  Kim has been running with a CD player which isn’t fun, and I’ve been running with nothing; and I’m so out of shape that I want to quit with every step, so I really wanted something to listen to, so I’d have something to focus on besides how much I want to give up.

After researching the myriad different brands and models available, I settled on the Creative Zen Nano Plus.  It’s got a gig of space, an FM tuner, a recordable line-input, and folder-based navigation.  I got it at Best Buy for $110 two weeks ago, but the next week Wal-Mart and Circuit City had it on sale for $70, so I took it back and we both got one at Circuit City.

My only significant complaints about it are that I wish the screen were bigger (or just that they’d use more than 1 line of it for displaying the song title); I wish the song title was taken from the filename rather than from the ID3 tag (since it uses folder-based navigation after all); and the line-input is one of those stupid 3/32-inch jacks instead of a standard 1/8-inch jack (but I’ll probably rarely use that so it’s just kind of an annoyance).

The included earbuds are white, which apparently makes you cooler since they’re the same color as iPod earbuds; but it also makes you more of a target for thieves, since the white earbuds are a sign that the mark is carrying an expensive iPod.  But where I live, the bulls are more of a problem than the thieves, so whatever.  Anyway as with all earbuds, I can’t seem to use them without them either falling out or really hurting my ears, so I picked up a pair of those headphones that slip over your ears and that position the speaker sideways into your ear.  They work much better and don’t hurt.

The MP3 player that I really wanted was the MobiBLU Cube, but it has two issues that I can’t tolerate: a 2-second gap between tracks, and a failure to sort songs alphabetically within folders except for the first 6 characters of the filename -- in other words your albums only play in jumbled order.  MobiBLU is releasing the Cube 2 at the end of June, so depending on price and whether these issues are fixed maybe I’ll check one out.