Creative Zen Vision M
And now a pretty detailed review.
This thing is awesome. I picked mine up at Buy.com if you are looking for one. If you’re too lazy to read the above review then I’ll summarize my experience so far.
CREATIVE ZEN VISION M ROCKS!
Interface and Ease of Use:
The iPod has a really cool scroll wheel that most people love. It is very cool and easy to use. My Zen (aka Dave) has a touch pad thingy in the center of the player. It allows you to scroll up and down and is also “tap” sensitive. Rawr that’s hawt! You can adjust the sensitivity on it too. Too bad you can’t adjust the sensitivity of women or men that act like women. There are also navigation buttons to the left and right of the touchie pad. They work great. They just do. Nuff said.
Music:
Creative Zen plays music just as well as any other player out there. (iPod) It will play .wav, .mp3 and .wma files so you have a wide varitey of choices. There are a few ways of placing music on the player. You can use the good ole “Windows Explorer”. Pretty simple drag and drop. This is good for files you already have *cough downloaded cough* on your computer. If you have a CD you want ripped to the Zen, you just open Widows Media Player 10 (wmp10) and choose the “Rip” tab. You can choose the quality of the rip (turns in to MP3 files even) and it will show you the size the CD will take up. When you are finished ripping that CD goodness, you then click on Sync tab. Guess what that does? I’ve found this way easier and faster myself. I’m sure there’s another way, but I’m to lazy to test anymore. Why mess with something that works oh so well? WMP10 will automatically download the track info and album cover to display while a song is playing. This is MUCH better than having to add them yourself. However, you do have that option if you want. Some people are communists about letting WMP10 download stuff on their PC. You are probably the type that puts A1 sauce on your steak! Freaking Commie! This thing is great for music. Unlike some players, you can listen to music while you go back to the main menu screen and mess with other stuff. Very nice Creative.
Video: (Because that’s the whole reason for having this over just some plain jane music player)
What can it play? How about MPEG-1/2/4, DivX 4/5, XviD5, WMV9. Oh yeah baby! (What can the iPod video play? How about MPEG-4, .mov and .m4v.) The screen is very clear. It comes with a plastic covering over the screen that I’ve yet to remove because I’m afraid to scratch the screen. I’ll keep it on until I can get something better. The clarity of the video is amazing. It comes with a video converter that will size and convert almost every video you own to the standards of the player. Easy. Portable Porn… err… never mind that.
ETC
It does so much more. It has a microphone feature. (Good for lectures and spur of the moment songs you have created) It has built in FM Radio. If you keep the firmware that comes with the Zen, you’ll be able to record radio broadcasts. I discovered that with the newer firmware, they removed the ability to record FM radio. Damn you RIAA! There’s a special place in hell for each of you bastards! Image/Picture viewer. This is a cool way to carry images around to show friends. The screen is large enough to make it worthwhile to use. There are other things I just can’t think about right now.
Conclusion
My Zen:Vision M is a wonderful thing. I have had this review on hold forever so I thought I would post it now. I know IPod is more popular, but I think you get more bang for your buck with this bad boy. If you have the cash, I’d seriously look into it.
Pros:
30 Gigs is a LOT of space for music, movies and pictures
FM, Video, Picture, Music and storage of files (like USB Flash drive)
Volume level is more than you’d ever need
Cons:
On the heavy side. If you want something to work out with, you may want something lighter.
FM reception is hit and miss. It uses your headphones as an antenna.
Interface is different than IPod which can be confusing at first.
Oh, and I named my player Dav. =)
KK