Widescreen awesomeness on this iPod killer. Review on Creative Zen Vision W

So I finally got my hands on the 60 GB version of the Zen Vision W. I ordered it off cafegadgets.com, a decent site for ordering gadgets in India. A week later I was feverishly ripping open the courier delivered package.

Appearance: This is quite a large player-fits your palm if you have large hands and weighs a hefty 300gms. So you can't exactly carry it around in your pocket. The buttons are a bit small but  press with a satisfying click. A  clear plastic cover protects the giant 4.3" screen. It doesn't get warm as it plays and is comfortable to hold for long periods of time(when you're watching stuff). A nice black velvet pouch is provided to carry it around. The charger socket and TV out are protected by a rubber cover. A CompactFlash memory slot is provided for copying photos off a digital camera. You can also get adapters, so that SD, microSD, MMC and other cards can be used.

Format support and software: Creative Media Explorer is provided on a CD-it tacks onto Windows explorer, and organizes the storable media in categories- Music, Video, TV(for TV clips), Pictures and Zencasts(fancy name for podcasts). ZenCast, a podcasting client, is also provided. There was another iTunes like software for managing music collections, but I chose not to install it since I anyway have Winamp. The product is recognized by Windows media player 10 and 11 and you can directly manage your music using that if you prefer.

The media explorer provided is easy to use.  Drop a video on it and it will analyse it first and convert it(to WMV)  if it is incompatible(either the codecs, or the video dimensions). Though it natively converts WMV, the player supports even Divx and Xvid with a few restrictions(hence it's not Divx certified). I used VirtualDub to convert a few

movies and episodes of Firefly; Xvid conversion is usually faster than WMV. For a 45 minute episode it took about 20 minutes to reprocess video and audio(from AC3 to MP3, as the device doesnt support AC3 audio). Copying files is super fast over USB 2.0.

Interface: I'm accustomed to the media library on my Nokia N82, this offers a similar view. There's a 5 way directional key, a dedicated menu key, a'back' key, and 3 keys for playback- play/pause, next and previous. A tiny  mono speaker lets you playback sound-it's not really great and it's better to hook up the player to headphones or external speakers. Sound clarity is good, but I don't like the bundled headphones, they dont fit properly. It's better to get a good set of headphones. Sound clarity is quite good, there's a 5 band equalizer with presets, but accessing it is awkward. It's not easy to quickly switch between the currently playing item and the equalizer.

A few color themes are provided, you can hack the player to add a few more if you like. Navigating songs from a 3000+ collection would be tiring since there's no keypad to quickly type and jump. Instead, they provide an alphabet list on the side, so you can at least jump to the first letter. An onscreen keyboard is also available to type on but it's cumbersome, given that the screen is also not a touchscreen. On the whole-the menu interface is easy to learn if not fantastic, and you don't need to read the manual to figure this out.

Screen: Full marks to the enormous screen- 4.3", 480x272 @ 262k colors. This is less than my N82's 16M color display-but who can tell the difference? Clarity is amazing-provided of course that the movie you copied was also high def.If you load a low quality clip, you can see the difference. I turned down screen brightness to 10% for indoor use and to conserve battery life-even then it is pretty clear.

Music-Music playback is great, with the equalizer as mentioned before. Album art is also displayed if your songs have them embedded-however it could not display them for all my songs. Guess this is because of the images being too large in some of them.

Podcasts-The CD ships with Creative ZenCAST, a dedicated podcasting client. You can subscribe to podcasts and synchronize them with the device. They appear under a separate category called Zencasts.

FM Radio- Just like mobile phones, this requires the headset to be plugged in.However reception was much poorercompared to the radio on my Nokia-had to keep shifting the wire to get a good signal. You can save upto 20 station presets.

Photos: You can copy photos to it, and optionally resize them. They show up crisp and beautiful on the screen. Initially there are a lot of sample photos and videos shipped with the device-they really showcase the bright screen. It can also display them as a slideshow.

Voice recorder- There's a built in voice recorder; the mic is located at the top right of the device. However I had no use for it and so haven't tested this feature.

Battery life: Creative claims 4 hours continuous video playback and 15 hours for continous audio. For video-that means around you can watch around 2 full length Hollywood movies. I guess if you turn down the screen brightness it would be a bit more. The supplied charger takes 3 hours to charge, via USB it does it in 6. This is an added bonus-even though you can't use the device when it's connected to a PC, it still keeps charging.

Hackability: This is obviously not officially supported- but there's sites like pimpmyzen.com where you can create custom themes, splash screens etc for your device- at your own risk. Creative makes it easy to revert back though-if you download the original firmware from their website, you can always restore it if things go wrong.

Recovery: There's a recovery mode available-remove the battery and replace it while holding the power switch on-and you get taken to a boot menu where you can reformat the drive, restore firmware etc. Not for the faint of heart.

Conclusion: This is a solid player that runs rings around the iPod masses due to its beautiful big screen and support for varied formats. It's perfect to take along on a long journey or even casual listening around the house. Of course, it's too large and heavy to carry in your pocket-then again, it's primarily a video device. At the price I paid, it's quite a steal(until the next greatest comes along of course).