Creative Zen Vision

A few years ago everyone was amazed with compact MP3 players. As the devices have matured, more and more features have been added. Today’s batch of portable audio players has bigger capacity and also extra features like built-in microphones, color displays, and FM radios. The Creative Zen Vision notches the standard even higher, you can watch movies and TV as well view photos, listen to music, tune in the radio, record your voice, and check out your schedule.

The Zen Vision is equipped with a 30G hard drive, enough for 120 hours of movies or 15,000 songs. If you want to use it to store photos, you can carry tens of thousands of them in your back pocket!

The Zen Vision doesn’t restrict you to one or two formats, either. You’ve got lots of choices. You can view video in AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4-SP, WMV9 and Motion JPEG. Audio files can be stored in MP3, WMA, or PCM WAV formats.

The audio and video specs are quite impressive. Signal to Noise ratio is 97db over the full frequency range, with total harmonic distortion of less than 0.1%.

There are lots of choices for interfacing with external devices. The Zen Micro connects to your PC with a USB 2.0 interface for speedy data transfers. Video output is via composite TV-out with support for both NTSC and PAL. Audio output is handled with a 3.5mm stereo mini-jack for headphones or external speakers, and there is also a built-in speaker.

The battery can is removable (a big advantage over the iPod) and can provide enough power for 13 hours of continuous music playback. Recharging can be done through the power adaptor which is included in the package.

Great little player, right? Although the Zen Micro has lots of features, there is still room for improvement. The viewing angle is restricted, so it’s pretty hard to watch movies with your buddies. And unlike some of the other audio players on the market, this one doesn’t display album art.

It would also be nice if you could schedule FM recordings. The FM recorder feature is a good idea, but sometimes you can’t manually start the recording yourself.

All in all, the Zen Micro packs a punch for the money. Recommended!

 

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