Creative Zen Vision:M (30GB)

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Features
A portable video player is only as useful as the number of video codecs it supports, and clearly, the Vision:M wants to see itself indispensable by including support for all the major codecs currently in the market. What this means is that most of your digitized video content are immediately playable on the unit. However, do take care when encoding your video; we made an initial mistake of encoding a DivX video with an incompatible audio codec (AAC), rendering The Incredibles speechless.

	Five colors. Click for larger image

Like any standard Creative MP3 player, the Vision:M is definitely not short on features. There's FM radio, voice/FM recording, picture viewing and the option to sync Microsoft Outlook data (one way only) as well as output video to an external display. With an extensive list of options, Creative tries to keep user navigation easy by introducing the My Shortcut button. Essentially, this allows the user to jump to a selected menu item from anywhere within the player. We like the fact that we can also modify the associated menu item at any time, though this can be improved by tying the button to a user-defined list rather than just one item.

Similarly, the main menu is also fully customizable. We love being able to add or remove options as we like it. Audiophiles to a fault, we placed music-related items like "rarely heard", "all tracks", "random play all" and "FM radio" on top of the main menu. This feature plays well with users who have a control fetish though it's probably something that we would tweak only once in while.

	The bothersome sync adaptor. Click for larger image

The right click button makes a lot of sense for seasoned Windows users. Contextual sub-menus help to avoid the hassle of trudging back to the main menu just to alter a setting. Creative does well in covering almost all the bases to such an extent that a right click in picture mode will generate a 10-option sub-menu. Yet having said that, Creative did miss a few, such as failing to include the equalizer settings in the music playback submenu.

The inclusion of keyword search on the Vision:M is probably the first we have ever seen on an MP3 player. By typing out the keyword "angel" on the virtual keyboard, the Vision:M found Five For Fighting's Angels and Girlfriends from a 5GB selection of MP3 files. However, we note that the search extends to only within the confines of the menu you are at. For example, if we type in "Five" in the All Tracks menu, the search will be conducted only by song titles and not artist names. Thus the search will not be successful.

	Technicolor glory. Click for larger image

This can be both a blessing and a curse and will depend on the user's needs. Frankly, we remain impressed although it would have been a nice extra if we could alter our Outlook entries with the keyboard, too.

Unlike the iPod which has a password protection feature to prevent unauthorized access, the Vision:M's security precautions extend to only video content. After enabling the four-digit password, user-selected video folders will become invisible till the user enters the proper password again.

For audio tweakers, the Vision:M has eight preset equalizers, a user-defined five-band equalizer plus a bass boost function.

Pictures-wise, Creative's latest offering allows the user to rate pictures and create his own photo playlist by choosing to see only images accorded a certain rating. The Vision:M also has three different viewing modes (thumbnail, list, detail) as well as a zoom view, though the degree of magnification cannot be altered. Listening to music while browsing the photo album is also possible on the unit.

	The M and me. Click for larger image

The iPod allows for a very fast scroll rate when viewing by thumbnails since thumbnail copies of the actual picture are also created during the transfer procedure. There is a small tradeoff for speed as extra hard drive space is used to store the thumbnails. The Zen Vision:M is admittedly a little slower since thumbnails are generated within the player itself, but memory-wise, it's more space-saving.

The Creative MediaSource content manager software is bundled together with an enhanced Windows Explorer interface, with the former for new users who prefer the convenience of an all-in-one program. Though if you are already using Windows Media Player 10, the Vision:M works just as well as the MediaSource software. In a sense, there is no true drag-and-drop functionality for video. You will have to transfer it via any of the three aforementioned avenues. We tried to do the sneaky through Windows' My Computer interface, but both the player and laptop refused to comply.

What's lacking is a ripping software to digitize our DVDs, though on the point of legality, it's doubtful that this shortcoming will be addressed anytime soon. Creative's supplied software does try to help by converting incompatible video formats straight into WMV and there's an option to auto transfer the new video into the Vision:M after conversion. We clocked a time of 32 minutes when we converted a video with a duration of 24 minutes 43 seconds into WMV format.

	You need this to do TV. Click for larger image

We take issue with the Vision:M in terms of connectivity. Unlike the old Zens, the mini USB port and the AC jack are no longer built into the player. Instead, Creative uses a new propriety port that seems to be a clone of the iPod's. An attempt to spark its own cottage industry in Zen accessories perhaps? The task of attaching an external sync adapter every time there is a need to charge the unit or connect it to a computer is an unnecessary inconvenience we would rather do without; not to mention the fact that it's easy to lose.

Another bugaboo with the Zen series of players is that to use the unit as an external hard drive is rather tiresome; first the feature has to be enabled and the capacity set at anything from 512MB to 16GB. That's putting an unnecessary cap and may prove exasperating when you are suddenly in need of 30GB of free hard drive space.

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