Digital Journal — The Creative Zen Vision is a portable media player (PMP) that entices you to pack up your home entertainment centre and put it into your coat pocket. At their very basic, most PMPs offer the ability to view digital photos and video, as well as listen to digitized music. The Vision does all these pretty well, and all within a reasonably small package. About the same size as a Palm PDA (4.9 x 2.9 x 0.8 inches), the Vision weighs about 8.4 ounces — heftier than most PDAs, perhaps, but still not a heavy load.
The most prominent feature on the Vision is its large 3.7-inch VGA LCD capable of displaying 262,000 colors. The screen size is ideal for viewing stored photos, and makes for comfortable movie viewing on a long flight or train ride. On the downside, however, you have to tilt the device at a certain angle to enjoy the best display this screen is capable of. If you get the angle wrong the display looks flat and dark. In the world of PMPs, the display is everything. The display is also the Achilles heel of the Vision, as it makes it very difficult to show off photos or videos. To display your media to others, you’re better off using the video cable included in the package and sending the output to a TV.
If you can get used to the viewing angle, though, the Zen Vision can indeed turn into a mobile entertainment centre. Equipped with a 30GB hard disk, the device can certainly accommodate a whole lot of photos, video and music. The player controls, (consisting of a 4-way directional button, a menu key, a back key, and play, pause, fast forward and rewind buttons) are pretty intuitive and easy to use, as are the built-in menus.
The system software lets you create simple slide shows and MP3 playlists. The sound system — consisting of a built-in mono speaker — is adequate, but you’re better off listening to audio with the supplied earbuds. The removable and rechargeable Li-Ion battery is rated at four hours for video playback, but if you plan to see more than one movie on your next trip, you may want to spring for an extended-life version of the battery ($70) as a backup.
Creative also makes it relatively easy to put content into the player. The most direct way — which is very important for digital photographers — to transfer content to the player is to insert a CompactFlash card into the slot provided, then copy files. Other types of memory cards, such as SD, MMC, or Memory Stick, are supported, but you will have to buy Creative’s CompactFlash adapter. In addition to the memory cards, you can also use the bundled USB 2.0 cable to interface the device directly with your PC (The Zen Vision doesn’t work with the Mac).
If the player is going to be sitting beside your computer on a regular basis, you may want to consider buying the $40 docking station, as the dock lets you charge the player, sync it with your computer, and seats the Vision at a good viewing angle.
Once you’ve made the USB connection, a Windows XP machine will automatically recognize the Vision as a disk drive, and you can use it for storing data. Unfortunately, photos, videos, and music dragged and dropped into the Zen Vision in this manner can’t be played on the device; if you want playable files, you’ll have to transfer them through the Zen Vision Media Explorer software that Creative provides or use Windows Media Player to do the syncing. However, there is at least one advantage to using Creative’s software: it includes a “Convert Video” function that lets you easily transform some videos that are incompatible with the device into a form that the player can use. The Zen Vision recognizes video files in AVI, DivX, MPEG, Motion-JPEG and WMV formats. Music files are readable if they are in MP3, WMA, DRM, WMA and WAV formats. Digital photos have to be in JPEG format.
To get movies into the Zen Vision, you can also try out Video Vault PVP, a third-party software package that is bundled with the player. This software (which is not mentioned in any of the Creative documentation) lets you convert DVDs, existing video files and video from a video camera into files that can be played on the Vision. And the package is remarkably easy to use — with just a few clicks, Digital Journal was able to convert a 111-minute DVD movie into a 500MB WMV file viewable on the Vision.
If converting movies to watch on the Vision is what draws you to this product, be sure to set aside some time for video conversion before planning an extended trip, as it can take some time (usually about the same amount of time as the running time of the movie). But even with the lengthy conversion time, Video Vault PVP is a great way to maximize the Zen Vision as an alternative to a portable DVD player. The version of the software that ships with the Creative package is a trial package that is fully functional, but only for 14 days. To make the software fully functional you’ve need to buy it ($39.95).
If all your photos, videos, and music aren’t enough for you, you can also use the Zen Vision’s FM radio to tune in to your favourite stations. In this case, the bundled earbuds are a must, since they also serve as the antenna. Also, the radio won’t play through the player’s internal speaker.
Finally, the Vision also takes one more form of input: voice recording. While this feature is often handy to have, the developers at Creative seem to have included it as a half-baked, last-minute idea, because try as we might, we could not get a decent voice recording. In fact, playback was completely inaudible (even when we recorded with the built-in microphone held right in front of our lips).
Even with its few downfalls, the $400 Creative Zen Vision does a relatively decent job. For the money, the Vision puts a reasonable amount of multimedia playing power in your hands. But if displays are the most important aspect for you, the viewing angle will likely turn you off — especially if you are used to bright, vivid screens found on Epson’s P-2000 or P-4000.
