Creative ZEN Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player (Black)
by Creative
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List Price: Our Price: $150.00 You Save: $99.99 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Creative ZEN Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player (Black)
Customer Review: So satisfied with my Zen Vision M!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have owned this product for about four months now, so I have had a really good chance to break it in. I love it. Honestly, the only real drawback is that it's kind of bulky. Bulkier than an Ipod and heavier as well. It's cool though, because I have a clip I can use to put on my belt or pocket, or I can actaully just take the clip off and put in my shorts pocket. I also bought the neoprene skin along with car charger and wall charger. The adapter you use to plug into the computer is a little different since it comes with it's own special adapter to do this with. I was having issues with the player for a while when trying to use my Yahoo Music Unlimited to Go subscription. When I would try to download, the computer kept screwing up and freezing. Songs would only download 70 percent of the time which was incredibly annoying. BUT once I did the update for Yahoo Music Engine and updated to the latest firmware on the player by going to the manufacturer website, everything is absolutely pristeen!! I have 3099 songs on it as of today and I cannot get enough of it! I listen in the car mostly and at home as well. I look the look of the player because it does not look like everything else on the market it would seem.
I do not have any videos on it as of yet, but the player comes with some demos installed. I gotta say the display is wonderful. Great color! I never thought I could watch someting on a screen so small and enjoy it, but it's actually kind of cool. Perfect for riding on the bus and listening or watching a video. The sound quality is very good as well. It comes with an equilizer option where you can customize it to your particular liking or set it to the common options of rock, jazz, classical, pop, etc., just like the Ipod. Just remember, if you do the custom EQ option, bass can distort the sound if you do not set it correctly. Sound is different in the car as opposed to a home receiver. I have seen many complaints about it's navigation wheel but I disagree. At first, when you are just a novice on the player, navigating can get frustrating because the button is sensitive and you tend to scroll down and press on the wrong link constantly. Oh, you can change the settings for the button sensitivity by the way. I set mine to low on day 2. Yes, once I was but a student, NOW I AM THE MASTER! Now scrolling is something I can almost do in my sleep. I have playlists, tons of albums, and never a bad moment listening anymore. By the way, creating playlists is another downside on the player. The instructions on how to do this don't make any sense and when I tried to use them, it did not work as I wanted it to. So now, I just create the playlist on the computer in using Yahoo Music Jukebox and it's a lot easier that way. I really like the DJ option as well, since it will just play every song on my player randomly. This is great when you stock you player with nothing but the tracks you love. One remaining annoyance though is that when you download tracks from Yahoo Music Jukebox to the player, they don't stay in the order they were on the album for some reason. You have to go and change them around in the player (which I do using Windows). Would call the manufacturer about that, but once the first sixty days are up, no more free customer service calls. It then becomes, I think, $12.99 per incident. The forum on the website is extensive, but for someone like me, it's a bit opaque and hard to navigate if you don't know exactly how to word what you are looking for.
I have not had any problems with the harddrive freezing or crashing. No hardware problems at all, especially since I did the firmware update. The cool thing is that you go to the site and it can tell you all the available updates for your player and lists them with recommendation factors. Sweet. Battery power seems fine since full charge probably lasts 10 hours or so. Features are many, almost too many to go into every single detail but some are calendar, organizer, most popular song play, rarely heard song play, yet to be rated song play, artist lookup, etc. Probably the coolest feature of the Zen Vision M is the shortcut button. You can set it to go to a popular selection like rating screen, equilizer, whatever. That is pretty damn sweet if you ask me.
So all in all, I definitely think this is a great option vs. the Ipod. Not to mention, the fact that I got the player, the neoprene skin (which absolutely rocks by the way), and the chargers all for less than the cost of a comparable Ipod. AND I still get 50 bucks back in the rebate deal that came with it. Absolutely awesome! After rebate, my entire purchase ended up costing me less than $200 dollars! That's right, I got a 30 GB mp3 player and accessories, both necessary and optional, for less than $200 bucks. I am in the catbird seat with this one. I definitely recommend the Zen Vision M.
Customer Review: Fantastic! As close to perfection as any out there.
Summary: 4 Stars
To start, I LOVE THIS PLAYER! And I'll get into why later. I can't rate it a 5 though, as it's not perfect. But it is as close as anyone has come in the portable media device business.
First, I'll start with the flaws that I've noticed, because I know people come here to look for issues with products. However, I don't feel any of these are deal-killers. First, the player scratches easily (I have the black one and it's only 3 months old and its finish is showing signs of wear...buy a skin to protect it! I've heard that the screens scratch easily, too, but I haven't removed the screen protector that was on it from the factory. I suggest you leave it on. If you remove it, I believe you can buy replacement screen protectors online.
