Jonzee.com

If you’re interested in listening to the Audio version of this review which gets into a little more detail, check out Episode 6 of the Jonzee.com Show here

I know with all the recent talk about the Microsoft Zune that is soon to be released, and comparing that MP3 player to the Ipod, there are a lot of other good alternatives that are being left out of the conversation or forgot about. One of which is the award Winning Creative Zen Vision M. The Creative Zen Vision M won Best of show in CES 2006 and a lot of other gadget, electronic based sites and publications have given it praises and “best of…” awards and labels.  But do you know anyone that has one? Is it really any good?

The First thing I noticed about the Zen Vision M (to make things short I will call it the ZVM throughout the rest of this article) is that it has a lot of functionality, probably more functionality than the market leader Apple Ipod. The ZVM comes in 30 and 60 gig Models. It plays audio, video, and Fm radio. It is also capable of displaying pictures and can be used as a voice recorder and data storage device.

As far as its appearance the ZVM is a pretty nice and shiny looking device. It is available in several colors. It is a bit thicker than Apple’s Ipod so it isn’t quite as sleek but it is pretty handsome in its own right. The only problem I have with the ZVM’s appearance is if you get a color other than white, you’d notice that only the front of the device will be that color. The side and back will still be white. This in my opinion makes it feel a bit generic. But if you use some type of a protective (leather) case, the back of the device will not be visible to most people.

The ZVM has a pretty good amount of battery life also. According to Creative’s specs, the ZVM has a about 8 hours playtime when listening to WMA files, and about 14 hours playtime when listening to MP3 and using the FM radio. It also boasts about 5 hours playtime when watching Video. I found that those numbers seem to be fairly on par with my experiences with the device. There’s also 2 ways to charge the device, by use of the included wall charger or through USB while you have it synced to your pc

As far as audio, it has support for the usual formats: MP3, WMA and WAV. But when it comes to video, the ZVM shines in format support. Get this; the ZVM will play back WMV, Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Mpeg4, Xvid, Divx, and Motion jpeg. With the exception of some of Apples codec’s that just about covers most of the video formats. The restriction of coarse is that those files are only supported to certain max bitrate, but that is something you can easily avoid when finding videos to transfer over to your ZVM and is very rarely an issue. The Screen on the ZVM is has a 320X240 resolution and videos look pretty good and colorful on the ZVM’s 2.5” Display.

The ZVM has Audio/Video outputs so that you can view your movies and other video files on your television through RCA connection. The video’s image quality seems to work pretty well when doing so, and there are options of changing the playback speed. There are also options that will allow the stretching  or zooming in on the video image, which would be pretty handy to have for some people that want to eliminate the black bars of widescreen video when displayed on a 4:3 Screen. The cable that allows AV connection to your television is not included in the box, and it is a semi proprietary cable that you have to pretty much order through Creative’s online store. I say semi proprietary because there are some cables that will work with the ZVM that the readers over at Epizenter figured out through trial and error.

Other features of the ZVM include an 8 band equalizer, Calendar, Personal contact organizer. And the ability to format a portion of the hard drive to be used as a regular USB storage device.

As far as Software, Creative has included a sufficient amount of software to help you get content from your PC to your ZVM. Some of which is a media player, Podcast client, video converter, Tag updater, and a few more tools and items that you may find useful. It also works with the newer version of windows media player without any additional software if you choose not to use Creative’s software. Notice I haven’t talked much about anything on the Mac, sadly enough if you have a Mac you will be out of luck trying to use your ZVM cause there is no Mac support as of yet (I doubt there will ever be any Mac support).

All in all I think the ZVM is a device that pretty much lives up to the CES best of 2006 badge with the support for all the video formats and functionality. It is a device that will not disappoint you and probably is a better device than most other MP3 players on the market.

The 30 GIG model retails for $299 but can be found at JR for $229

If you’re interested in listening to the Audio version of this review which gets into a little more detail, check out Episode 6 of the Jonzee.com Show here

Creative’s Zen Vision M Page