Click to play videoNew Delhi: For tech freaks, here’s introducing another life and death choice – that between Apple iPod Video and Creative Zen vision.
The 30 GB Zen Vision weighs about 240 gram, comes in black or white, has a large 3.7 inch TFT LCD screen and a loudspeaker as well.
There’s volume control, power and mic on the top, television out, power and audio jacks on the side, USB and docking port below and a slot for a compact flash card on the side.
The interface is very user-friendly and apart from video, audio and pictures, it’s got FM radio and voice recording.
So what are the most obvious advantages of this device? For starters, the screen is large and attractive with the sharpest display on a portable video player.
It also supports a lot of different formats including the popular DivX movie.
It has an easy interface and the software that comes bundled is way better than iTunes as it helps you convert all the video on the computer into a playable format without much fuss.
Also unlike an iPod, Zen vision comes with replaceable battery.
Most importantly, the Vision can be used purely as a portable hard drive by plugging it into a Windows XP system and dragging and dropping files without any installation or setup.
But is it the perfect media player? Not quite. The screen maybe superb but the viewing angle is unbelievably narrow.
Plus, video conversion is still not idiot-proof because it doesn’t recognise popular formats like real player and sometimes the conversion is less than perfect.
Even though the Vision plays FM, there’s no way to record it. The price is tempting in dollars but the moment it comes to India, the duties push it up to Rs 30,000 - nearly double the dollar price.
Yet, it is certainly recommended to anyone looking to buy a media player right away and definitely over the Apple iPod video, which doesn’t play any formats except its own, is incredibly difficult to use and doesn’t have half the features for the same price.
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