Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB
Page 8
Image Quality
In this section, I will compare the image quality of the Zen Vision:M with the Zen Vision and iPod 5G.
The Zen Vision has a 640x480 screen, while the Zen Vision:M and iPod 5G have 320x240 screens. However, for easy comparison, I have made the following screenshots the same size.
Please note that due to the way cameras capture images and perform white balancing, the following screenshots are not meant to represent the actual image quality on the players. The comparisons are meant to be made relative to each other only.
There are four main screenshots in this section: two scenes from Dreamworks' Over The Hedge HD trailer, and two photos.
Right on top is the Zen Vision, followed by the Zen Vision:M.
There are two things of interest: first is the very obvious aliasing at the high contrast areas on the Zen Vision:M, such as roof of the house, or the section where the pavement meets the road. Second is the difference in colours. The Zen Vision:M has much more vibrant and saturated colours.
Again, the Zen Vision, followed by the Zen Vision:M.
Again, a little aliasing can be seen, such as where the yellow of the turtle shell meets the dark green. And again, the Zen Vision:M produces vibrant colours.
The higher brightness and vibrant colours make it very comfortable to watch videos on the Zen Vision:M, even on a train with fast moving reflections from the window. The viewing angle is also wide enough that you don't have to lock your arm in a fixed position like with the Zen Vision. The only problem I had was the aliasing. The aliasing occurs when the video has a resolution higher than 320x240, and the player has to resize it. The result is that any high contrast areas suffer from aliasing. To confirm this, I re-encoded the above video to fit within 320x240.
However, to re-encode your videos to fit within 320x240 can be tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, if you use Creative's Video Converter to do so, the aliasing still appears (probably because it uses Nearest Neighbor resizing).
Next, let's take a look at photos. Again, the Zen Vision is first, followed by the Zen Vision:M.
Unfortunately, this time, the Zen Vision:M produces overly bright and saturated photos. I would say that when viewing the photos on the computer, the actual quality is between that of the Zen Vision (somwhat poor contrast and dull colours) and the Zen Vision:M (too bright, saturated colours), but leaning more towards the Zen Vision.
Also, the Zen Vision:M suffers from aliasing.
To sum up, the brighter, vibrant display of the Zen Vision:M makes it ideal for watching videos, especially when on-the-go. However, the weak resizing causes aliasing, which ruins the image. Also, the vibrant colours works against the Zen Vision:M when it comes to photos, creating photos that look over-saturated. An analogy is this: the Zen Vision is like a standard PC LCD monitor, which has better colour reproduction, while the Zen Vision:M is like a TV set, with bright and vivid colours.
Problems
The most noticeable problem I found with the Zen Vision:M was a 0.5 to 1 second pause every 7 to 10 minutes of video playback. This occured when playing full-length, 700MB XviD files, but did not happen on a transcoded WMV video.
Update: 15 Jan - Creative has released a new firmware, v1.11.01, which fixes the above problem.
Like the Zen Vision, the Zen Vision:M also can only resume playback of the last played file. I would have preferred if it would remember them for each video file.
Another smaller quirk was that most of the time, the Zen Vision:M failed to begin charging when first plugged to the AC adapter. I had to unplug, and reinsert the connector. This is not a really big deal, but might be frustrating if, for example, you left it to charge overnight only to wake up in the morning and find that it wasn't charged at all. Creative informed me that this could be a fault specific to the unit I received.
The Zen Vision:M is also very prone to scratches. The review unit I received had some scratches on it, and I admit I added a few to them. If the screen portion was recessed a little, at least that would prevent some scratches on the screen itself. Still, this allows Creative to introduce one more accessory: screen protectors.
Click for larger picture.
Having a sync adapter is also a bad idea. While it is understandable that using a sync adapter would reduce the player size somewhat, having to use the sync adapter to connect the USB cable, or to charge using the AC adapter is really troublesome. This also means that, unless you actually bother to carry the sync adapter with you, you won't be able to bring around the Zen Vision:M and use it as portable storage.
While not a player-related problem, I did find it strange that the pouch included with the Zen Vision:M was so oversized. It was only slightly smaller than the Zen Vision pouch, and keep in mind that the Zen Vision is much larger than the Zen Vision:M.
Click for larger picture.
Just a quick mention of things already brought up earlier in the review: poor resizing method leading to aliasing, over-saturated colours and MediaSource and Audio Converter do not support Unicode tags and file names.