Great-looking video and high-quality audio make the VisionM a great iPod alternative.

By John Gawley on February 7th, 2007

The Creative Labs Zen VisionM is a 30GB video capable music player that gives the ipod a run for its money! Creative’s Zen VisionM is a great Apple iPod alternative.A 30GB shipping model of this video-ready music device possesses one of the finest color screens ever placed on a portable player. The VisionM sounded great, too, though audio codec support is a bit weak–with support for MP3, WMA, and WAV, but not for AAC, FLAC, or Ogg Vorbis formats.

The player achieved a loud level before reaching 1 percent distortion (an industry standard measurement), and generated little noise. The VisionM does more than play music. It supplies a raft of options for photo and video viewing on the unit’s beautiful 320-by-240-pixel screen.

This media player has an incredible LCD screen! An included adapter and cable lets you link the player to a TV. The VisionM works nicely with PlaysForSure subscription services such as Napster. In addition, it carries an FM tuner/recorder and a voice recorder.

With the touchpad at the default sensitivity setting, a few quick flicks of the thumb allows a user to move through lengthy lists of artists and albums, though landing on a specific selection was sometimes challenging.