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: $99.99 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Creative ZEN Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player (Black)
Customer Review: 5 Stars+dongle=4
Summary: 4 Stars
Just the dongle kept it from getting 5 stars. To be fair this is probably how creative managed to beat the Ipod's battery life and still maintain a similar size. But the dongle is needed for charginging, syncing, using the optional AV cable or any other accessory. So if I want to use the optional car charger I have to bring the dongle.I have the ac charger by my night stand, but I have to get the dongle from the usb cable on my computer and visa versa. I'm planning on ordering the video out cable, buts thats yet another place to bring the friggin' dongle.
But let's not be so negative. There are 4 other stars.
It's played every avi file I've loaded on it. The fact it doesn't have to come from the itunes store or some other proprietary format is a huge plus. If you know how to go about creating and obtaining your own content this is definitely the right choice. I record shows with a huappauge pvr-150 card, which means my shows are free.(if you don't count the 100$ capture card,you can find others for 40$ and up) If you plan on doing the same you won't be able to play your mpeg files. Despite what creative says you can't play mpeg unless you use a very low poor quality bit rate. However I record with sage tv which automatically converts recordings to Divx at night. I suspect and hope creative will improve mpeg playback in future firmware. I wouldn't use Creative's converter. Too darn slow. "SUPER" is a great little free program. It converts to and from just about anything. For 20 bucks Divx sells a fool proof dragndrop converter.
Music playback sounds great. Has EQ settings preprogramed, and custom. The included earphones seem fine.(I'm not an audiophile) A tip here, when playing music switch it to lock, this way the screen goes blank and improves battery life. No support for Audible books yet, but Creative says it's coming. It does support drm. I wouldn't know as I only by CDs and rip them to mp3. They have somthing called Zencast, a podcast client, it does make navigating podcasts easier, but I still prefer IpodderLemon.
At first I thought the scroll pad and interface would drive me nuts. But after a day our so I got the feel for it. The interface is also quite customizable, allowing you to add or delete menu items, and change wall papers. There is also a custom shortcut button which is really handy.
Battery life does't come close to my "AA" lyra that I was used to, but it does seem to match Creative's claims. It will be better when i get the car charger(friggin' dongle!) I've never had it go dead yet.
The picture quality is superb. The size is very watchable. People have written they wouldn't watch a 2 hour movie on it but I have. My wife loves it(she has no idea how much it cost,thank God) Now she can watch LifeTime while in bed and I actually am there happily watching Underworld. It does have feature wich lets you stretch 16:9 to full screen to make watching easier on the eyes but if thats a problem for you I would recomend cropping the original.
No accessories accept through Creative right now, but that will change.(There selling a gazillion of these) But definitely get some screen protectors. I don't know if it scratches easily but don't want to find out.
So if you can survive without Itunes, live with that extra .25" thickness(oh please people), and deal with the fact it's rectangular like an Ipod(The chief complaints of the ipod users in these reviews) I would highly reccomend the Vision M. (friggin dongle:)
Update 4/28/06:
Creative is now selling the dongle for 9.99. So for me that lessens the impact of the dongle in my review. I'm ordering an exrtra dongle to make life easier. I continue to be impressed with how cool it is to carry around my favorite shows.
Customer Review: The first 24 hours...
Summary: 4 Stars
Just as the title indicates, this review will recap my experience with the Zen in the first 24 hours of ownership. This will not be an iPod vs Zen review. I could care less about the manufacturer, I just want a solid MP3 player.
The packaging is very small and tight. Tons of additional software optionally installable. The Zen and and all cables were underneath a 2nd styrofoam box. For a minute, I couldn't find any of the cables, they too were neatly packed underneath some other stuff.
Once out of the packaging the first thing I noticed was the "feel". Very solid and tight. I immediately placed my ShieldZone scratch resistance skin over the entire unit.
Software installation, while simple, really taxed my Dell Inspiron 6000 for some reason. The install took forever. Not sure why, it just did. As indicated by another reviewer, I only installed the Zen media explorer, Creative Mediasource and AudibleManager (books). Once that was installed a reboot was required. I went to the Creative website and immediately updated that software and the firmware. Great idea from another reviewer. Your firmware will be shipped out of date. Go to the Creative website and get the latest version.
Once the software was installed the moment of truth had arrived. I plugged in the Zen to the USB port and watched in glee as the brilliant color screen lit up and told me it was docked. It also began charging. Sadly though, it took awhile to get enough of a charge to be able to upgrade the firmware, but it finally took. Charging by USB cable took upwards of 5 hours for a full charge. 5 hours folks, so be ready for it when you unpack this baby.
I arrived at work around 7:30 am and immediately plugged it in. As mentioned numerous times, the screen on this thing is just AMAZING. I had it running solid until 4:30 pm...9 hours. At the end of that time, the battery was indicating only 1/4 left. Contrary to what you might think, I did not monkey around with it too much (fast forward, skip, volume, etc) for anything to mess with the battery. Came home and listened to Cardio Coach V2 on the player which is just over half an hour more. Battery was still at 1/4 left. No skipping with me just hanging onto it running hard on the treadmill. I will say that your hand will wrap around the unit and could easily hit some of the buttons on the unit. Not a big deal, just hit the lock feature.
