Music players are getting smaller, and while none are as thin as Apple’s iPod nano, none in our test are as small overall as the Zen V.

Volume levels were good with little clipping at high volumes. There is a record function, using the built-in microphone or the line-in socket on the top of the device. Quality from the microphone was not great, but it’s more than enough for recording a lecture, for instance.

The supplied Creative earbud headphones are of reasonable quality, but seeing as Creative makes several good models of earphones, we were surprised that a better quality pair was not included with the Zen V.

The Zen is only the size of a large biscuit, but it packs in 4GB of memory. The display is medium sized and clear, with bright colours that make it easy to see what’s going on. The colour schemes can be changed using the onscreen menus.

It uses the same playlist, artist, album and song navigation as the other players, but the joystick in the middle is used to physically navigate through the menus. It’s possible to add tunes to a playlist while others are being played, and there’s a clever DJ section in the menus which can randomly select tracks, play tracks that haven’t been heard recently, and help find music in a number of other ways.

The player can charge using the USB connection to a PC. A cloth carry case is supplied in the box. There’s no FM radio, but it does come with an organiser (calendar and to-do list) and the ability to view pictures (but not video).

The screen’s quality was not great, but it’s satisfactory for this kind of image viewing. Music can be transferred to the player using the Windows Media Player or the drag-and-drop feature of Windows. This means you don't have to install the supplied software, although this does make things easier.

This article is part of a group test of portable music players.
See also:
Portable music players
Apple iPod nano
Iriver U10
MSI P640
Sandisk Sansa e260
Sony NW-A1200
A table of features can be read via our pdf download above.