Creative Zen Vision:M price and reviews

I think this device would be a 10/10 if they fixed the battery life for the audio to about 20 hours. Thats really my only problem with it. I hope it makes an impact on the MP3 market.

I have stayed away from the mp3 market for a long time. The first player I purchased was the Diamond PMP300 which was a good-sounding, reliable player which I still have. The next was the Iriver 190T which sounds ok but is a pain to use and was only useful in the gym. I have been tempted many times to buy something new.

The Ipod was an attractive choice for the navigation but that was it. The sound from the device was ok but really not good enough for me to pay a couple of hundred dollars for and every Ipod I have tested except for that 1 gb flash model with no screen have been a disappointment for sound. I looked at IRiver but the flash players did not have enough room and their hard drive players were nothing special in terms of sound or navigation. I looked at the new Sandisk models which sound awful. I tried every model I could get my hands on but was never impressed with the sound quality and THAT is the #1 reason for spending money on these things isn't it?? I tried the earlier creative models but I had read many horror stories about the phono-jack interface and decided not to buy even though it did have the best sound.

Then I heard about this player and decided to go to BestBuy and give it a try. OMG I just fell in love with it and raced to the next closest store to buy one (This store was sold out).

The sound on this thing is just amazing. Clear, bright and with enough power and base to give it some heart and soul. This is hands down the best sounding player I have ever heard. Now that is before you start adjusting the EQ. With the 5-band EQ option I could get it to sound even better and just the way I liked it for the type of music I was listening to. If you are not convinced how much of a difference there is between this and an IPod for sound then go to the store and try each one out with the same set of headphones. The screen if absolutely gorgeous - bright, clear and colorful. The interface is a joy to use. It's a bit different than the Ipod but I had no problem getting to what I wanted to do quickly. Nothing was confusing. The only people who might have trouble with this are the same people who can't figure out how to use a microwave or remote for a TV. Every feature worked as advertised. Music, videos, FM, Photos, voice recording - I have tried every feature and it has NEVER given me errors or locked-up.

I was not really expecting much for the video. There are so many different video and sound standards for movies I figured I would have to spend hours converting all my movies and video to some proprietary format. But I was wrong. Every movie and video clip I have uploaded to this thing worked. I didn't have to reduce the video size because the device scales the video for the screen. Fantastic! I could not notice any frame drops or pauses in the playback. Try this on an IPod video and tell me if the experience is the same.

FM quality is just about as good as anything you are going to get with these things. The photo feature is nice and the photos load very quickly during a slideshow. The microphone has been useful for me to record seminars as well.

It seems to be well built. Everything including the click buttons seems tight and able to withstand repeated use. The earphone jack is very sturdy and I could not get it to move. The back will not show scratches easily but the front will so I strongly suggest a case and you can find cheap neoprene sleeves designed for the ZMV on ebay for cheap.

I have not tested battery life extensively but what I have noticed is that you can actually get more or less than what creative states depending on what you are doing with it and more importantly what your screen brightness is. These displays suck a huge amount of power and the screen on full backlight is just ridiculously bright. If I'm listening to a long playlist of music I put the HOLD switch on which automatically turns the screen off and improves battery life enormously. For everyday use I usually have it set to 30% brightness which is plenty for me since the quality of the screen is so good that it is easy to read.

30gb is a LOT of room for most people even if you use this thing to load movies and tons of photos. People always want more but when people are arguing about 1 gb more or less for flash players I just do not understand the argument for more space on hard drive players.

This is the first online review I have written for a product and I was inspired to do so for all those people like me who were waiting and waiting for something right to come along. This is it, you will love it!

Somehow, I'm not surprised that all you ipod lovers are rating this low just because you are ashamed that another company has come up with a product that can challenge apple's effective monopoly on the market. Here we have a product that is not a knockoff. It has a different control device, different colors, and operates on the same basic principles of Creative's original Vision... need I remind you all that that came out before the ipod? This has a brighter screen, better colors, and better battery life. Simply because another company chose to put out an upright video player as well, following the suit of Archos & Cowon as well as Apple, is not a big deal. As a matter of fact, Iriver did it a long time ago as well. Apple, here, is the copycat... creative is just changing their line to suit the niches of the market. In case you don't recall... creative had a PVP out long before apple.

I can see many Apple employees here too or if they are not, these people must be brainwashed suckers who came here to bash only.

I bought 1 of these, and I am posting after having played with it. Unlike Ipod supporters whiners, I zoom whenever I like on my pictures, I see more colours, more definitions... not some washed out screen.. I hear better sound too. Oh and errmm, I can even output to a TV at much better resolution to enjoy with my girlfriend.

You may think you dun need a radio, for me, it is simple, when I felt like it, I CAN listen to it, I have a choice... Kick ass product really. Period.

all you ipod fanatics think that ipods are just so great and you turn a blind eye to all others that try to compete. Ipod is so generic and yet u rattle on about individualism. I have a zen micro and it is good, and im not sure about your customer support but when i emailed them they replied pretty quickly. However, I think that no one can really judge this without even owning it, but the fact that all you ipod worshippers dont even write an honest review just because you have an ipod, well news for you so does the rest of the world so shut up about your "individualism" and the faultiness of creative mp3 players. I've heard plenty of bad things about ipod too like how you have to replace battery every year for 50 bucks i think and that it freezes. so anyway, if you're going to praise ipod, dont bring other mp3 players down with it just because it isnt ipod

I bought my Vision:M for $299.99, a typical price. I got it home charged it and was very impressed with it. I signed up with Rhapsody to Go and was impressed with all the music I could load on it for $14.99.

