creative Zen vision - to take the plunge or not?

CryptKeeper · 16 Mar 2006 at 20:31

I have a 3 year old Creative Nomad Zen thing (yeah one of the first hdd mp3 players). Its all fine and well and the quality is awesome. I'm considering taking the plunge into PVP and getting the Zen vision. All the reviews seem to be based on the US market (e.g with TIVO). I really wanted to know is there anything you can do with this and Sky+? Also, is this the right time to buy? I know that there has yet to be an ultimate pvp come out so I'm worried that apple or someone may launch it in a few months making mine seem like a waste of money. My main reason for choosing the ZEN was that it looks cool and the screen is very hi-res. Would be using it everyday for mp3 and maybe twice a week for video + holidays etc.

Thoughts?

Anchundan · 16 Mar 2006 at 21:47

Hi - Are you talking about the new Vision:m?

I just got my Zen Vision:m on Tuesday. Before this I had the Zen Touch 40GB and before this the Nomad Jukebox 3 20GB.

First impressions - neat, sleak and light! Excellent screen, really makes me feel I have top-notch technology.

I bought it purely for MP3. Creative have always had the best sound - they started with the soundblaster what seems like decades ago, and whatever apple pull out, doesn't appear to get near to the sound quality of the creative products. However, saying this, the screen is much better than the ipod's, displaying far more colours.

My problem with this is, I own a PDA (Dell X50v). Its a VGA resolution (640x480) so it's got 4x as many pixels as the vision. So if watching movies on the move, I watch them on the PDA. Which is slighly annoying, as it's about the same size as the vision, but no HDD. However, 4MB SD cards and 2MB CF cards have come down vastly in price now, and you can get a very high (VGA) quality DVD compressed to about 500MB with the right software.
It just means, I carry around both.

The vision does display crisp video, with vibrant colour, and excellent sound (which far surpasses the PDA), and watching music video's is an absolute pleasure.

I've only had the unit 2 days, but I know instantly I made the right choice.
Ipod's might look cool, but their sound (in my opinion) isn't up to it. and they're soooo common!!!

Edit : you can link it up to your TV with the optional video cable, but I think it's only an output, so probably couldn't record any programs with it. 'fraid I don't have sky+ or tivo, so can't really comment.

CryptKeeper · 16 Mar 2006 at 22:51

Actually I'm not talking about the :m model. The Zen vision has a much larger screen (VGA 640x480) and it horizontal.

Anchundan · 16 Mar 2006 at 23:20

I don't know much about this one. I know it's been out a long time, and was one of the first to produce 'movies on the move'. Great resolution screen though. I personally doubt Apple will come out with anything close to this resolution for a while as they seem more interested in compactness and style than functionality.

I was tempted at the time of release, but had heard about the planned PDA's with VGA resolution and decided to wait until they were released.

I just have a feeling that, although the price of the original vision remains high, I think they might be phased out soon. Maybe creative will be releasing something better in the near future, now that they've released the 'mini' vision:m.

Edit :

Shows I really don't know what I'm talking about - I was thinking about the portable media centre (20GB 320x240 resolution). This one came out summer last year, and looks Much better than the last.

I love the addition of the CF card slot.