Profoundly Pork-like Player Packs Pretty Powerful Punch; Poor Proportions
Written: Dec 22 '06 (Updated Dec 25 '06)
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Pros: The Vision:M has excellent sound, coupled with a beautiful screen and fantastic navigation.
Cons: It's big. Really big.
The Bottom Line: Even with a tremendous amount of storage, a set of features to die for, and a well-designed interface, the Vision:M's dramatic size seriously hampers its ability as a portable-audio player.
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| audio_freak's Full Review: Creative Technology ZEN Vision M (60 GB) Digital M... |
Slim is in, or so they say. And the Creative Zen Vision:M 60 GB is anything but. At 0.9 inches, this thing has none of the svelte, slender modern styling that's been so brilliantly executed by others. It reminds me more of a big, fat, plastic-encased sandwich.
And yeah, I have one.
I guess what Creative has on their hands here in the form of the Zen Vision:M 60 GB is either a mold-breaking, completely daring, revolutionary new concept aimed to bust open the confines of what popular technology is defined by these days, or a dud.
(Hint: It's not the first.)
My very last mp3 player was the 30 GB version of the Zen Vision:M, finished in a beautiful green (for a picture I took of it, see the article for the Creative Zen on Wikipedia. It's at the top!). I loved it, but it liked the sidewalk more: on one occasion my little green player decided to lean in and give the pavement a little kiss.
A twenty-mph kiss out of the second story window, to be exact. It was quite tragic.
So enter the 60 GB. I saw the untimely death of my little green thirty-gig machine as a perfect opportunity to upgrade to its big brother, packed with twice the storage capacity while retaining the same great interface. I quickly ordered one online, and it arrived a few days later.
Initial impressions were.. mixed. For one, I was ecstatic to have an Vision:M again. But my god, this one was seriously thick. It felt much like a reunion with a long-lost loved one who just so happened to have gained about a hundred and sixty pounds. You give them a big, loving hug, but you wonder why your arms can't really reach around them like they used to. That's what it was like.
However, I couldn't deny that it was still a brilliant device inside. Apart from the difference in storage and physical size, the 30 and 60 GB Vision:Ms are identical.
The screen is the first thing that you'll notice about the Zen Vision:M. From an image and video standpoint, the Vision:M delivers spectacularly. With a 320x240 resolution rated to a quarter million colors, the Zen's pictures come to life. The colors are saturated beautifully and stand out a lot greater than they might on an iPod Video. Set the Vision:M on 'hold' and the screen will actually turn off. It saves power and makes a lot of sense.
Brilliant screen or not, though, the interface is one of those things that sells players. Since Apple has apparently patented the circle, its rivals have resorted to alternative methods.
Creative introduced its design in 2004. The Creative Zen Micro (click for review) featured a vertical 'touch strip'. Navigation was done by moving your thumb up and down on the strip, and a click was accomplished by tapping the strip once. However, the system was too sensitive and often mistook the down or upward brush of a thumb for a click.
The Zen Vision:M has finally gotten it right. The new touch area is much larger, with rounded corners - the sensitivity is near perfect. Scrolling is much more accurate, and navigation is a joy. It's even possible to quickly scroll up and down by simply holding your thumb at the top or bottom of the strip. Best of all, the M never confuses scrolling motions for 'clicks'. High-five, Creative.
Next, the the Vision:M's menus are extremely intuitive - in fact, it was Creative's menu system that inspired the subsequent iPod's menu design (and a $100 million settlement by Apple). Anyone familiar with audio devices these days will have zero trouble. I promise.
The four main buttons on the Zen are as follows:
Bottom left: Back (Goes up one menu level)
Top left: Custom (Can be programmed by user)
Top right: Play/Pause (Play/Pause)
Bottom left: Menu (Brings up list of options for current selection)
So easy.
Creative mp3 players have always delivered exceptional sound quality, and the Creative Zen Vision:M 60 GB is no exception. The sound is notably much crisper, crunchier, and fuller than the iPod's. The M shines when you really crank the volume up; the bass remains intact without distortion and the treble manages to stay within a reasonable level whereas other players will dissolve into an sonic mess. The addition of the 5-band custom equalizer helps immensely; this coupled with the Bass Boost on/off feature can deliver some pretty spectacular results.
Video on the Vision:M is for the most part, a cinch, and amazingly clear. The very best thing is that it takes almost all popular formats today, provided that the video is sized correctly to fit the M's screen. This isn't a problem, though. Creative gives you a handy little video conversion program that's relatively painless to use compared to most other video converters today. And since the M here has a 60 GB drive, you can store around 240 hours, or ten days straight, of nothing but video once all is said and done. Duuuude.
One thing I noticed, though, is that the seeking is not always accurate. You might let go of the button on say, the 35-minute mark to watch your favorite fight (or god forbid, love scene) in the Matrix, only to have the video inexplicably wind up starting at 34:30. It's slight but annoying.
