Ureview by: Eraser
Ureview points: 28
Ureviewer since: April 2006
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Reviewed On: Thursday October 18, 2007
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 8 | Recommends product: Yes
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Introducing ZEN
When someone thinks mp3 player, someone thinks iPod.
Apple's huge success with their stylish portable mp3 players hasn't gone unnoticed for most people that live on top of the rock or next to it, instead of under it. These days, iPod is almost synonymous for portable audio.
With the success of the iPod and the fame it has collected people tend to forget there's more out there than just the iPod. One such competitor for Apple is a company called Creative. A company that's in the computer and peripheral market for as long as I can remember. Most famous for their Soundblaster range of products back in the '90s, now most mainstream people that are not "in the know" with computer hardware will probably know them from the PC speakers they sell.
Creative also has a strong line of portable audio players, known as the ZEN series. The ZEN Vision:M 60 is the latest Zen. It features a 60GB harddisk and allows for up to 17 hours of audio playback or 5 hours of video playback without recharging it's battery. It features a wide array of media formats, like MP3, WMA, WAV (audio), AVI, DivX, Xvid, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV (video), JPG (image). For more technical specifications, check out the ZEN vision:M Wikipedia page.
Looks and use
The ZEN Vision:M is a beautifully designed piece of hardware. It's up there with the iPod in the looks department. It features a 2,5" TFT LCD screen which shows nice, bright colors that are noticably better than what the iPod video is capable of (check here for side-by-side comparisons). Under the display is a touch pad which allows you to scroll through menus or adjust the volume. A single tap with a finger selects an option. The pad itself also functions as a two-way button for selecting next and previous tracks.
Around the pad are four large buttons which light up blue when the display is active. These buttons are used to play or pause a file, open up the context menu (which is a menu that slides into the screen from the right, giving you additional options and functions), a back button to go back in menus and a button that shows you what's currently playing.
The four buttons are large and easily accessible. The menustructure offers quite a lot of options. Together with the additional options under the context menu, there's a small learning curve to what options the device offers. Once you've familiarized yourself with this, the large amount of options won't look so daunting anymore and you'll quickly navigate to wherever you want to be. The interface design is, in some aspects, pretty slick but in other aspects (such as the chosen font) not what I would've chosen. This is just a minor point and not nearly as important as I make it sound.
Managing Files
The ZEN allows both automatic or manual synchronization, which basically means that you can automatically synch the media files on your PC with your ZEN or manually drag and drop files between your PC and your ZEN. Since I'm not a fan of automatic synchronization, I haven't attempted to test this mechanism
Manual management of your files can be done by connecting your ZEN to your PC through an USB cable. Windows Explorer (both XP and Vista are supported) shows a special ZEN Vision:M Series Media Explorer, which you can click to access the files on your ZEN. The Media Explorer basically is an application embedded within Windows Explorer. It shows not a file list but a control panel that gives you a number of options. You can browse or add media, manage playlists, Rip Audio CD's, Convert Videos or synchronize media and/or Outlook data. Outlook data? Yes, you can synch your ZEN with Outlook. I'm not sure why anyone would want to keep contacts and appointments on their ZEN, but it's possible if you wanted to.
Under the Media Explorer is a tree structure that shows your media and data. Here you can drag/drop audio, video or image files to your ZEN and back to your computer again. And that is exactly one huge improvement over iPod, since that, under normal circumstances, does not allow you to copy files from your iPod to your PC. The Media Explorer also allows you to manage ZENcasts, which is another fancy word for PodCasts, which in turn is another fancy word for automatically downloading MP3's to your (portable) player.
Included Software
The ZEN Vision:M comes bundled with a CD-Rom with software. This includes drivers and the Media Explorer, but also a Creative Mediasource 5 (which allows you to rip, copy, convert and manage audio files), a video converter and Audible. Audible is kind of like the iTunes store, where you can buy and download music, audio books and other audio things.
Conclusion
The ZEN Vision:M 60 is a great portable MP3 player. It supports lots of media types and features an FM radio as well. The FM radio and the fact that you can drag and drop files to your liking, from and to your PC give this player a few bonus points over the iPod. Add to that the fact that it's slightly cheaper than the iPod, and you've pretty much got a winner.
The Vision:M won various awards at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show and won the Red Dot Design Award.
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| Pros: lots of storage space, great flexibility in file management, support a wide range of audio and video formats, nice screen. |
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| Cons: Slightly thicker than the ipod. Menu navigation is a bit complex at first. |
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