Advantages: Loads of features, brilliant screen quality, value for money
Disadvantages: no mains charger supplied, headphones not great

...The Creative Zen Vision:M is the ultimate in personal entertainment. Although most people prefer to stick with the 'popular' Apple iPod products, i feel they are often excessively priced for the features that they offer and as such you are merely paying for the brand name. Creative's entertainment products on the other hand are packed full of features at a very reasonable price. The Zen Vision:M has several features that make it stand out from an iPod. Firstly, there is the ability to use the player as a portable hard disk, the capacity of which can be set by the user from 1GB to 16GB in teh 30GB model. This enables the user to store files other than the usual mp3 and mp4 files such as documents and other program files. The advantage of this is also that you can transfer songs from a computer that does not have the creative software... Read review

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Advantages: Sound Quality, Photo and Video Features
Disadvantages: No charger

...charger provided with the MP3 player. WHY????? and unfortunately my old Micro charger doesn't work with it either as you can only use the docking hole to plug a charger in (which you have to buy separately - luckily they are widely available). I don't like the fact Creative have changed from a USB plug in to the docking hole as this is located at the bottom of the player so if you want to charge and listen to music and you have one of the cheapy docking station speakers you can't put the player in the place holder! These are only small gripes though as the applications and sound are excellent. Note for Creative, stick with the things that worked for the old Micro Zen (ie better software and charger) with the additional features and upgrades of the Vision (larger capacity, photos and videos) and you would have a seriously brilliant... Read review

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Advantages: Screen, style & quality build
Disadvantages: Non removable battery

...chose the vision:m. If you prefer fashion to function then the iPod is probably for you because after all: its an iPod. ACCESSORIES There are a number of accessories available including: Wired remote, FM adapter (to tune it into car stereo), Video cable (to play video on your tv), leather pouch, docking station, car charger. As for third party accessories I haven't seen any advertised. FIRMWARE UPGRADING The vision:m is firmware upgradeable and mine had an old version of the firmware so I decided to try and upgrade it to the newest version v1.61.01e. So opened up the instruction manual and done like it said, put the switch to the left, insert pin into reset hole, let go and select 'upgrade firmware' option. double-clicked on the software upgrade and it came up *zen not found* when it was indeed plugged in. Got... Read review

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Advantages: Massive multi media capacity. Backs-up your digital camera without a PC
Disadvantages: Easy to scratch. It won't record radio. Getting DVD files ready for download is fiddly

...to find a whole stack of artists I'd never heard of, which when pursued as far as playing them, seemed to emanate from albums I knew about by artists I'd heard of. On inspecting the WMP listings, I find that the Zen shows both artists and contributing artist. Therefore if Joe Bloggs is credited with either jamming on, or writing some of a mainstream track, they'll appear as an artist. The solution is to scroll down all of your track listings changing the 'Contributing Artist' column to be the same as the actual Artist. With a bit of CTRL-C here and CTRL-V there it doesn't actually take too long. In future, I'll be scrutinising every CD that gets ripped, BEFORE it gets ripped. The changes then show up on your Zen next time you 'sync' it. The official Creative Docking Station (approx. £20) for the Zen Vision M would appear to be merely a means... Read review

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Advantages: Not an Ipod, easy to use
Disadvantages: Lacks ipod's accessories, no charger in the box

...General I spent a long time looking around for my MP3 player. Both friends and family had all went for Apple iPods and the pressure was on so to speak. No question the iPod looks, well used to look sexy, and it had the backing of one of the worlds leading technology companies, but no matter what way I looked at it as an option it just not tickle me. I was on holiday in Crete last September (2006) and we flew through Gatwick, with a bit of time to kill I smoozed around a leading tech chain store and saw my first Creative ZEN Vision:M, and I was won over with the beauty, symmetry, and in general sheer simple sexiness of the Zen. When I got home I looked it up, researched it and eventually just went for it. I purchased mine from Amazon, where I get most of my items. Currently priced around £139.99 When the box arrived... Read review

