Creative Zen Vision:M
For my birthday, I bought myself a Creative Zen Vision:M (30gb) , a mp3 player – although these days its cooler to call them DAP’s (Digital Audio Player), since they do more than just mp3′s.
This thing is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPod, so there are some comparison’s to be made.
Looks/Feel
It looks like an iPod. At least, the white version does, which is sadly, the version I have (I wanted green :().
So, just like an iPod, it looks nice. The front is half screen, half controls, the back is a magnesium shell, which is fairly different from the ipods polished metal (aka, finger print magnet)
Its a little heavier and bulkier than an iPod, but it still fits comfortably in my pocket along side my mobile phone.
The controls….the controls take awhile to get used to. They’re ‘okay’, but the iPod’s click wheel probably wins out here.
The middle strip is touch sensative (and acts as ‘up, down & confirm’), while clicking to its sides will give you next/previous
Audio
Audio on the ZVM is the best I’ve heard from a DAP, but my exposure has been fairly limited.
My sisters iPod Mini (1st gen) had very very poor audio quality with a fair bit of distortion if turning the volume up above 40%!
Quality is great, customisable EQ is cool, but the included earbuds are junk. I’ve bought some Koss KSC-75′s (‘clip on’ headphones) and they match it well.
I’ve also hooked them up to my Z-5400′s, and my Sennheiser HD 497′s – the quality was still pretty darn good for those speakers/headphones.
Video
Again, like the latest iPod’s, the Zen plays video.
I never thought I’d be a person who’d watch video on such a small screen, but the Zen has convinced me otherwise.
I’m told the screen is brighter and faster than the iPod’s, but I don’t really know. The screen is very colourful (enough to watch, say…Transformers), and is an okay size if you’re on the train and holding it in your hand.
XVid/DivX are supported, but its not a “DivX Certified” device, so all files won’t (like, say, the Transformers Movie). Key is to make sure its stereo (or mono) MP3 audio, with XVid or DivX specific video codecs.
WMP10/11 will transcode it for you (if it detects an incompatilibity), but that may take awhile.
Functionality
The best thing about the really crappy mp3 players from ebay is that they all use the internal filestructure (sometimes enhanced with id3 metadata) to sort your mp3′s, meaning you can just drag and drop because they are “mass storage devices”.
Just like the iPod, you can’t do this with the Zen – not exactly anyway.
The ZVM uses the “Media Transport Protocol“, which is introduced in Windows Media Player 10 (or 11) for Windows XP (and is natively supported in Windows Vista, since WMP11 is installed. Hrm, I wonder if MTP works under the Vista ‘N’ – European versions without WMP).
This means you can sync your WMP10/11 libraries straight to your Zen. Which would be fantastic, if I didn’t use a decent audio player like WinAMP (there are plugins for WinAMP, which ship will the latest versions of WinAMP, that will sync playlists/libraries to the ZVM). Alternatively, MTP sets up a ‘psuedo’ drive in Windows Explorer where you can just drag & drop music and video onto your Zen
(two views of how a MTP device in Vista looks)
For those using Linux or Mac OS X, there are MTP implementations, but I’m not sure I’d count on it to work the greatest.
The ZVM also has a “Removable Disk” mode, where you can partition your ZVM into 4, 8 or 16gb. Files dumped on here can be accessed by any OS that can read FAT32 (so you’ll treat your ZVM as a large USB flash stick, I guess), but sadly, files on that portion cannot be accessed from your ZVM.
Conclusion
Personally, I find this a great player, it does everything I want, has great quality, plenty of storage, and the battery life is pretty damn good.
There are a few quirks – none of which are deal breakers – but I still love it.
Between this and an iPod? I’d probably choose things because I’m a little anti-mac. If you use/like iTunes, this probably isn’t the player for you. If you value FM Radio, maybe it is time to switch to a new Media Player.
I bought mine for $350, but the ‘real’ price is $350 + $70 for a decent pair of headphones.
Hey I just ordered my creative zen vision m on Thrusday,July 5th. It comes in about 2 more days. I ordered it at the wal-mart websiter for only $200.
I was glad I found it at a cheap price. I love all of the features thats on the Zen. The only thing I’m sacred about is how the music and videos load onto the player. Oh, well I will figure it out soon enough.