Four and a half hour Creative video shocker reviewed

BACK AT CES 2006 Creative Labs announced the Zen Vision M device. The device has been available in Euroland for some time and we know that Creative is selling them quite well and the company had some shortages. Today they are available in multimedia stores. This very saucy and functional player will cost you below €350 but will do all you want it to do.

Zen Vision M is a 30GB MP3 video player that will copy with just about anything that you can play on the Windows media player. As a matter a fact you transfer and organise the files using Media Player 10. If you have the previous version it won't work but the upgrade is fast and easy. We have to say that it will play all sorts of movies as well. The player has a hard drive that enables you to store a lot of data on it.

Creative offers its own software and it is really easy to manage files, transfer the music, pictures or movies. If the movie format is not compatible it will even convert it to a suitable format that will play on your small cinema. We tried to convert Real media, a one of the few video formats that won't play on the device, and it sure took a long time but it transferred it to AVI. You can use WMV files and we can confirm that DivX files will work as well.

We have to admit that Zen vision M has a lot of hidden secrets. It has an FM tuner that works just fine and it can record the station frequencies as well as the names. The second nice thing are the microphone and the dictating device. I tried to record a presentation and even though I was ten metres from the speaker I could understand the recordings. I tried to record an hour and a half long speech and it worked just fine. The surprising part is that the Wav file occupied only 75MB of the player's memory space. It was a low quality stereo but it is still impressive. You can probably record for hours before your battery dies.

You would be surprised by the quality of the screen. It will just blow you away. You will be able to see the movie, pictures or the playlist even in bright light. It has a much better screen compared with the Zen Micro Photo but will still look pale under direct sun light. It has a significantly better screen than Ipod Video but we will get to that part.

Of course you can use it as a storage device as well - as it won't be easy to occupy the player's memory with just MP3s. The player has a mini USB 2.0 connector so the transfer goes relatively fast. It is as fast as this drive can go but it roughly takes the same time to transfer 700 MB AVI file as it would take to copy it to an external USB 2.0 device.

You can create a play list out of your MP3 files, you can search for the files, there is an equaliser and overall it is a very functional MP3 player. When you seek for files you will be able to do a chase the front letter or a keyword and that works just fine. It will play MP3 for roughly 10 hours before it betrays you. We really cannot think of anything that you could improve on the MP3 player side as Creative has thought about all of the details. It will play video files for roughly four and a half hours before it goes off.

The navigation is easy but there are some things that we found a little bit odd. The touch pad is great. You can very easily and smoothly navigate through menus but you really do have to press the side buttons to make the desired action. You get used to it but you don't expect it, as you would expect touch sensitive buttons rather than the ones that you really need to press.

We tried to play some video files. We first tried Creative Labs' marketing files optimised for its 320x240 screens. They just looked fabulous, much better than I expected. We tried a 700 MB AVI DivX file. It was a 16x9 format movie, it looked small at first but you can get used to it. You probably want to magnify the 16x9 movie to fit the screen better and even if it distorts a picture a little bit it looks much better. After a few minutes you get used to it and you can actually watch a movie and enjoy it. It is not as enjoyable as a laptop or a PSP but hey, this device can fit into your pocket and a laptop or PSP won't. In all fairness, the PSP can fit into a really big pocket but it is at least twice as big as the Zen Vision M and it is limited to a memory stick pro storage capacity and you usually wont get more than 2GB.

There is a really dull thing about this player. You need to use the dongle to get the power adaptor connector, Video out or USB 2.0 functionality. We think that this is bad. We would like to see these connectors inside the device even if it would make the device bigger. Ipod Video 30GB has the same problem. The biggest problem is that you will keep forgetting to carry your dongle thingy and you won't be able to transfer the files at a friend's place or even recharge your player. I think that Creative needs to get those connectors on to the next generation Video capable device.

Now for the super surprising part. We tried the video out with Creative Labs Video cables. The cable uses relatively standard variation of a stereo jack that can transmit the video. It splits into two stereo audio cables and a single yellow video cable. It cannot get easier than this, I just connected it to my TV set and it worked. I could not believe the quality - it was just as good as you would experience from a computer or some other video player. You can put your Zen Vision M in your pocket, don't forget the dongle thing, put the cables in the other pocket and go to your friend's place and make a video night of it. You can pack a lot of files into 30GB. You should be able to store 40 movies each of 700 MB and you would still have 2GB for the pictures and MP3. The battery will provide a nice four and a half hours video play time but you can always connect the device to a power source when you are in the house. It is such a shame that you cannot change the battery. It is buried deep under the hood.

You want to use this device with Creative labs EP630 black headphones. Those headphones will give you an amazing sound and the bass that you would not expect from an in ear-in headphones. You can naturally connect all kind of speakers to this device and it will play just fine.

Conclusion
We like this device, as it has a great display, it has a massive 30 GB storage, will cost below €350 and will be able to play music, videos or pictures. It has good recording capabilities, it is equipped with an FM tuner and will offer you 10+ hours of music playback or four and a half hours of video playback, much more than the Ipod Video. It has a unique design, is thicker than an Ipod Video but it has more features and a much better battery life not the mention the fact that Zen Vision M has a superior display quality.

If you are looking for an MP3 Video player with a massive 30GB of storage you should consider this device as it has a superior display and loads of features. µ