New player
Feb. 24th, 2007 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyI've had my new MP3 player for a few days now, and I'm very happy indeed with it.
It's a Creative Zen Vision M. I previously had a Zen Micro, and though it sounded fine and the UI was good in principle, the execution left much to be desired. The touchpad on the Micro never worked very well for me, and ALL the navigation was via touchpad; no tactile feedback at all. It got kind of irritating at times.
By contrast, the Vision is really quite nice. Navigation is easier; the navigation surfaces actually click, and the touchpad rocks back and forth for left/right navigation functions. Very sensible and well thought out.
The screen is outstanding; video on it looks noticably better than on coworker's iPods. Video navigation (finding a spot in a 2-hour video) is really easy and fast.
Since I did plan on using this at least somewhat for video, the Zen was the sensible choice; it plays pretty much every format around so I don't have to convert any video to put it on this device, I just copy it over.
I think the sound quality is great too. We used some $450 Sennheiser headphones a guy at work has at his desk, and loaded a few tracks into an iPod video and this, and we both thought the Zen sounded a bit better.
The FM radio is also much better than the one in the Micro. And I'm happy to have the FM recorder and the microphone recorder back again (not present in the cheapo player I've been using even though it had both FM and a voice recorder); being able to record convention panels and such is nice, and there are a few NPR shows that don't podcast that I like to pick up when I get a chance. The 10-hour per-recording limit makes that stuff possible.
The Zen is also $170 after rebate for the 30 GB model. Pretty easy to live with.
I went out to eBay and picked up about every accessory I'll need for $25; silicone case, hard case, another set of headphones, screen protector, neck strap, arm band, AC adaptor, DC adaptor, A/V cable.
The media organizer software that comes with it is pretty good. I decided to start over with my collection since it's very messy, so I'm dragging things over to a new drive one band at a time and cleaning up the tags. There's a lot of crud I never listen to anyway. Also I have a lot of classical that I'd like to listen to but again it's all over, lots of it on CD. I like the explorer thing too; it's very skinny, and lets you just move files over to the thing without a lot of dancing around.
It's a Creative Zen Vision M. I previously had a Zen Micro, and though it sounded fine and the UI was good in principle, the execution left much to be desired. The touchpad on the Micro never worked very well for me, and ALL the navigation was via touchpad; no tactile feedback at all. It got kind of irritating at times.
By contrast, the Vision is really quite nice. Navigation is easier; the navigation surfaces actually click, and the touchpad rocks back and forth for left/right navigation functions. Very sensible and well thought out.
The screen is outstanding; video on it looks noticably better than on coworker's iPods. Video navigation (finding a spot in a 2-hour video) is really easy and fast.
Since I did plan on using this at least somewhat for video, the Zen was the sensible choice; it plays pretty much every format around so I don't have to convert any video to put it on this device, I just copy it over.
I think the sound quality is great too. We used some $450 Sennheiser headphones a guy at work has at his desk, and loaded a few tracks into an iPod video and this, and we both thought the Zen sounded a bit better.
The FM radio is also much better than the one in the Micro. And I'm happy to have the FM recorder and the microphone recorder back again (not present in the cheapo player I've been using even though it had both FM and a voice recorder); being able to record convention panels and such is nice, and there are a few NPR shows that don't podcast that I like to pick up when I get a chance. The 10-hour per-recording limit makes that stuff possible.
The Zen is also $170 after rebate for the 30 GB model. Pretty easy to live with.
I went out to eBay and picked up about every accessory I'll need for $25; silicone case, hard case, another set of headphones, screen protector, neck strap, arm band, AC adaptor, DC adaptor, A/V cable.
The media organizer software that comes with it is pretty good. I decided to start over with my collection since it's very messy, so I'm dragging things over to a new drive one band at a time and cleaning up the tags. There's a lot of crud I never listen to anyway. Also I have a lot of classical that I'd like to listen to but again it's all over, lots of it on CD. I like the explorer thing too; it's very skinny, and lets you just move files over to the thing without a lot of dancing around.