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Advantages: Handles numerous file formats; good battery life
Disadvantages: Slightly chunky; not as attractive as iPod; screen scratches easily

...are to do with the screen, which seems to scratch very easily (though the scratches are not really noticeable when a video is playing) and it can be difficult to see what is on the screen in strong sunlight. These aside, with my Zen Vision:M being over a year old I have no intention of replacing it as every button still works perfectly, there is still plenty space on it for the average owner (I have about 15 movies and about 300 music tracks), and even the headphone socket (a problem on previous Creatives) has not given a single second of trouble.... Read review

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Advantages: Accepts wide range of file formats, good battery time, looks great
Disadvantages: takes a while to get used to, less well known than the Ipod

...The Zen Vision: M is a portable media player that has the capabilities to play music, videos, photos and a radio. It was developed by Creative Technology to rival Apple’s Ipod and to date has successfully done this. Released in late 2005 it has gone on to win many awards most of which compose of best in its category. ************************************************** Look ************************************************** This 60 GB version has a black front and a white back. The dimensions for the entire device are 10.4cm x 6.2cm x 1.86cm and it weighs 163g. The display screen is a 2.5” backlit TFT LCD and has the resolution 320x240. The last fact that it is 18bit with 262, 1444 colours. Enough of the technical specs, me too. It looks sleek with its curvy edges. There are a variety of themes that you can set to change... Read review

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Advantages: Great battery life, Stacks of features
Disadvantages: Can be sluggish, some loose ends

...This is Zen's latest creation, the vision M. As the title suggests zen have included video into the MP3 player much like apple have done with their ipods. If your a sceptic and think zen cant beat ipod, then think again. Although the ipiod is renowned for being the daddy of MP3 zen have levelled with it. The Vision M boasts 30gb of memory, thats enough for a good 7,500 songs or plenty of movies. I currently have all of my music back catalogugue, all of my pictures and about 10 films on this beast. The advantage this has over the ipod is that it has twice the amount video playback time. Its possible to play videos for 4 hours on the vision M and only 2 on an ipod 30gb. The sound quality and video quality are both excellent. The amount of things you can do is also quite extensive, this includes creating on the go playlists... Read review

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Advantages: Video playback of 5 different file formats
Disadvantages: Quite heavy and thick - not as stylish as the ipod ramge

...The Creative zen vision : M is the new focus of creative's attention, it has many attractions which trumps the ipod and if considering whether to buy a creative zen vision : M or other competitore such as thje fifth generation ipod, you should look closely and opay attention to this reveiw. Okay will shall start with the bad aspects of the zen. Firstly and the most obvious point is the design, it is a lot thicker than the fifth generation ipod-The zen has a thickness of 1.8 cm, the 60gig ipod is 1.4 cm thick while the 30gig ipod is only 1.1cm thick. Also it has more weight than the ipod, this can be thought of as a good or bad thing for even though it is reasonably6 heavy i beleive it fits into your hand and is more comfortable as i know i think that it would be very easy to break the ipod in half-anyway it feel that way. Another factor... Read review

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Advantages: Big 60GB capacity for everything on it, can watch videos
Disadvantages: scratched easily but can be prevented

...~~~~~~~TheZen~~~~~~~ -60Gb capacity to carry 15,000 songs tens of thousands of photos and 240 hours of video -2.5" colour screen displays 262,144 colours for high definition video and photo viewing -USB host feature, transfer files to the Zen without your pc -video files it accepts are wmv9, mpeg1,2 and 4-sp, motion JPEG, divX 4 and 5 and Xvid -up to 16 hours of continous audio playback and 5 hours of video playback -FM radio and voice recorder -works with subscription and pay-per-download music and video services ~~~~~~~~PCSpecification~~~~~~~ because you have to install software for this Zen your PC needs to have these specs for a smooth run -pentium 3/AMD duron or better -windows XP -256 RAM or higher -170MB of HDD (harddrive space) or higher -CD-Rom Drive -USB 1.1 or 2.0 ~~~~~What I Think~~~~~~ well i have had... Read review

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