Features: One thing I really enjoyed was the great EQ, I enjoy a lot of different music so I set up a generally warm sound with EQ. The EQ is very responsive and does the job well with a good number of customizable settings, as well as quite a few pre-programmed settings.

The vision:m has a MIC, although I never used it, and an FM tuner. Which begs the question why use an FM tuner when you have 30 gigs of music?

The built in video converting software is decent but unethically slow, I recommend using Riverpast Video Cleaner if you're willing to shell out more money.

I;m a customizing freak so I really liked features like setting any of your photos as the background, and having a number menu styles to pick from.

Controls: I found the controls very easy to use. And in fact I found it faster to browse a 1500+ song library faster on this than an iPod. The thing is, the Creative Vision:M will actually detect how fast you flick you're thumb past the touch strip so the faster you move your thumb the more items it will fly through rather than if you moved it slow. I found the controls a lot more satisfying to use than even an iPod. It may sound like I'm a raging Creative fanatic but just continue reading because the negatives are at the bottom.

Looks: Aesthetically this is a really good looking player, there are nice clean lines and the glowing buttons are great for night use. All though it is thick a power user who is going for features dosent care. One my favorite touches though is the fonts, the fonts are clean and easy to read and are nicely anti-aliased, so your text doesn't look like it could cut you open.

Creative really hit the mark on the screen, its wicked bright, even at 50%. And the colors are deep enough to swim in, the screen has twice as many colors as the iPod 5g, and best of all there is no dominating blue shades on the screen.

I detected no system noise in between songs. And the player sounds great. But it's expected by now that the packaged headphones are rubbish, but much better than the iPod's. I used a set of JVC's in ear phones that perform surprisingly well for $20.

Amazingly the little Vision:M *actually* handled a 720p video I had from E3. I was astounded at the amount of power this player has. One great feature with the video is if you're willing to shell out $20 you can get a cord that will hook up to your Television set.

Although the battery is rated for a good 14 hours that is not the case if you're a law abiding citizen and you're using any subscription services. It seems that opening up DRM protected files takes an extra omph from the processor and in reality I only got a good 8 to 10 hours out of the battery.

The player is quite thick, in fact its really thick, but I wasn't to bothered by that. What did bother me was how badly the black scratched. After a good two days of the player being used (most of the time the player was housed in the leather case it came with) it looked like I took a Dremel tool to it. Point in case, this thing scratches easily, and might drive you up a wall.

Creative needs to get it's act together when it comes to RMA's. Last time I had to send my Zen Micro into the RMA department it took a good 24 days to get my player back. And after a month that one failed with a different problem. If you do buy the Vision:M find a place like Best Buy that will do all the RMA work for you.

Syncing the player was a dream, when it worked. After installing the WMP 11 beta I had problems syncing the player, and I spent a good hour figuring out what was wrong. Apparently WMP 11 had deleted a service that I needed, so I had to reinstall. Although this is not Creative's fault, it is however, what most people are going to sync with and should be aware of it.

I had some random freezes that where really irritating, and I had to search my house for a paper clip to restart the player. Also I found if I paused a video and went to photos or something and came back the audio would be out of sync.

Finally the player stopped working after a short 21 days. I browsed the Creative forum and even wrote an angry letter at Creative and shook my fist at them, and received no reply. Needless to say after browsing the forums, I found this was an extremely isolated event, and the problem could have even been me.

Bottom line: if your looking for a player that does it all and you want to be able to milk that subscription service for all its worth this is a great player for you. However if your looking for a player that will just work and will be easy to use this may not be the thing. Although there are always going to be problems with mp3 players. If your not a power user but you're still highly considering this player go down to your local Best Buy, or Circuit City, and see if they will step up and be you're RMA department. I really liked this player but I was preaty turned off to it when it was my second Creative player to break.

Another thing to consider is that Creative is reporting losses of $112 million. That's not good. Part of these losses are definitely in the fact that Apple has a firm grip on the mp3 player market. The Creative Zen Vision:M is clearly a better player in terms of numbers, but people have the mind set that the Creative will always be a copy cat (even though Creative released juke boxes a good 3+ years before Apple released the iPod). Throw away your opinions, go down to Best Buy and seriously consider this product.

And a note for buyers don't let a sales person try to talk to you into a product be it iPod, or even Creative. Formulate your own opinions based on facts, not on opinions be it James Kim or mine.

Creative has done video players for awhile now. If anything Ipod took the Idea. I don't see anything wrong with the navigation pad either. It does not steal anything from Ipod. Different design. Maybe Creative made it touch because it makes navigation good? Bottom line is it is a great product. Oh, and all the people who rate things bad because they like another product....please...don't

I own an iPod and I'm also a fan of Creative, so this has nothing to do with any bias. I think the design on this looks incredible. Does it look like an iPod? Undeniably yes, but that doesn't make it a bad player right off the bat. I think it's a shame that all these Apple fanactics are driving the customer rating down on a product they could not have possibly even personally tested yet. As far as Creative ripping off Apple, let's not forget that the interface (artist>album>song etc.) used by Apple and some other mp3 players was created, and now pattented, by Creative. Everyone in the game copies features from each other back and forth and that's just how business works and, from a consumer standpoint, it's good. It just means that we're eventually getting products that combine the best of everything out there. I have faith in Creative and if it's anything like their past products then it'll be great. People should rate and buy these things not because they are die hard loyalists to one brand name or the other, but based on which player is better and suits their needs best. If it takes an iPod like design for Creative to catch some eyes and make people look deeper to realize Apple isn't the only game in town, then so be it.