Creative Zen Vision 30GB vs. Consus PMC-300 20GB
Page 14
Consus PMC-300
Navigation System (Continued)
Finally, we come to the "Music" menu. To index newly transferred music, you must press the "Tools" button, then choose "Refresh". This "Refresh" takes quite a while to complete. Also, I encountered a few instances where it just hanged there and I had to switch the player off and on again.
Selecting "Album" lets you browse by, well, album name. Note that it is not in alphabetical order.
Selecting the album will display the list of songs in that album.
Pressing "Enter" plays the selected track. Pressing "Tools" provides a few more functions.
Remarks
Comparing the Zen Vision and PMC-300, it is obvious the Zen Vision wins hands-down. The Zen Vision's menus are visually appealing, and quite intuitive. The higher resolution helps too. The PMC-300's menus look very basic, and very text-based. While the "Tools" button is good in that it provides extra functionality (like the Zen Vision's "Options" button), the menus are not very well organised, and look like they were placed there as an afterthought.
The Zen Vision also has some nice effects, like translucent status bars over videos or pictures. Little things like this add to the overall user experience.
While the Zen Vision reacts to button presses consistently with a slight delay, the PMC-300 sometimes responds instantly, and sometimes with a delay. I got rather irritated with it at certain points, especially when coupled with the overly-sensitive touch buttons. There were a few occasions I ended up several screens away due to a delayed response of the player, and because I pressed the buttons a few more times when I thought the initial presses did not register.
The PMC-300 is also not a good performer when it comes to music. I encountered a few instances where the player hung on me. It also takes quite a while when opening a folder to browse for music. Also, music in folders cannot be indexed using the "Refresh" function. Windows Media Audio (WMA) files also cannot be indexed.