Creative Zen Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player (White)
by Creative
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List Price: Our Price: $160.00 You Save: $89.99 (36%) 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 (White)
Customer Review: Lack of Customer Service Alone Deserves One Star
Summary: 1 Stars
I was actually pretty pleased with my player while it was working, but the atrocious customer service and product support provided by Creative are enough for me to recommend against buying it to anyone.
First, a little background about my experience--my player worked great for about three months, then all of the sudden it completely died. The player would not respond when being turned on or when plugged into my computer via the USB adapter. I went to Creative's website and tried a couple of suggestions provided in their "help" section to no avail. I then searched around for a customer support number to call, and finally found one, buried deep in the files on the software installation CD provided with the unit.
After calling customer service, I was eventually told by a recording that since my unit was past the minuscule 60 day warranty period, I was not eligible for help over the phone. I then proceeded to attempt to use the online, email based customer service. This proved to be quite a difficult task as well, as I stumbled through a series of circular links no less than five times before finally reaching the email submission page.
After sending a detailed email explaining my situation, what steps I had already tried, and so on, I received a response within a matter of hours (the one strong point of the customer service, I suppose). Unfortunately, this email was utterly useless, as all it did was provide me with links to online help pages, the majority of which I had already read. Some of the provided links even offered suggestions which were impossible to implement given the symptoms which I had clearly described in my email. In essence, my email response contained so little thought, and was written in such a formulaic manner, that I seriously wonder whether or not it was a computer-generated response. On top of that, whoever or whatever wrote my "customer support response" email actually had the audacity to close it out with an advertisement--that's right, an advertisement--for a pair of Creative headphones.
I calmly replied to the previously mentioned email, explaining that I tried all of the listed steps to no avail. I even offered my own suggestion--that the USB adapter provided with the unit had gone bad, thus leading to the lack of response when plugging the unit into the computer and making it impossible to charge the unit. The next response I received made no mention of my suggestion, and simply stated (again, in a form letter) that I should send the unit in for repairs (for a fee, of course), and if nothing was found to be wrong with it, it would be returned to me (presumably unfixed, and of course I would still be charged for the service).
I am still considering buying another USB adapter to see if my theory is correct, before sending the unit in to be "looked at," so there may still be hope. Regardless, the utter lack of respect that Creative has for its customers has been made abundantly clear to me. I am far from being someone who has a "the customer is always right, no matter what" attitude, and I completely understand that with complicated technical devices things go wrong occasionally. But Creative's policies stoop far below the level of acceptability in my opinion; they are what I would expect from a supercheap knockoff, not from a supposedly respectable company. The short warranty period should have been a tipoff, I suppose--a $300+ consumer device should last far longer than 60 days. Suffice it to say that I will never be buying another Creative product ever again, and I urge other consumers not to as well, for their own sake.
Customer Review: We need to hear from people who have had the player for awhile
Summary: 3 Stars
I've been reading some of the reviews of the Zen Vision M and am very worried about the display cracking, as one owner mentioned.
I had a Zen Vision M for about 2 months recently as I put songs and pictures on it for my mother. I've just now ordered one for myself but it hasn't arrived yet.
I have had several music players over the years and I can tell you the pros and cons of each one as time has passed. But I haven't had a Zen Vision M long enough to know its longevity.
I wish people who've had one awhile (like the guy whose display broke) would write more of the reviews.
Anyway, I can help new owners with 2 things right off the bat:
--THE PLAYER FREEZING UP. The big vertical button in the center of the player is too close to the other 4 buttons that surround it. If you press the vertical button on its right arrow (to, for instance, go to the next song), AND simultaneously press the square button on the upper right of the player (the pause button), the player will freeze. You will accidentally do this a lot, so get a paper clip and straighten it out for resetting the player (there's a little hole on the bottom, next to the out port).
--ALBUM ART PROBLEMS. If your songs have been copied from CD's, you would have album art in the song files only if you had embedded it yourself (paid downloads automatically come with album art). Just like the Zune and the IPod, Creative Labs' software tries to control album art. If you find that several songs (all by different performers) have the same album art picture, which happened to me, it's because the Zen Vision players require a distinct (totally different) album name in the Album field of the track tag of each song. Don't have "Greatest Hits" for both the Monkees and the Beatles! Make one Album name "Monkees' Greatest Hits" and make the other "Beatles' Greatest Hits". Otherwise, you'll get either the Monkees' album art or the Beatles' album art for both songs!
