Creative Zen Vision W digital media player review
| Design |
| As it's an upgrade over the first Vision, it's natural to be drawn into making comparisons. There’s no denying that this silver and black Zen 134 x 75 x 22mm and 276g in weight, the Vision W is clunkier than other products on the market. But what you get is a solid built product that fits snugly into one hand and comes with a 4.3 inch screen. Yes, it’s impressive isn't it. Like all other media players, the Creative Zen W is square in shape with that large screen we’ve just mentioned. To the right of it you get the five-way control pad, the back button, menu and playback buttons, all of which feel really sturdy under your fingers. AT the top you’ll find the power switch and the volume buttons. We like the spring-loaded door that hides away the CompactFlash slot on the left of the Zen W digital media player, and on the right side the rubber tab covers the power and A/V out ports. |
| Setup/Installation |
| Once you’ve loaded up the software on your PC you can start transferring music, videos and JPEGs across via the USB socket. |
| Features |
| The Creative Zen Vision W comes with 30GB of memory and colour 4.3 inch screen with a 480x272 pixel resolution. The Creative digital media player supports 16:9 viewing as well as allowing audio formats including WAV, WMA, MP3, and protected WMA, as well as Audible audiobooks. Photo support is limited to JPEGs, but video-format support better with WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 SP, MJPEG, and AVI files encoded using the DivX and XviD codecs. To transcode incompatible video files, there's the included Creative Sync Manager software. The Zen Vision W is compatible with Windows Media Player. The DJ feature acts as a preset playlist, giving you Album of the Day, Random Play All, Most Popular, Yet to be Rated and Rarely Heard. And you can also create up to ten bookmarks within each audio file, and videos remember where you left off so they can start off from there. And should you want, Creative's Sync Manager software can also transfer your Microsoft Outlook contacts, calendars, and tasks to the Zen Vision W. As well as all this there’s an FM radio, voice recording, eight sound equalizer presets including a five-band custom preset and a CompactFlash slot. |
| Performance |
| Well what can we say, this Creative definitely out performed its predecessor. Watching movies on its wide colour screen was a pleasure and even fast moving films came across well. The sound quality was excellent for such a small device when using headsets (although the built-in speakers found a bit of bass hard going) and using it as with most Creative Zen media players was very easy. We were even impressed with the FM radio which on some devices have been a great let down. The big test was putting on DiVX films, which are notoriously difficult, but this little baby pulled it off and worked a treat. Battery life was very good too and over 15 hours of MP3 listening and it even kept going for over five hours on movie playback. The other features including Outlook, and the voice recording worked admirably too, the only disappointment we had was that you couldn’t record straight from the TV like you can with Archos. But then you can’t have everything in life. |
| What's In The Box? |
| Creative Zen Vision W, AC adapter, a soft carrying bag, a minijack-to-RCA A/V cable, USB cable, headphones, standard mini-USB 2.0 cable. |
| Overall Opinion |
| On the whole if you’re looking for a portable media player we thing this is a fine product. The Creative Zen Vision W is much better than the Creative M and thanks to its wide screen and wider angle viewing you get a greater viewing experience. |
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Pros + Widescreen + Fantastic sound, + Great viewing angle + Decent batter life |
Cons - No WiFi |
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Media Capacity 9/10
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Appearance 8/10
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Ease Of Use 8/10
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Build Quality 8/10
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Value For Money 9/10
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
11/10/2006 at 2:12:28pm
11/10/2006 at 2:12:28pm
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