Customer Reviews
great for the plane 
2007-12-28
I've had this 1 year now. It's great for air trips. I watch a movie, then put on songs. I have about 10 movies, 80 pictures and 400 songs loaded. The batery lasts about 4 hours for video or 2 hours of video and 5 hours of music. I use DVDshrink (freeware) and CloneDVDmobile to copy movies to the viewer. It does occasionally lock up but if you remove the batery and reconnect it the veiwer always restarts. The fast forward and rewind are difficult, you don't see where you are while rewinding. Because the viewer has regular TV resolution the picture when plugged into a regular TV is amazing.
This is a great way to carry several hours of movies and music and a great way to watch and listen to them.
Great Amazon & Creative support! 
2007-07-05
The player does all that it says. But everyone's worst nightmare is getting a bad one out of the box, which happened to me. I called Creative support and the helped me confirm the hard drive was defective. Then I told Amazon and in 5 minutes had a prepaid return label and a new player within the week. That is great in anyone's book. Still getting used to the player, but it works great!
Good product for the price 2007-03-30
Pros:
A lot of features such as Video Playback, MP3, Organizer, Alarm Clock, Voice Recorder, FM Tuner. Using their software is basically like opening up explorer in Windows. Resolution and sound quality are nice. Having buttons instead of a touch pad allows for more precise control. Removable battery pack is nice. There is an additional extended battery pack available for purchase. Has a speaker so you can blast ghetto music in a fancy restaurant if you'd like. Can take a CompactFlash card to transfer data. Many other fun features.
Cons:
OMG is it HUGE!!! I honestly wasn't expecting it to be THAT big. I thought "hm... maybe a little bit bigger than the Zen Vision M...?" This thing is almost the exact same size as my Nintendo DS! I just can't get over how HUGE it is. It's a bit of a turn off for those who might want to use it to exercise and walk around with. Think super old school Walkman but significantly heavier! When the delivery guy dropped it off, I was shocked that the box was so HUGE!! I thought they had sent me the wrong item! And then I opened it...!!! I was almost repulsed by how prehistoric it looked!
More cons... The thing LAGS. It definitely doesn't operate nearly as fast as the iPod when switching menus. I guess that's because of all the things it offers. It does get to be a little bit tedious and frustrating.
Even more cons... Lack of accessories. I guess I probably won't need a toughskin or protector for this thing, because if I drop it, it'll damage whatever it lands on, purely by its size.
Overall, as far as the functions of this player are concerned, I'm happy with it. However, I'm still trying to get over the ridiculous size of the thing. Do I dare bring it out in public? What would my friends say? Would people stare?! I highly suspect that they will laugh.
Oh well... I guess I was really only going to use it to play music in the car. I must remember to hide it in the glove box before I let any passengers in the car.
Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player (white) 2007-03-12
I just love my Multimedia Player. I can play songs, listen to books and store pictures to carry around with me. The screen is big and sharp so you can see pictures very well. I have not tried to play videos on it yet and I have not had any problems so I don't have any complaints.
Perfect 2007-03-11
I was a little concerned about buying this item by the Internet, but everything was really easy and the service was perfect. The items arrived in very good conditions and on time. Wonderful service!
Good product 2007-01-14
Zen Vision takes portable digital-media another step into the future with this very compact multimedia player. Featuring a transflective screen that provides excellent image and video quality even in bright sunlit conditions, the 30GB Zen Vision carries up to 15,000 songs, tens of thousands of photos, or up to 120 hours of video. With a convenient size 4.9 by 2.9 by .8 inches at only 8.4 ounces, this compact digital-media player offers MP3 audio storage and play, digital photo storage and display, plus MP4 digital video storage and play. Plug&View slot on the side of the player supports both Compact Flash Type I and Type II media. An optional Compact Flash Adapter plugs directly into the Compact Flash slot to accept the most popular memory card types including SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card and Secure Digital, 17 variations in all Supports a wide selection of video formats for enjoyment of movies downloaded from the Internet, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Simple Profile formats such as DivX and Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG. The Zen Vision also supports TiVoToGo, for viewing of TV content recorded on a TiVo personal video recorder, and digitized home movies transferred from the PC USB 2.0 connectivity Built-in microphone - shows volume levels on screen for optimum voice recording quality Organizer - Provides calendar, tasks and contact lists, and syncs with Microsoft Outlook Enables setting of Date & Time, plus allocation of Removable Disk space for dedicated storage Clock with wake-to-any-music alarm Color - BLACK
I Love This Thing! 2006-10-29
I am very impressed by the Multimedia player, especially with the image (video) quality. It is a little heavy to carry around, but it has worked great for me using it in rental cars with a cassette adapter, and in various hotel and cruise cabins with the portabale speaker system. I have found the controls and menus to be easy to work thru, and easy to see. I am not sophisticated by any means, and still learning, but this unit is easy to use, and maintenance is a non-issue. Battery life isn't as the company predicted, but I got at least 6.5 hours of driving time out of it, and that was enough.