Video is great, but reportedly sucks the life right out of the battery.
The unit makes noise when syncing. You can easily hear the disk "clicking" as it records information. Playing however, I can not hear anything. Maybe it's the earphones :)
Syncing with the included software took forever and did not correctly transfer over the album art. Deleted the music on the Zen and went for Media Monkey. It transferred in half the time and looks like all album art is accounted for (the Zen will display the album art while playing the song).
In the first 24, I've got to say I'm impressed. Great sound, video and screen puts this over the top.
So far, the only negatives I have are SLOW charging time through USB. Get home at 7 and your unit will be drained and wont be charged until midnight. Get the AC adapter for sure. Included software is nice, but get Media Monkey to handle everything. Faster and no worries with album art. Heck, if you spent the time to get all the album covers for your files, you might as well have a player that will display them.
Bought it at a competing store and utilized a $20 off coupon with Google checkout. Total shipped was under $185 and I couldn't be happier with the purchase. You shouldn't think twice about picking this up.
Customer Review: I used to love creative, but....
Summary: 2 Stars
Past - Right from the start I was a big supporter of Creative zen. I brought a 20gb player about 2 years ago and once I got used to the controls it was everything I wanted. It had a long battery, outlasted all of my friends Ipods etc.. in short it was a great player. I told anyone who would listen what a great player it was, I even wrote a glowing review about it here. Then about 3 months ago I bounced it on the floor. I couldn't get it fixed by creative, so I brought the new 30gb vision m series.
Why the buy - its was about the same price as the new apple 80gb, but I have a PC, wanted to stay away from apple forced formats and had such a great experience with the old one, I didn't even do any research on it.
Pros
Bigger than the old 20gb
Pictures and Video - the image quality seems better than the apple. But the screen marks quickly
Improved controls - the new wheel style controller has made navigating much easier and the panel isn't as sensitive as before
Better Sound quality - from what I have heard in Ipods.
Negs
No Power cord included. - yeph, only a USB connection.
Headphones - terrible.
Software - the lot needs to be updated from the website. But still is very buggy, i.e. transferring playlists will duplicate the tracks on the player, the PC software kills performance, some OS cant run the system, some music formats arent supported etc..
Compatibility - Ripping to mp3 format is an issue, it wouldnt play loss less format, it crashes XP professional etc..
Music Catalogue - every band with "The " at the start of their name, comes under T. Getting songs played in album order is a hassle, as well as songs with the same name.
Battery Life - it said 12 hours plus, but I haven't gotten anywhere near that
Creative Support - They are just interested in selling, not supporting
My experience - right from the start I had problems. The loaded software from the disc and it killed my PC performance. I tried to find out about the application and why this was happening, but no support. Then the loaded firmware wouldn't work, so I needed an update. When I tried to uninstall / reinstall I kept getting errors, so had to resort to folder deletions. Then I started to have connection problems with the player. I would plug the player in and the PC would freeze. About 1 in 20 attempts I would connect, but then the software would crawl and usually crash. So I reinstalled my XP, twice, reinstalled creative, too many times to count, updated the MS patch and hotfix for USB, as well as the drivers. But still the same problem.
Creative support was non-existent, so I got on to the Net forums. I found out that that many people are having the same problems with this player. There seems to be a number of major problem areas with the player and software, but there seems to be no solution offered by creative. .
So after 3months and endless hours on the net, I have a player sounds great and is easy to use, but I still cant connect to my PC, ( if want to load new songs, I have to format the player and reload the lot, it takes about 2 hours.) the battery life is about 7-8 hours and I cant get playlists on the thing. I don't care if a product has all the bells and whisel, but I do expect it to work and be compatible with a standard XP p.c. Considering the price of the product, I don't considered this experience acceptable and because of it, I would no longer recommend this player.
I am sure some people are having a great experience with it, but there are a lot of people who feel more than a little burnt.
Customer Review: This is to balance out all the geniuses who don't even own this
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't own this unit either but some people are just ridiculous.
first things first, this unit has been out for only a month or so and doesn't have the benefit of rabid apple fanboyism so of COURSE there wouldn't be many reviews but even 37 various reviews of a unit is good enough info to know whether or not you'd like the Zen. Saying "I'll trust 300 people rather than 37 people" and giving the Zen itself (what did the zen ever do to you to deserve that?) a low score is absolutely ridiculous and asinine.
second off, iTunes should NOT be seen as a plus for the iPod, rather it depends on the user. I like having complete control over my library and itunes is great for ripping and renaming/ID3 tag changing en masse but I HATE HATE HATE using it for my nano (it was a gift!). Some people love iTunes and that's their perogative.
Third, as for it's looks. GET OFF IT~!
Okay it's shaped like a box that's longer vertically, guess that bites off the iPod?
