Creative's much anticipated Zen Vision media player was clearly aimed to come in at $399, with another hundred and change coming from must-have add-ons like the docking cradle, second battery pack, and remote control options. With their competition in this nascent space marketing products in the $700 range, it sure looks good on paper. But to get to that sweet spot, Creative had to leave out a number of things, principally the ability to record video directly into the unit and a comprehensive user manual.

But the things they did incorporate into the Zen Vision are quite good. The 3.8-inch, outdoor-viewable 640x480-pixel display is a delight. If the viewable angle was a bit wider, we'd probably to call it magnificent. The new user interface -- notably, it is not Windows Portable Media Center -- is lovely to look at and easy to figure out in about 30 seconds. The buttons are well located and clearly marked, so there won't be a lot of unintended actions unless you really get sloppy. The removable battery pack runs up to 13 hours for audio and 4 hours of continuous video. There is a handy CompactFlash slot built into the left side, with an optional adapter for other types of flash media like SmartMedia and Memory Stick wafers. Pop in a card full of photos and they'll copy automatically for immediate viewing. JPEGs up to 8-megapixels in size are supported, so most pro shooters are not well served by this feature.

Playback quality of still photos was crisp and videos are smooth and artifact-free. I never felt the 30GB hard drive inside was struggling at all. Audio playback was flawless, as we've come to expect from Creative products. Noteworthy is the Vision's 97dB of dynamic range above the noise floor. What's this mean to you? It means you hear nothing at all until the music starts -- nothing. Prepare to be pleasantly startled.

Compared to the company's last PMP, which was like a shiny black plastic brick, the Vision is about the size and weight of a high-end PDA -- the Palm LifeDrive comes to mind. I wouldn't call the Zen Vision pocketable, but then I complain about my Motorola RAZR in my pocket, so you'll have to make your own call on this aspect. The case is cool magnesium in either dark grey or a pearly white finish -- both look and feel really good.

So far, I've described using this device to consume media already on the device. Getting that media onto the thing, however, is an entirely different matter. Like all media players, this is a minefield of gotchas, eating up time like you have no Earthly responsibilities except to shoehorn bitstreams into shiny metal boxes. If, perchance, you do have a job, a family, or a hobby or two, you may wish to read the following critique carefully before you hand your plastic to the cashier.

The Zen Vision ships with a pretty well designed application for Windows that aggregates all compatible media from your PC and offers to load it onto your Vision. It can even detect if a particular video file can be copied without conversion or whether if must go through the digital wringer to be transcoded first. It isn't always right, but it's pretty darn good -- leaps and bounds better than anything we've seen from any other PMP maker.

Video conversion is problematic for two reasons: it takes forever and it renders everything it touches to half the screen's resolution: 320x480. TiVo owners who have Series 2 boxes and Home Media Option enabled can transfer recorded TV shows to view on the Vision, but again, you'll find yourself staring at the thing and screaming, "What's taking so [expletive deleted] long?" It can take as much as two hours for every hour you've recorded to transcode -- and this thing is marketed as a convenience device? I can see going through this much hassle for something I intend to watch over and over, but for some ephemeral TV show? Not so much.

That's the good news. The bad news is, unless you want to become a video hacker and break the letter of the law by using banned software tools, you can forget about watching your commercial DVDs on this machine. You can download from Microsoft DRM-sanctioned sites like CinemaNow.com, which offer subscriptions to legal movie downloads, but the selection is quite limited, the prices and high, and the video and audio quality are sub-optimal. It's easy to find and use DVD decryption software in the net, but it takes time, tons of hard drives space, and patience. Are you sure you want to get into all that?

Home movies are no problem, of course, and look fabulous on that bright, crisp little screen.

Not content to leave those last few cubic millimeters transistor-free, Creative stuffed an FM radio tuner, a voice recorder, and an Outlook-compatible organizer into this unit. The radio is actually pretty good, using the headphone cable as an antenna and showing signal strength with cellphone-style bars. You can even press and hold the Play button to record on the fly, through there is unfortunately no timer function. The voice recorder is clearly an afterthought, with no control over the internal mic's sensitivity or line inputs for direct recording from another source. The organizer claims to "sync" with Outlook, but it doesn't really -- not in the sense most of us would agree on. Your calendar, tasks, and contacts make a one-way trip and must constantly be recopied to stay up to date. To be fair, the iPod's iCal/Address Book "sync" function is just as lame.

Still, after all this, I can't help but admire the Zen Vision and lust after it just a little teeny bit. Creative's latest volley in the PMP wars points the way to the future without actually taking us there. Devices like this are appearing way in advance of the entertainment industry being ready make it easy for you to enjoy their content on your device the way you want. Creative, like Archos and others, are establishing beachheads for the real battle to come in the years ahead. If you have the time and inclination to tinker with arcane bits of hacker software, the horrors of peer-to-peer networks, DiVX download sites, or even your own TiVo box, then you can enjoy TV and big screen movies on a little screen that you can carry with you. I have to wonder how many folks will buy one of these things only to show their digital photos, watch home movies, and listen to MP3 files and FM radio. When it comes to media consumption, only you can decide where your sweet spot lies. --David MacNeill

$399 from creative.com

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