Also, few people know this, but you don't have to embed album art in a song's track tag for the Zen Vision M. Zen's software allows you to drag and drop any picture file for a given album name. So, make sure that all songs that come from the same album have exactly the same album name (you can enter that in the ripping software or in Zen's software once you've put the song there), and make sure that each album name is distinctly different for songs NOT from the same album, then go to the folder in Zen's software that contains your songs, right click on the display and select "Album Art" and you'll see the album art for each album name for the songs in that particular folder. If an album name has no album art, you'll see a musical note on a gray background. Open a second copy of Windows Explorer, go to the folder that contains the picture that you want to make your album art (should be .JPG format), re-size both copies of Windows Explorer so that they can fit side-by-side on the screen, click on and highlight the picture's filename, then drag it over to the folder with the Zen's songs showing and drop it on the musical note whose album name you want to have the art.
How do you get performers' pictures? Go to "amazon.com" and search for a given performer and, when you see the CD photo that you want, right click on the picture and select "Save Image As" and give it a filename then note what folder it's being placed in.
Customer Review: Unfortunate Shipping.... Phenomenal Device!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes yes yes they shouldn't be selling them before they can stock them, however IT'S WORTH THE WAIT!!!! SO WHY GIVE THE PRODUCT A BAD RATING WHEN THIS ISN'T A PLACE TO REVIEW THE SHIPPING!!!!!!!! It's unfortunate that idiots come on here and write a review NOT on the PRODUCT but just to complain about slow shipping! I ordered mine on April 8th and it didn't ship until May 3rd, it arrived on the 5th. I was excited I got an InvisibleShield fullbody cover for mine! HIGHLY recommended, it's literally invisible and only takes maybe 10 minutes max to perfectly get it on the player, when it dries it's never going to let your expensive investment get a scratch on it! but that's off topic, this mp3 player ROCKS!!!! I have about 16gb of music on my computer and I put about 10 gbs onto my Vision:M it couldn't have been easier!!! I must admit I haven't figured out how to get zencast videos to transfer onto it, and I had to update my Codecs and Quicktime to convert videos onto the little thing. DonnieDarko in DivX format took about 20minutes to convert and transfer onto the Player. the screen is beautiful!!! you can easily click your way through your library and strike up a playlist (Much like you would on your computer in windows media player) and save that playlist if you feel the need to do so. A beautiful feature I LOVE LOVE LOVE is you can take a picture from your PICS Folder and if you'd like to you can APPLY IT AS YOUR WALLPAPER!! That's a great little creature feature that I love, Jimi Hendrix is hanging out on my screen at the moment. The battery lasts a long time, with all my fidgeting and playing around for the day I'm sure I'll only get 10 hours out of it, but if I was on a long roadtrip (I.E. put the player on shuffle and on hold so the screen is completely black) I'm sure you can easily get 15 hours out of it. I do recommend getting New headphones I have a pair of SPRKPLG Ear Plugs from Koss, they're cheap($20) and they almost completely shut out outside noises. I've also set up my Radio tuner, it scanned and created presets and you can label each radio station too if you feel like it. The equalizer is a godsend too! In normal it was still too bass happy for me I like my mids and highs so I put it on vocal, or jazz both are a good setting for rock or jazz etc, the bass boost would be more for the Rap crowd, not my taste but to each their own. Lets seee, yeah it's pretty simple click and drag from MY MUSIC to the creative zen Music folder, quick transfers! lightning fast, faster than my MPIO and Sandisk FlashDrives! I must admit when I add afew folders to a playlist at a time it takes a little pause to complete, and when watching a movie it pauses for up to 10 seconds before it plays again. That is a little bothersome but patience is a virtue and if you're watching a movie you'll probably be watching it all the way through anyways. It feels solid in my hand, it's thicker than the Ipod which I actually like, I don't feel like I'm going to break it. beautiful design and hopefully when Creative reorganizes their priorities in the next quarter, they'll supply more stores and online stores, with more than enough Vision:Ms they could KILL IPOD if they just get on the right track with Distribution!!!! Thanks for reading and remember, if you're patient you won't mind the wait, it's really a trip playing with this thing! I'm in love with it!Customer Review: Not a bad Ipod alternative
Summary: 4 Stars
My experience with this unit was bad from the very start. I tried to find it locally and the only color that was in stock was black. This is at two local stores. This may sound silly, but I have several minor issues with the black version. The front is black and the back is..white. Why? Not a big deal, but please, why can't they have the things all one color? Another negative about the black verison is that after a half hour of using it you get all these fingerprints all over it. Yes, they are easy to see too.
So I get my player home and open it up and am disgusted. The screen has these weird splotches all over it. Four on the sides of the unit's LCD screen and one very large circle shaped one in the middle! At first I thought it just had a small hard to see plastic cover on it that needed to be removed, but that wasn't the case.