The next issue is with the touchpad. It's VERY SENSITIVE! However, you can adjust the sensitivity in the system menu. I have it on "Low" and I still end up "clicking" when I meant to go up or down. It takes a bit of getting used to and is sometimes frustrating.
My last issue is with their video conversion software. It's great that when sync'ing the player can automatically convert video on-the-fly to a supported format, however, I've found that videos captured on my camera in .mov format, don't convert properly. The video converts and is loaded to the player, however, the file will not playback. I can FF and rewind through it, but it doesn't playback. All other videos and podcasts seem to work fine. I even reconverted the file after updating all my video codecs, but it still doesn't work, so I'm assuming it's a bug in their software.
Oh, there is one more thing: If you used to own a flash memory mp3 player, this one (or any player with a harddrive) will not give you the same battery life. For extended battery-life, make sure to run it in "Locked" mode. If you leave the screen lit, you'll only get about 4-5 hours of playback. Even with the screen lit though, I can get through a day at the office on a full charge.
Other than that, this thing is FANTASTIC! The player integrates amazingly well with the new version of Windows Media Player. I find that I don't use the Creative software for much of anything, except uploading pictures and sync'ing contact info. With this player, you're free to shop for music downloads just about anywhere, unlike the iPod. So far I've used it with Urge, eMusic, and Yahoo! Music without a hitch.
Stores and displays pictures! You can transfer pictures and play slideshows of them which is great for showing off the kids pictures to people. The 2.5" color screen is crisp and pretty bright. The screen brightness can be controlled in the system prefs in percentage increments of 10. I keep mine at 50% to save battery life and it's plenty bright enough. The player will auto-dim after a few seconds as well in order to spare the battery. As mentioned above, though, running in Locked mode yields the longest playback.
Music playback is great, but you'll want to get new headphones, as ear-buds aren't great. I rarely use headphones, so it's not an issue for me. I have portable speakers I use in the office and an FM transmitter for the car (The iRiver AFT100 works great, and I live in the NY metro-area where there's no dead air. It will overpower weak stations, I've had good luck with stations in the upper 80s-low 90s, but I digress.) Music is listed in numerous ways; the various catagories are: Song, Artist, Album, Playlist, Genre, and Recordings (yes, you can do voice-records with the built-in mic and record from the FM radio, too). The player also has Bass Boost, multiple preset EQ settings to choose from, and a feature called Smart Volume, whereby it regularizes the output of your mp3s. Don't you just hate it when one mp3 is 10X louder than the one that just played, and you find yourself stunned by the sudden blast of noise in your ear? Not with this player. While there is still variation from track-to-track, it's relatively minor.
The built-in FM radio is a nice little extra. You can set up to 32 preset stations. Reception is good outdoors, but not great within an office building. It uses the headphones/speaker wire as an antenna. When needed, I can usually get acceptable reception by creatively rigging the wire.
In addition, you can set up a portion of the drive to act as a portable storage device. And, it syncs with Outlook, you can store all of your contact info, appointments, and tasks. Justification for having it in the office. ;)
Anyhow, I hope this review helps you. If you buy one, you won't be disappointed as they're more flexible and cheaper than the comparable 30G iPod. I just don't like being wedded to any one company for anything and the Zen affords me the freedom to load pretty-much whatever I want on it. Happy listening!
Customer Review: Nice, but a bit disappointed
Summary: 4 Stars
I checked every single day on Amazon.com and on Creative's web site to see when this product was available, and when I saw it was out, I bought it right away without any hesitation. I really didn't care about the price. I had done a lot of reading regarding this product and it seemed like a good buy to me.
I received it and was so excited. I still am happy about it. You read about all the features, so I won't even get into it. I really like this device, but I was a bit disappointed because of the following:
1. It scratches very, very easily. I take such good care of it, and still it got a ton of tiny scratches in just about a month's time. This is exactly the reason I didn't get the ipod Video because I read that it scratches easily.
2. The battery life is not as good as advertised. You'll have to put the brightness to the lowest, which is 10%, and just let the music play without changing the songs or using any other features of the player, before you can probably attain the 14 hours or so that they claim you can get out of the player. Every time you operate the player, like touching the scroll or other buttons, the screen becomes a bit brighter and uses some extra energy. In other words, when they say 14 hours, they really mean that you'll have to put the player on 10% brightness (which is not good for viewing pictures), and just leave the songs to play and not touch anything else, otherwise it will be more like 8-10 hours or so of battery life. I took a flight from Paris to New York recently and the flight time was roughly 8 hours long. I had the player on all throughout the flight except for takeoff and landing. I had it at 10% brightness and I did changed songs and operate the player a bit, and right as we were about to land the battery went dead. So you decide.
