Creative Zen Vision W (30GB)

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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.

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