 Since
the arrival of the video iPod you could be forgiven for thinking
that mobile video viewing has taken off? Apples own figures show a
healthy download rate but nothing spectacular, perhaps this is
because it takes more than an iPod and a handful of PMP’s to make a
revolution. So time for the original revolutionary the founding
father of the MP3 player to step in and that’s exactly what we have
for review today the Creative Zen Vision M, where M stand for
mobile!
Tipping the scales at 163 grams and measuring 104 x 62 x 19mm the
Zen Vision M is not porky just well formed and for a video player a
perfectly acceptable size considering the need to fit in a 51 x 39mm
screen. The screen is the key aspect of this device and its 320 x
240 pixels isn’t exactly ground breaking but is more than adequate
on a device of this size. A big plus point is its ability to handle
262k colours as opposed to the 5G iPod's 65k.
However as we have found with so many portable media players (PMP)
the proof of the pudding isn’t in the specification wars but in the
use and so we start where it normally all goes wrong, getting media
onto the Vision M.
The 30gb hard disk is claimed to hold some 15,000 tracks or 120
video files, but the software supplied to load them up is a mixed
bag. The Creative Media source software is a kind of music match
come windows media 10 application and it’s not a patch on either of
them and does not offer anything that can’t be down by WM10, after a
few plays with the rather clunky application we switched to using
WM10 for audio ripping and catalogue. The second application is less
dispensable and this is the Zen Vision:M explorer, based on a
windows explorer look and feel you can organise your AV assets and
drag them into folders both on your PC or on the Zen Vision M
itself. It also has the inbuilt conversion tools to allow you to get
video into the correct format for the M, this is handy as despite
the Zen M having a wide support of video formats the first one we
tried needed a transcode.
Worth a mention at this point is Zen Cast, creative answer to the
world of podcasting, this is feed manager which helps you organise
your Podcast subscriptions and make sure they sync onto your device,
great for audio and even video podcasts. Using the USB 2.0
connection we managed to sync a number of videos in Divx and WM9
plus the usual collection of MP3 and Wav files and even some Jpegs,
the USB connection is not however a mass storage connection, so you
can’t just hook up your Zen Vision M and expect to transfer media
onto another PC. It is possible to partition a section of the 30gb
drive to do this but that then can’t be used on the device for media
storage for replay, all a little strange and a negative point for
us.
It would have been nice to have the optional dock included with the
package but Creative like Apple have gone for making the entry level
price as low as possible, so you’ll have to live with the Vision:M
sitting on your desk with a cable in it unless you splash out on the
optional dock.
Fire up the Zen Vision:M and you soon see that the cool user
interface style of Zen has made it onto the Vision M, the touch pad
slider makes here as well allowing your to scroll through the media
either slowly or quickly by tapping the end of the slider. You can
also access media by its metadata on artist / performer, genre,
album all added by an alphabetical slider menu, its also easy to
edit media metadata and to copy / paste even rename.
We’ve got a long way into the review without even laying anything,
so time to rectify that and starting with audio we tested MP3 at
variable bit rates from 128 to 192kbps and also WAV’s at 320kbps,
these were consumed and played with aplomb by the Zen M. Audio
quality is as good as the Zen Micro (hardly surprising) and there is
little disturbance during playback even if you are rooting through
the menus, although the browse speed does suffer. Use a better set
of earphones than those supplied and you’ll be hard pressed to find
a better sounding device.
 But
you are reading the review for video! We primarily tested 2 formats
Divx and WM9, the WM9 was encoded in various bit rates from a low
200kbit stream to some 2mbit adverts that LP managed to encode form
digital betacam tape. The lower bit rate media worked well although
did not really do justice to the Zen Vision M’s screen, select
something encoded at the same 320 x 240 pixel resolution and around
500 – 700kbits and results are quite good.
We watched a not so legal copy of the West Wing and have to admit
to being impressed at the sharp picture and vivid colours, there are
some compression artefacts but these are less noticeable on such a
small screen, connect up the video output of the M and we’re sure
it’d be a different story. The large 2mbit files didn't want to play
at all so we guess there is some upper limit and trust LP to find it
with his monster encodes!
The Divx file was little more problematic and at first it didn’t
want to play, we thought this was due to its resolution being much
higher than the screens but running it through the sync programme
and reloading it onto the M seemed to solve this and it played
faultlessly with great looking pictures and good audio. We tried a
whole set of music videos obtained for legal sources and everyone
who witnessed them thought that the Zen Vision M was clearly better
than the video iPod when it came to pure video quality.
The other main attribute of the M that you now start to wonder
about is battery life. First up there is a cause for concern, the
battery in non user replaceable so if / when the Lithium Ion unit
gives up the ghost its off back to Creative for open heart surgery.
Until then we found that the audio playback life is an exact match
for the iPod at around 14 hours when playing MP3 files with the
screen switched off, Video playback eats battery and you can expect
around 3.4 hours of life with moderate volume, enough for a full
length movie and few hours of audio playback.
There are the usual bundled extras including an FM radio with 32
presets, voice recorder using an inbuilt microphone and a full PIM
(personal information manager) which can sync with outlook to hold
your appointments and contacts.
Creative have also given the Vision M the same photo viewing
capability as the Zen Micro photo with a nice interface of either a
list type view or a thumbnails, you can zoom , rotate and even crop
images on the unit. But we do question the full use of this as it
would be tricky to get your images directly from a camera to the
Vision M, which we think would be the main use. there is no card
reader and the proprietary sync cord would not plug into many
cameras we have seen, and even then you may have to put them on the
partitioned storage that can function as USB mass storage, which
would mean you couldn't browse them anyway!
That said we don't want the extras to detract from the Zen Vision
M main function as an AV player / PMP, it won best in show at CES
Las Vegas 2006 and we can see why, priced at around £250 this 30gb
PMP is one of the first truly portable and useable portable media
players to arrive in the UK. It's not the size of a house brick and
does not have a battery life shorter than a Liberal Democrat MP's
leadership run, Video is clear and engaging and the whole package is
easy to navigate and fill up with media.
We can excuse the occasionally slow interface when playing video
files and even the very annoying lack or universal mass storage that
forces you towards Windows XP Pc's. So for now it gets our
vote as the top PMP available on the UK market, but don't rest on
your laurels too long Creative as a more interoperable player will
be along soon and it may even support more formats like Ogg Vorbis
and ACC / Flac.
Published - 28/01/2006
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