The Creative Neeon was my first’real’ MP3 player after some unsuccessful stints with cheap Chinese crapthings like Mitashi. I have the 6 GB version which I bought in the December of 2006, and it’s been my faithful companion since. Of course, newer and better players have entered the market since, and hence this product is slightly outdated. I’m not even sure if you get it anymore, since Creative have come up with better players since.
The 6 GB version cost me 8200 back then, and at that time it was a good buy. These days, there are better players available. For sheer space, there’s the Apple iPod, for sound quality there’s the Cowon, and for a bit of everything, there’s Creative themselves who have some sexy MP3 players like the Zen and the X-Fi for that price range.
The sound quality is quite decent, I’ve listened to everything from underground Hindi(GMD!) to heavy metal on it. The bundled headphones are best done away with, I’ve used the Neeon extensively with the Sony ADR110 and my new Sennheiser PX100s, which brings the sound to life, totally. I even connect the player to my Logitech 2.1 speakers, but you get the feeling that the li’l player was not meant to drive a big pair of speakers, since you get better sound out of the computer as far as speakers are concerned.
The build is excellent. It’s a little cute thing, and you can drop it as many times as you want, but it will stay put. However, it’s scratch prone and my player has a little dent in the back. However, it doesn’t affect performance in any way. The navigation, however sucks. It’s a pain. You use a little scroll thing on the side of the player to go up and down, and it’s not exactly too easy to operate, it will take a while getting used to. The interface is bad too - does not show the artist name. File transfer speed is quite slow, too.
However, those are faults that you could be willing to live with, for the decent audio quality for the price. Like I said, these days, there are better players available. This review is meant to help people who want to pick up this player second hand, or the few 2 GB versions that are available on eBay for 2000 bucks. If you get the 5/6 GB version for less than 5000, go for it. Over that, there are many more options available, the daddy of the pack being the iPod 30 GB itself, which retails these days for less than 10000.
And this choice these days is probably the only reason why I do not recommend buying this player as of now, other than that, I love my little player!