Introduction

Hmmm... it's been a while now, hasn't it? It's been almost one year since my Creative Zen Portable Media Center Review. Between then and now, many portable media players have appeared in the market.

In fact, there are a lot of Taiwanese- and Korean-made media players available in the market these days. Even the Archos media player is now available locally as well.

But forget about those media players. Today, I'm going to focus on Creative's new portable media player - the Creative Zen Vision!

A New Device, A New Look

First of all, you should note that unlike its predecessor, this media player is no longer using Microsoft's Portable Media Center. Instead, it uses Creative's own software with a different user interface (UI).

The new UI gets the job done but you'll probably need some time to get used to it. Navigating your media library is simple enough... IF your media is properly sorted. This is particularly true for music files since they will probably constitute the bulk of media files in this device.

When you navigate through your music library using Albums, Artist or Genre; you can make use of shortcut buttons on the screen to jump to a certain alphabet. This helps you quickly go through large libraries.

However, the menu feels slower than what we experienced in the Creative Zen Portable Media Center. There's also the usual wish that certain Zen features made it over to the Zen Vision. But even at first glance, the Zen Vision has improved over the original Zen.

The new Zen Vision is much more pocketable than the Zen media player. It's now about the size of a PDA at 124.2 mm long x 74.4 mm wide x 20.1mm thick. So, the Zen Vision is much easier to carry around. Of course, the smaller size comes at a price.

While the Zen PMC came with a huge battery that gave it exceptional battery life, the Zen Vision's battery has only about half of the capacity at 1650 mAh. Fortunately, the battery is removable. So, you can get actually get a few more batteries and swap them in for extended periods of use.

The Zen Vision is available in two colours - Magnesium Black or iPod Pearl White. As you can see, I purchased the Magnesium Black version. The case has a textured feel to it, which prevents it from being a fingerprint magnet. The shiny, smooth trim, however, is a real magnet for fingerprint smudges!