Creative's Zen Vision versus Apple's iPod

A co-worker of mine in the U.K. asked me to purchase for him Creative's Zen Vision. I oblidged and as I side benefit, I was able to compare it with my other gadgets.

I wasn't aware of this gadget, so I had to lookup what it does. Apparently, on first glance it appears to be an iPod competitor. It sports a 30gb hard drive capable of playing back songs, photos and videos. The three main features that in my opinion distinguishes it from an iPod is the ability to play multiple video formats, its 640 x 480 screen (versus 320 x 240 for the iPod) and the compact flash slot. It also has a fm receiver, an organizer and voice recorder, however this is redundant with the capabilities of most cell phones today.

The first thing I noticed when I unpacked the gadget was the sheer size of the thing. Here are some shots I took for comparison agains a Nokia 770 and an iPod:

This gadget simply is too thick and wide to carry around. The other thing one notices is the aspect ratio of the screen, one would expect a widescreen like the PSP for video viewing.

Lately, I've had a painful experience transfering my PVR recordings (in MPEG2) into the iPod. It's been a two step process, where I convert MPEG2 to Quicktime, then I use Quicktime to generate the iPod compatible format. The one saving grace of the Zen Vision is that you might need to do any conversions, since you it supports a wide range of video formats.

Zen Vision like the iPod does not have any networking capability. The PSP has WiFi so you can conceivably stream and watch videos directly. The same can be said about the Nokia 770. If I wanted easy access to my media collection, then the Nokia 770 or PSP would make much better sense.

However, one really has to wonder, what is this device really for? It's just to bulky to carry around like the iPod. It doesn't have a widescreen like the PSP for video enthusiasts. Interestingly enough, the device has a higher resolution than the PSP. This fact leads me to suspect the real purpose of this device. This device is best used by camera enthusiasts. Camera enthusiast that happen to own a camera that uses compact flash cards. Zen Vision's 30gb drive can conveniently provide temporary storage while in the field. Of course, one can do the same with the iPod camera connector.

So in summary, if you take lots of photos on a camera that uses compact flash and need to immediately view your photos then Creative's Zen Vision portable media player is possibly the device for you. However, if you access your media mostly from home, well then a Wifi device like the PSP or Nokia 770 would me a better alternative. Now, ff you are on the road a lot, then the iPod's form factor simply can't be beat. Therefore, the use case where Zen Vision makes sense is an extremely small case indeed.

The key to ubiquitous access to media is connectivity and form factor. I guess that's why Creative came up with the "Zen Vision:M".