It has a 320 by 240 color screen, I guess that bites off the iPod?
The interface has words listed vertically! JUST LIKE THE IPOD?! Whoa what a COMPLETE ripoff (sarcasm, oh btw didn't you know that creative has a patent on hierarchical menu systems before apple could?
Did the Firefox browser bite off of IE when they put the "back" and "forward" buttons on the upper left of their interfaces?
The only similarities fanboys are just driveling up is that it's a mono colored MP3 player, like an iPod but that's just silly; so if another MP3 player was one color, then it's biting off the iPod?
As for it's features..
1) Radio - I'll listen to it to find new musical content/bands to enjoy plus at times I just actually might get bored of my 20GB collection. Also you have to pay 30 dollars extra and bulk up your iPod to add radio to it.
2) Interface - I'll give yah this one. Creatives interface is pretty intuitive but the click wheel is a darn nice idea apple has. Still, it's not impossible for a normal person to use this unit.
3) Battery life - A person below me scoffed at the Zen having better battery life. Wow that's ridiculous. who WOULDN'T want longer battery life? In a practicality sense, more bettery life == using the unit more OR charging the unit less == longer battery life in the long run. Remember that Lithium Ion batteries have limited charges so charging it less extends the life.
The battery life is the same as the iPod however, except with Video (4 hours-ish for Zen).
4) Color Variation - I'm pining for the green one. If the iPod's have color variation, people would be flocking for them too.. oh WAIT! Why do I see so many females with pink and green iPod mini's still? ridiculous argument yet again. Choice (In this case, color of the Zen) is a good thing.
5) AC - My buddy lugs his power adapter (30 bucks extra from good ol' apple) around for his iPod. He doesn't mind and he charges it quite often actually.
6) Software - You don't have to use any but yet again this is up to the consumer. Some people like iTunes so that would suck if they used the Zen but I personally hate iTunes so it'd be good for me :).
7) Microphone - Usable in class lectures. Also people have actually SAID the sound quality from recording was good, instead of this person CLAIMING it would be bad.
Stupid arguments by Fanboys, it's quite pitiful. I say get whatever you want, iPod's ARE fine players but the people backing them can be pretty dumb.
It's all up to you! BTW Once I save up, I AM getting this but that's just me!
Customer Review: Excellent Portable Media Player!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have had my Zen Vision: M for a total of about nine months now, and I use it practically everyday and I love the thing.
On the audio side, The Vision M supports an adequate amount of audio formats, including mp3, wma, and wav for you audiophiles. The player has a handy equalizer that really makes a difference with a ton of presets.
The area where the Vision M really shines is screen/video performance. It supports a ton of formats, including xvid, divx, avi, mpeg, etc; this means that there is virtually no conversion required for most videos when transferred to the player. However, some video files contain AC3 audio which the ZVM does not support and audio conversion to mp3 is required. The screen on this thing is beautiful, being able to display more than four times as many colors as the iPod's screen. You really have to see it believe it.
One amazing feature of the ZVM is to set a user wallpaper. I love that you can crop, adjust brightness, and change color tone of your desired picture to get it to look the way you want. Several themes are also available to choose from which changes text/dialog box colors and wallpapers.
The touchpad is effective, in fact a bit too effective for navigation and I set to low sensitivity. The lighted tactile buttons are a nice touch, and an even nicer touch is the shortcut button. You can use it access whatever menu you want with one press.
The FM radio picks up very well with autoscan, although I really don't use it so I can't comment on it. But if radio is your thing, then you'll love that you can record directly off the ZVM's radio. The built-in Microphone picks up voices in a crowded room very well and comes in handy quite often.
I can see how the player's removable disk (up to 16GB) feature would come in handy as a replacement for a flash drive or a full-blown hard drive for transferring large files; it does however seem kind of impractical that you have to carry the player along with the dongle and a usb cable around on you. Needless to say I don't really use this feature.
The Zen, however is not without faults. Its easy to forget that there's an actual hard drive in this thing, and people (including myself) don't treat it as carefully as it should be treated. I used to keep it in pockets and bags, throwing the bags carelessly. The player has locked up on me a handful of times, requiring a poke of the reset button; considering the player has met tile floor a couple times, it has held up fairly well. The M is also extremely prone to surface scratches; all past and future scratches can be concealed and prevented with an invisible skin from bestskinsever dot com for about eight bucks shipped.
The included software is pretty weak, I did not install mediasource so I cannot say much about it. The included video converter only works about half the time and will not work with long movies I have tried, but there is plenty of freeware for video conversion out there so it's no big deal. I use MediaMonkey for ripping and tagging music, and the creative zen explorer to sync albums with album art to ensure it shows up. besides that, for music, videos, and photos, it's as simple as drag and drop in windows explorer, which is very, very convenient.
All in all, the ZVM is a high-end player way ahead of the pack, with a great feature set that would be able to satisfy the most demanding portable media enthusiast. Minus a few faults, the ZVM shines. Even two years after release, is definitely one of the best players on the market and most deserving of your cash.