Creative Zen Vision W (30GB)

Look around. There're plenty of people who seem to be perfectly content with watching videos on their too-tiny screens. Mobile phones and miniature flash-based MP3 players are the general causes of squinty eyes. But take a look at dedicated video players like the monstrous Archos AV700 with the 7-inch screen and things assume a new perspective.Design
Yet, with large screens, size would naturally weigh in. When the Zen Vision first burst onto the scene, there were several rave reviews with some thinking it was a good compromise between screen real estate and weight.

	The Zen Vision W: It's barely pocketable.

As it's an upgrade over the first Vision, it's natural to be drawn into making comparisons. At 134 x 75 x 22mm and 276g, the Vision W is decidedly clunkier than the older Vision (74.4 x 124.2 x 20.1mm and 232g). Though the Vision W feels more solid, it cannot be easily held in one hand while viewing videos. The lighter Zen Vision by virtue of its shorter length can be comfortably held and controlled using the right hand.

But the 4.3-inch screen of the Vision W pips the Vision by a long mile. It does not suffer from the poor viewing angle of the Vision and colors are undoubtedly richer (more in the Performance section). We like the fact that Creative has maximized the real estate on the player's front, leaving no awkward empty spaces as in the Zen Vision.

Physical controls on the Vision W differ little from the Vision. The five-way control pad and the Back, contextual menu and playback buttons are located on the right of the screen. The only difference is the placement of the power switch and the volume buttons; they have traded places on the Vision W. Button tactile feedback on the Vision W is excellent.

	Catching speed is a doozy.

A spring-loaded door protects the CompactFlash slot on the left side of the unit, while a rubberized tab hides the power and A/V-out ports on the right side. At the rear, there's a large battery that pulls double duty as the Zen's rear backing. But for something this size, there's no kickstand to prop up the Vision W at a decent viewing angle on the desk; that's something Archos remembers to include.

The aforementioned CompactFlash Type I/II slot would make the Vision W a good companion for shutterbugs. Most dSLRs these days still use CompactFlash as a storage media and, with its largish screen and memory, the Vision W will ensure there's always plenty of storage left.

The graphics user interface (GUI) is classic Zen fare. Menu items are well-organized and also customizable. Menu items can be hidden and, depending on your preferences, some sub-menu items can be placed directly on the main menu, possibly making it one of the more intuitive GUIs for most users since it would suit their purposes.Features
Out of the box, the Vision W can play popular video formats right away without the need to convert (WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 SP, MJPEG and certain DivX/XviD files). But expect technical hiccups sometimes when a perfectly encoded DivX file is oddly not supported. Overall, it spells good news for non-geeks who are clueless about converting their own videos.

	CF to hard drive: It's a space saver.

There's also radio, voice recording, eight sound equalizer presets including a five-band custom preset and a CompactFlash slot. While it's understandably convenient being able to output video to a TV via the bundled A/V cable, it's a pity the new Zen Vision W is still unable to record from the telly.

The DJ feature acts as a preset playlist, serving up Album of the Day, Random Play All, Most Popular (based on your ratings), Yet to be Rated and Rarely Heard. We particularly like the Smart Volume option, which keeps volume levels consistent across all music tracks.

The same virtual keyboard from the Zen Vision:M has been ported over to the Vision W. And it looks a lot better on a wider screen. But without the touchscroll, typing out words is necessarily laborious. Like the Vision:M, keyword search has been enabled, but it's restricted to one parameter, i.e. song, artist or album. It would have been pretty awesome if we could search across the entire content on the player.

If you use Outlook, data such as contacts, appointments and tasks can be synced with the Zen, though it's strictly one way. Outlook content on the Vision W is read-only and cannot be edited on-the-go. Performance
FM autoscan on the Zen Vision W was pretty decent from our test location in the central business district. It missed only two major radio stations.

Using 240MB worth of MP3 files on looped playback, the Vision W easily surpassed its rated 13 hours of battery life with 18 hours 28 minutes of performance. We also tested video playback with an XviD file (640 x 352-pixel resolution). At 5 hours 6 minutes, the Vision W again beat its own rated video playback time of 4.5 hours.

Audio fidelity was rather good when we auditioned it with the Creative Zen Aurvana. Bass was tight with good presence when we sampled Massive Attack's Angel. We found the mids and highs on Diana Krall's You Are Getting to be a Habit with Me to be relatively accurate.

Too bad Creative did not see fit to extend the same audio finesse to the mono speaker on the Vision W. Dump stereo imaging out the window. We found the speaker unable to handle bassy tracks at high volumes without breaking.

Video-wise, the Vision W impressed greatly with its large screen. Colors were saturated compared with the older Zen Vision's washed-out display. We also liked the broader viewing angle, but noticed that the Zen Vision still beat the Vision W when it came to sharpness, though it's apparent only when reading subtitles. We detected some banding when the Vision was put through some fast-moving scenes.