3. I don't know if it's me, but the earphones just keeps falling out of my ears. Well this is not a major issue, but I just think for a product that's $330, it should come with better earphones.
4. The software that came with it is not the most user-friendly. I just think that they could have made it easier. It came with two different methods, one supposedly for the beginners and one for a more seasoned user, but even the beginners version is kind of complicated to me. The process is just too slow, you have to click on each item you want to put into the player and then click "add"..., so if you have 400 songs and 400 pictures that you want to add to your player, you'll have to do this process 800 times. I really didn't see anything like "select all" or "add the following" or something like that, you just have to do them individually. That sucks. If anyone knows of an easier way let me know!
5. I was not able to get about 30% of my music and video clips into my player because of licencing errors or the file type was not compatible with this player. I thought that quite a number of file types could be used without a problem... I really don't understand this part, all I know is that I just have a lot of songs that I can't even get into my player.
6. They advertised that I can use Yahoo Music Unlimited or Napster with this player... I subscribed to both and found it very difficult to use when I used the "to go" versions from both of these companies. The "to go" is that the music comes directly from these companies sites into the player and you don't have to pay for each songs. I thought it was a cleaver idea. It just didn't work at all using Yahoo To Go, and Napster To Go worked, it's just that each song took well over 10 minutes to be transferred into my player. I called up Napster only to be told that this Creative Zen Vision:M device that I have is not compatible with Napster To Go. Duh, so why did Creative and Amazon say it is?
So I gave the negatives about this player... but to be fair, there are probably twice as many good things about this player which I'm not going to name them all. Some of the good things are: it has a huge capacity for quite a number of songs and pictures, it has voice recorder, it's gorgeous looking, very bright screen when you put it to 100% brightness, FM radio which you can record from and save it on your player, decent size... it's not too big and not too small... it's definitely bigger then the ipod video, but I like the feel of it, once you get used to it, the buttons and scroll is pretty simply to operate, the sound quality is great and there are 25 levels to choose from... and the list goes on.
Overall I gave it a 4. I guess I am disappointed a bit because I had my hopes up way to high and anticipated this player for way too long. Please e-mail me and let me know if you know of any fixes for the negatives I listed. I will really appreciate it.
SilentSound2006@aol.com
Customer Review: i :heart: my zen! ipod can suck it! ;)
Summary: 4 Stars
dang! i had written this HUGE review, submitted it, and somehow, it got lost. ;( this is probably for the best since i've now had the creative zen vision:m (ZVM) for awhile longer and i can write a more objective review.
anywho...
i finally decided i wanted a hd-based mp3 player after having my trusty little rio S10 (512mb) for a few years. of course i was aware of the iPod, but in looking around, i came across the ZVM. i knew all kinds of people who owned iPods, but knew no one who owned a zen. since i'm a bit of a gadget girl, there were some things i needed to know before making my purchase. i grilled an iPod owner and got the answers i needed and then joined a forum and grilled a bunch of ZVM owners. it was quickly apparent that the ZVM was the device for me. i had planned on buying one right after xmas, but my mom surprised me with the blue one on x-mas day!
i've loved the ZVM since day one. it's nice and sturdy and the blue one is a neat color. i'm rare in the fact that i think they look way better than the iPod. the iPod is starting to look kinda dated and the ZVM stole my heart as soon as i saw it. navigation is easy and the screen is so clear and bright.
it's hard to write a review of an mp3 player without comparing it to the iPod. everyone and their brother has an iPod and so many people think there's nothing else out there. well, i'm here to say there ARE other things out there and (gasp!) they're better! i've been so impressed with the feature set of the ZVM and how awesome it's been to use.
a few people have complained about the touch pad, but if you lower the sensitivity, you'll get used to it. it took me about a day and then i was 100% comfortable with it and how it worked. it can be a little sensitive at times, but it's not much different than apple's scrollwheel thingie. just moves up and down instead of in circle. also, the buttons are sturdy and press well. a very solid device all around.
the biggest and really only downside to the ZVM is it's software. it's not just bad, it's really bad. there are a bazillion applications and none of them are bundled together. you'd think creative would integrate all the little programs into one, but they don't. and many times, it's hard figuring out which software to use for what function. iTunes really does have creative beat in this area. however, there are some great alternatives to creative's software: mediamonkey and windows media player 11. however, you'll probably still need to use the creative software for things like transferring images.
how the ZVM is better:
* cheaper (although the price jumps around a bit).
* fm radio and the ability to record it.
* screen is amazing. more saturated and more pixels.
* more selection of colors for the 30GB model (pink, blue, green, black, white).
* works with all music stores, whereas iPod only works with one (iTunes).
how the iPod is better:
* far more accessories for the iPod. there aren't many fun ones for the ZVM.
* iTunes is far and away better software than the junk the ZVM ships with.
pros:
* awesome screen. bright, clear, crisp, saturated.