I didn't even turn it on and took it back for a replacement. Guess what? Another defect! A tiny one on the top right. This time it looks like an air bubble caught in the built in screen protector. I let it pass and use it anyway.
Please note that i've only used this unit for one day and one day only. I read the manual and know how to use it perfectly, except for a few things.
I connected it and had no problems using the software. To me it seemed even easier to upload songs that it is with the Ipod. I took a DVD I own and made an mpg out of it and uploaded it to the unit. I was pretty amazed with the picture quality. The screen is very, very good. Way better than the ipods for sure. The movie I had was 2 hours and fast forwarding it is a painful process. It's sooooo slow. You can speed it up eventually a little bit but this just ruins it for me.
Mp3s sound just find and maybe even better than on the Ipod. The Ipods default screen when playing music is just plain dull and boring. At least they make everything look much nicer in this player. Probably would eat up more battery life though with all those extra graphics though.
Does this have a way to shuffle by genre of music? I didn't notice that. That's the one thing I didn't see if you could do or not.
Overall, I just feel the IPOD video is better when it comes to ease of use. I absolutely HATED the previous/next buttons on the Zen Vision: M. Then all the buttons are somewhat hard to press with one hand, especially when using this thing while driving and you can't pay much attention to it.
I took the black ones back and ordered the white version from Amazon instead. I'm not sure if I will keep it or not.
I might stick with my Ipod video. It works just fine, but I almost prefer the layout of my old 3rd gen Ipod over this one! I'm not a big fan of the click wheel I guess. The wheel also seems more sensitive than the old versions, making it much harder to select items from menus.
One reason I wanted to get the Zen Vision: M is that the music download services for that are much cheaper. Itunes can get expensive. I'd much rather buy a CD in a store for $2-$5 more than download it off Itunes. Unfortunately though some of my favorite music from Japan is only available on Itunes. The TV shows and music videos are also nice to have, but i'm sure that stuff is available on non-Itunes download services. At least I hope so.
Customer Review: Not a bad try - but still no iPod.
Summary: 3 Stars
While this is certainly the best player to come out to compete against iPod, it just doesn't quite execute as well as Apple.
A quick summary: The Vision: M costs more per GB of storage space, is harder to use, and just isn't as cool and sophisticated as the Apple iPod. While the Creative has a great screen and a built-in radio, these just don't make up for the cost and cheep-feel of the device.
While the screen quality is great, it is not that big of a deal. The screen resolution is the same as the iPod video (storage capacity and battery life are also virtually the same between the two products). The only difference is the number of colors the screen can display, which is hardly noticeable at that screen size. I imagine Apple will have a similar screen soon if you really need the color.
As far as storage space is concerned, the iPod is a better bang for your buck. While Creative claims to have a 15,000-song capacity, it is making this claim based on a 64kbps audio file. I don't know of anyone who has a file lower in quality than at 128kbps file. Apple is up front about their capacity. For their 30-gigabyte iPod, they claim 7500 songs at 128kbps (to get 15000 you need the 60gb, something Creative doesn't offer). Your Creative player would have the same capacity since it also has a 30-gigabyte drive. Cost: $299 for a 30gb Video iPod or $329.99 for a 30gb Creative Zen Vision: M. Take your pick.
Besides storage space, another item to consider is to is ease-of-use. While they may look similar when it comes to input layout, they are not. The Creative is much more difficult to navigate than the iPod. Apple's menu navigation with the touch wheel is very intuitive, and simple to pick up on. Creative's approach is, well, creative. The menus are slow, and while you can learn how to use the touch pad, it is not very natural. Stick with Apple if you appreciate ease of use and not having to look at your screen every time you want to do something.
Apple's wonderful iTunes software is another reason to stick with the incumbent here. It is sleek and easy to use. It organizes music better than any other jukebox out there, and interfaces perfectly well with your iPod. Even though iPod doesn't play as many video formats, iTunes converts and optimizes video to play on your iPod for you. Simple as can be.
Finally, just take into account quality and style. Apple has been making quality iPods for years now, and they just keep getting better. The iPod is proven, while the new Vision: M is not. If there were significant benefits, it might be worth the switch, but the features are pretty much the same (except the radio, I must concede). Apple simply makes a classier product. The lines are simple and elegant on an iPod, and they feel great in your hand. The Creative is very plastic and feels more like a toy than a sophisticated music device. Even when Apple offered color on the iPod Mini, they still did so with a touch of class - the Vision: M just looks and feels cheep, although it is well build. Besides, with the iPod, you not only get quality, but you get to say you own an iPod. No one will know what you're talking about if you say you have a Vision: M.