Storage of music is tremendous, and quite possibly more than I would ever be able to use, but as a portable storage device for transferring pics over a long vacation, it fills the need in me.
The problems with the unit are that it does freeze up at times, but very, very rarely during playback. Mostly it hangs up when I am downloading to the unit, or is not recognized by the PC, which has happened frequently. Once I retry, after a day or so, it loads up as though nothing had ever happened. This is disruptive, especially when you are under the gun and trying to load up before a trip, and has occured at those times, 3 times in a row. Still wouldn't give up the unit though. The biggest problem I have is not really with the unit per se, but with how the music is loaded and displayed in the folders. I guess it is related to the Tagging of the music, and needs to be cleaned up (which is really labor intensive, so free music really isn't free).
Tried to purchase accessories from Creative but, they fell down on the job because of relocation of their warehouse, or so they said. Other than that, they were pretty good at explaining any issues with the unit within the first 30 days.
Would I purchase again? Yes. But would like the pricing to be more competitive. But I have to tell you, the video quality is superb, and if you are going to load quality video, then, this is the unit to get.
Definitely Worth the Money! 2006-08-23
I asked for the Zen Vision for my birthday. I chose this one versus the Apple iPod because of the larger screen to watch movies, removable battery and built in FM radio and voice recorder. My parents were a little bit wary of buying it for me - saying that they only say the point of listening to music and $390 was a lot to pay for gift. However, once I got it, it was definitely worth the money.
First of all, it was a lot smaller and lighter than I expected. I kind of thought it would be big and bulky, but it was light enough to be comfortable in my hand as well as small enough to fit in my front pocket. I compared it to my older brother's 3G iPod (40GB and clickwheel), and the Zen stacked up nicely. It was slightly thinner, but also longer and wider (which is expected because one of the assets of this player is the size of the screen). As soon as I turned it on, I found it was incredibly easy to use. The menus are really simple to use, and the buttons are natural.
The software was easy to install, and the nice thing is that the Zen synchs automatically with windows media player. And, within an hour, my Zen had all my songs, videos and photos. The sound quality is superb! Not to mention the video and picture quality. The screen is beautiful, and my home videos have never looked so good! The radio reception is a little sketchy, and the voice recorder isn't top grade, but they're both acceptable. There's really no problem at all.
I've had my Zen for about a day now, and I couldn't be happier. I'm having some trouble putting movies on it, since the included software doesn't convert DVDs. (BTW, the included Media Center Software isn't that useful - but luckily you can perform all the same tasks on Windows Media Player, which I do.) I took another reviewer's advice and am using a third party software to copy the DVDs to my computer. Hopefully that'll work! But overall, the battery life is great, and everything Creative Labs promises is here. I highly reccomend this product. Much better than an iPod Video!
Mind Blowing 2006-08-11
Before buying this one I did a lot of research and narrowed down my options to either the 5th gen 30gb ipod or the creative zen vision,and i don't regret getting the zen vision at all.
I've just compared the two below
Zen vision:Resolution 640x480 with a huge 262k 3.7inch lcd screen
ipod video 30gb:320x240 with a 65k 2.5inch lcd screen
Zen vision:It's got a built in preview speaker which is great if u have to get a preview of the song
ipod video 30gb:no previw speaker
Zen vision:Has a really good FM radio and an awesome microphone
ipod video 30gb:Don't know of any feature of that sort
Zen vision:u can upload music from any site imaginable
ipod video 30gb:only the itunes crap which is 1.00$/song.....??
Zen vision:can play almost every video format including DivX
ipod video 30gb:sorry mate look somewhere else!!
Overall the vision is well worth the extra bucks
It might be heavy but the built quality is simply great....buy the vision if u follow ur heart,buy the ipod...if someone told u so
Like the idea, but product has issues 
2006-08-06
I love the look and the idea of the Creative Vision, but I've had quite a few problems with mine, and it's only a month or so old. First, the device kept freezing up when I plugged it into the computer. I finally figured out that the USB cable was faulty. So then I got another USB cable that's OK. So then it worked fine for a month or so, at which point, now it's started to freeze up for no reason. A few days ago, it just froze when I was viewing photos on it. Today, it froze when I plugged it into a computer under its flash drive function. When it's not having any problems, it's a beautiful device, and I love it. But it's flaws are disappointing...
