Creative Zen Neeon 5GB Review
Page 5
Installing Software
Like the Zen Micro, the software installation is colourful and user-friendly.
Pop in the CD, and the following screen appears.
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As you can see below, the languages available are only English and Asian languages. A Creative rep told me that there are currently no plans to launch the Zen Neeon outside Asia.
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The Zen Neeon is bundled with Creative's music manager software, MediaSource, and Microsoft Windows Media Player 10.
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And the installation process.
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Transferring Files
The Zen Neeon works like the MuVo2 or other flash-based audio players as a mass storage class device. That is, you just dump your music in the player. Organisation of tracks is up to you. If you have everything put nicely in folders, then that is how your music is organised. This is unlike most other hard-disk-based players like the iPod (and iPod mini), iRiver H10, even Creative's own Zen Micro, which use a centralised music library in their proprietary formats. There are advantages and disadvantages to this.
Being mass storage class means the player can be plugged into any computer (Windows ME, 2000 or XP) and you can not only use it as a removable drive, but can transfer your music to the player so you can listen to it. You do not need any other software installed.
Using a centralised music library means that to transfer music to the player, you must have the necessary software installed, since the software is required to extract track information and add them to the music library. However, because of the centralised music library, starting up the player, and searching for songs would be much faster.
When I filled the Zen Neeon with about 1400 songs, it took slightly more than a minute to start up after unplugging from the computer.
That said, below shows the Zen Neeon Media Explorer method of transferring music.
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Click on "Sync Music between PC and Zen Neeon" and you get the Creative Sync Manager, which is pretty straightforward to use.
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For the Zen Micro, I mentioned in my review that there seemed to be so many ways to transfer music over to the player. This time round, Creative has learnt its lesson. If you use MediaSource to sync music, it will also load the Sync Manager. Luckily, though, you can still use Windows Explorer to copy music over, because the Sync Manager does not recognise Unicode file names. Considering that the Zen Neeon is catered especially for the Asian market, this is a huge problem. Strangely, too, files with Unicode file names display as Chinese in the Zen Neeon, while those in Big5 or GB displayed gibberish. For music with track info in Big5 or GB, you need to go to the "Settings" in MediaSource and set the language accordingly. This will convert the track info to Unicode. Alternatively, you can use the program which was mentioned in the Zen Micro review, called Convertz.
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Finally, it should be noted that music transferred using Windows Media Player 10 do not show up on the player. Creative has acknowledged this problem and will be addressing this in the next update.
Transfer Speeds
I chose 176MB of songs to transfer. Using the Creative Sync Manager, it took 2 minutes 29 seconds. Although it was a bit slow, I had pretty much expected it from Creative. However, when I used Windows Explorer to copy the same files over, it took a mere 49 seconds. I contacted Creative about this problem and was told that there would be some optimizations done to the software with the next update.
| Device | MB Transferred/Time taken | Average write speed |
| Zen Neeon 5GB (Sync Manager) | 176MB/149secs | ~1.2MB/s |
| Zen Neeon 5GB (Windows Explorer) | 176MB/49secs | ~3.6MB/s |
| m:robe MR-100 5GB | 118MB/35secs | ~3.4MB/s |
| iPod mini 4GB (iTunes) | 100MB/19secs | ~5.2MB/s |
| Zen Micro 5GB | 176MB/63secs | ~2.8MB/s |
Compared with the other players, the iPod mini is still unbeaten, at ~5.2MB/s. However the Zen Neeon comes in second at ~3.6MB/s, close to the m:robe MR-100, and definitely an improvement over the Zen Micro.
Benchmarks
The following graph and table show the results of the benchmarks done using SimpliSoftware's HD Tach.
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The red and maroon lines are the Zen Neeon. On the left, in blue, is the iPod Mini. On the right is the m:robe MR-100. I encountered yet another anomaly. As you can see, the read speed seems to be limited to 3.2MB/s, while the write speed shows a normal graph. I contacted Creative about this and was told that this was "due to the design methodology used in a relatively simpler architecture as compared with our previous models".
That aside, you can see that the Zen Neeon probably uses the same microdrive as the m:robe MR-100, as the graphs are almost similar. While the Zen Neeon beats the iPod mini in terms of benchmark, the iPod mini still transfers music faster.