Creative Zen Vision:M Reviewed
By David Walker |
December 19th, 2005
(2) Comments
Ian Chiu, Managing Editor at Everything USB, offers up his review of the recently announced, and available for pre-order Creative Zen Vision:M. Overall, it seems that Ian, though unenthusiastic about the controls, really liked the Zen Vision:M. How does it compare to the new video-capable iPod? Follow the link for side-by-side shots of the arch-enemies in color-screen combat.
Although the Zen was considerably bulkier than the new iPod, it appears that bulk is not without its merits. Whereas the new iPod’s battery dies after about 1.5 to 2 hours of video playback, the Zen hangs in for twice the amount of time – coming in at just around 4 hours of video playback. The same battery will give you about 12 hours of audio playback with moderate LCD usage. When it comes to file format support, the Vision:M has the iPod beat hands down. In short, if your video files are encoded in DivX or Xvid and don’t exceed 720×576 resolution, you don’t need to worry about re-encoding them. Creative also threw in support for MPEG-1/2/4, WMV9 and Motion-JPEG, although WMV support appears to be somewhat buggy with the shipped firmware.
Audio support, like other recent Creative offerings, includes MP3 and WMA files with PlaysForSure support for services like Napster or Rhapsody. The Zen Vision:M also sports an FM tuner that can records broadcasts, and a built-in microphone. Recording quality is ok at best, so look elsewhere if you’re planning on recording anything worth keeping. Overall, it appears that Creative has created a player that more than gives the new iPod a run for the money.
Filed in: Portable Media Players
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David Walker