Product Reviews

With the newspapers full of Apple's new video iPod, it's easy to forget that portable video players have been on sale for a while. Creative's new Zen Vision is the best one we've seen yet.

Unlike most video players, which feel cheap and plasticky, the Zen Vision feels solid, metallic and well made. Instead of the fiddly touch sensitive controls found on its other Zen products it has a well organised set of firm, but clicky, buttons.

Transferring files is simple as it integrates neatly with Windows Media Player 10. The 30GB hard disk is big enough to store plenty of music and a good amount of video.

The player's screen has a resolution

ADVERTISEMENT

of 640x480 pixels and measures 75x57mm. It's a great way to show off JPEG photos, and video files look superb. Its viewing angle is narrow, though, so two people can't comfortably watch the display at the same time.

The Zen can play most types of video files, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV9 and DivX. Its CompactFlash slot also allows images from a digital camera to be downloaded to the hard disk. In our battery test it played video for four hours. Sound quality through the headphones was great, while the built-in speaker was also good.

When playing music files the screen turns off to save the battery. The Zen can play MP3 and WMA files, and works perfectly with the DRM protected music downloaded from services like Napster. Should you run out of albums, there's an FM radio tuner and you can record radio to the hard disk. The Zen played music for 10.5 hours in our battery life test.

The Zen Vision is the best portable video player we've seen. It feels good, looks good and works very well. Our only concern is the price. It does more than the £220 iPod Video, but few people will be able to justify spending over £300 on this kind of gadget. We wish Creative had omitted the CompactFlash expansion slot, and kept the price down.