* sound is great when ripped at 192bps VBR
* feels nice and solid in your hand.
* great battery life.
* the device is beautiful. solid.
cons:
* non-removable battery (same as iPod)
* software! it really is horrible.
* does not ship with wall charger.
* integrated, non-removable battery (same as iPod 30GB).
* included headphones are crap.
advice:
* get an extra dongle. huh huh, i said "dongle". they're only 10 bucks.
* buy the wall charger. it charges at least 2X faster than the sync cable/charger.
* if possible, use the line-out hole instead of the headphone jack for external playback in places like your car. it sounds way better.
* join a forum (anythingbutipod dot com is a great one) - tons of helpful advice to be had.
* if you're unhappy with the software, try mediamonkey, it's great. i've heard windows media player 10 and up work well, too.
* get better earphones. the ones that come with are pretty crappy.
* get a BSE (best skins ever). great protection against scratches and they're cheap. in fact, get two. you'll probably mess the first one up. :)
Customer Review: Zen Vision M is a superior player.
Summary: 5 Stars
I was choosing between the Ipod video or Zen Vision M (ZVM). Frankly, I really didn't care whatsoever about which player I bought - Ipod or ZVM; I just wanted the "better" one (Toshiba Gigabeat S was out of the question due to reliability problems and short battery life).
Now that I have the ZVM, here are the reasons why I bought the ZVM over the Ipod. The ZVM has:
*Longer battery life - ZVM video lasts about 4 hours - which is twice as much as Ipod. As a result, I don't have to worry about the player running out of juice at the end of a movie like with the Ipod video. Also, it's just nicer to have longer battery life.
*Digital camera storage - The ZVM can directly store my photos from my digital camera so that I don't need to bring along a computer to store my photos when I travel - just plug my camera to the ZVM, download photos, then erase my camera's card to take more pictures.
*Hard drive capabilities - The ZVM acts like a hard drive. Just plug to a computer and download what you need. For example, I can go to my friend's computer and copy all the music/video/etc files I like with drag-and-drop ease. Also, I can now store very large PowerPoint files on the ZVM so that my work presentations have a better bang - and I get better results.
*Multiple file format support - The ZVM plays a lot of video file format's that I already have such as divx, xvid and WMA. This is not a major issue to me however because even with an Ipod, video/audio conversion is not a big deal - just an extra step.
*Software ease-of-use: With the ZVM, I don't have to rely on iTunes to get files loaded onto the player. Itunes program isn't bad, but sometimes I think it is a little cumbersome. Currently, I just use Windows Media Player and/or the regular Windows XP Explorer interface.
*Better screen: The ZVM has a better screen than the video Ipod. For example, the ZVM has 260+k of colors vs. 65k on the Ipod. The difference is readily seen with the ZVM having more vibrant colors and a less washed-out appearance.
*Accessory support: For $25.00, Amazon.com sells a combo that includes an AC adaptor, car charger adaptor, direct USB cable (no need for included ZVM dongle), and a battery pack (uses 4-AA batteries) for those long flights.
*Cheaper: The ZVM is priced much less than the Ipod.
*FM Radio: Despite a large library of songs, it's nice to be able to hear fresh music over the radio.
*Recording capability: The ZVM can record FM radio. But for me, I like the fact that I can put my BlackBerry on speakerphone and then use the ZVM to record the conversation for business legal and future reference.
*Short-cut key and easy navigation: The short-cut key is great; I have mine set to the microphone record function. I haven't had any problems with the ZVM's navigation on screen.
*Multiple subscription service support: Although I haven't used them all, I hear the music subscription support is great. For example, I heard that with Yahoo (at least for your 1st month), you can pay $15 and download all the music you want. What a deal.
*Customizable EQ: The ZVM has preset EQs also, but I prefer to set the EQ my way.
Despite these features that the ZVM has, there are a few shortcomings. For example, I wish the ZVM was thinner for the amount of hard drive space it has. I purchased the 30GB simply because it was thinner than the 60GB, although I'd prefer 60GBs.
When the thin 60GB comes out, I'll be buying that and ebaying my 30GB. I've found that the thickness of the 30GB is the max thickness I would want to have in one of these media players. However, with the 30GB ZVM, I don't mind the extra thickness over the Ipod - probably because I don't notice the difference. Maybe it's because the difference is marginal or that the 30GB Ipod and 30GB ZVM weigh the same.
If I could choose one word for the ZVM, it would be - versatile. I'm not a Creative fanboy or anything. I just like the features the ZVM has. If in the future, the Ipod has all the above features and remains thin with 60+ or more GB, I'd would be buying the Ipod.
For now however, I'm more than satisfied with the ZVM. It's a great all-around media player.