The one thing that bugs me about the Vision:M's playback is the lack of saved resume points, like in, say, the iPod Video. Unlike the iPod, the Vision:M only saves your place for the last video watched. So if you take a break somewhere in Lord of the Rings to watch a clip of a dog riding a skateboard, you'll lose your place in Lord of the Rings and have to find it all over again. Ugh. Bummer, dude.
The Vision:M's picture viewing is done right. This big guy's 60 GB hard drive lets you store 'tens of thousands' of photos, as proudly proclaimed on Creative's product page. Your pictures are neatly organized into folders, which each get their own icons instead of appearing as items in a list a la iPod. However, these folders are only represented by a little folder icon instead of a thumbnail, which would've been much nicer. These photos all look spectacular, of course.
I love the radio feature on the Zen Vision:M, and in fact this was one of the major reasons I decided to go with one in the first place. The reception is high-quality, with the station number prominently displayed in the center of the screen. You can set up to thirty-two preset frequencies, and the M can autoscan. The hands-down coolest ability lets you start recording a radio broadcast to your music library at the touch of a button (including the ability to name it with an on-screen virtual keyboard). Major rad.
The voice recorder is strong and picks up voices clearly without too much distortion. I've yet to really find a situation when I needed to use it, but I guess it's handy to have around. You can pause the recording in the middle without having to stop the file.
The Zen Vision:M has an organizer, to keep track of your friends, or targets, if you're a stalker. The organizer syncs up with Outlook, and it'll display everything about them. You can fill in their name, last name, work phone, home phone, cell phone, address, zip code, birthday, personal details, social security number, credit card number, blood type, etc. (okay, just kidding about the last few).
The M doesn't have any games, but I don't see the big loss here. Why play games when you can endlessly pore over your contacts list, memorizing everyone's zip code? It's quite fun, actually.
Connecting the damn thing to the computer is the part that seems to always give people grief these days. Well, fortunately it's quite easy these days. The Zen syncs perfectly with Windows Media Player 10 as well as the latest iteration, Windows Media Player 11. If those don't work for you, then the bundled Creative Media Manager works quite well, too.
However, the Zen Vision:M's USB cable doesn't connect straight from the bottom of the unit to the computer. It has to go through a separate piece first simply referred to as "The Dongle". I won't get into that now, but I have written a specific review about it here.
Right. Now that we've covered pretty much everything to do with the unit's function, we gotta ask the question: 'does this work for day-to-day use?'.
So we have a well-executed mp3 player here. Technically, it's superior to the iPod in terms of thought, design, and quality. But for a number of reasons it's just not a viable option for carrying your tunes around. We now go right back to the opening point of heft. Bulk. Fat. Yeah.
At a staggering four inches tall, two-and-a-half inches wide, and one inch thick, the Vision:M 60 GB is no RAZR. If the latest slimline technology is katana-like in precision, the Vision:M is like a chunky caveman stick. This device isn't wafer-thin; it's more like a bar of soap, minus the slipperiness, cleansing abilities, and FCC bathtub-approved status. This thing is fat. You have to see it to believe it, and I've included some links at the bottom of this review.
When you put the Vision:M into sleep mode, it dreams about doughnuts. When the Vision:M 60 GB sits in your pocket, it doesn't just sit. It probably bulges out enough to violate the dress code in at least a few states. They say the Vision:M has a gravitational pull of its own.
Seriously, though, the M is just far too big to be a realistic addition to your array of portable music devices. It's cumbersome, hard to grasp, and devastatingly large. I still feel embarrassed to take it outside my house, and that's not a good thing.
With every new device that I get, I eagerly wait at the door for the UPS guy to pull up my driveway and walk to the door with the big brown box. Then, I slash it open with a box cutter in an utter fit of technophilic ecstasy. The Zen Vision:M 60 GB's arrival was no different. I was so excited.
But when I first picked up the player I wanted to bury it deep back into the packing peanuts from whence it came and run crying after the UPS truck in the hopes that he'd take it back and mark the package as 'never delivered' so I might get a refund. I loved the Vision:M, but it pained me too much to see this new device looking just like my late beloved thirty-gig but grotesquely expanded to bulbous proportions.
Is it a good player? Yes. I hook it up to the TV, speakers, whatever. It's a great little jukebox, with excellent sound, a beautiful screen, and a very well-thought-out interface. But take this into the world and you'll find your street cred shot to pieces, dude. With its sheer size, the Zen Vision:M 60 GB effectively undermines everything else about itself that makes it good, and there are so many better alternatives out there that will provide a superior form factor and design.
For those reasons, I just can't recommend it, and with a heavy heart I'm giving this Vision:M two-and-a-half stars out of five, rounded up.
By audio_freak for Epinions, December 22, 2006. Comments / ratings rock.
Links
Creative.com - Zen Vision:M (includes a painfully real 360 degrees interactive view) http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14331
Product Specifications - http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14331&nav=1
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 299
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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Epinions.com ID:
audio_freak
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Member: Willy C
Location: Seattle, USA
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
I'm young, single, and I love music!
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