The Short Form

$300 / 4 x 2.5 x 0.8 IN / 5.8 OZ / us.creative.com / 800-998-1000

Plus

•Good video and audio quality •Long battery life

Minus

•Awkward touch-pad control •Bulkier than the iPod •Works only with Windows XP

Key Features

•30-gigabyte (GB) hard disk •2.5-inch, 320 x 240-pixel LCD screen •Plays MP3, WMA, and WAV audio; MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, Motion-JPEG, DivX, and XviD video •Rated battery life: 14 hours (audio), 4 hours (video) •FM radio/recorder •Voice recorder •Five colors available

Let's be honest: The Creative Zen Vison:M portable media player is an iPod knockoff. There are MP3 players, and then there are iPod knockoffs — players so similar that it can't be pure coincidence. Announced just a couple of months after Apple introduced its video-enabled fifth-generation iPod, the Vision:M also aims to be a high-capacity music player with decent video capabilities. And, as you'll see, it performs those functions very well indeed. But it also eerily mimics the iPod, and when you closely imitate something so beloved, minor differences really get noticed — usually for the worse.

Exhibit A: the vertical touch pad smack in the middle of the Vision:M's controls. The pad is a different take on the iPod's elegant clickwheel. Sliding your fingers up and down the pad, you scroll around menus or fast-forward through songs and videos. You select things (like a song in a playlist) by touching the center of the pad. But since the selection area of the pad isn't distinct, trying to punch up the right option often leads to accidental scrolling — a real hassle.

SETUP Setting up the Creative Zen Vision:M will be impossible without Windows XP — the supplied Media Explorer software will refuse to install on older Windows operating systems, and as with all of Creative's players, Mac users need not apply. But once it's installed, the software makes copying media files to the player a no-brainer: just select the ones you want, hit "Transfer," and — BAM! — you're loaded up. One strength of the Vision:M is that it's not nearly as picky as the iPod about what kinds of video files it will play. It won't, however, play the MPEG-4 videos the iPod likes. As with most portables, creating playlists on the go is cumbersome, so it's best to play DJ on your PC and then bring your lists over.

Speaking of DJ, the Zen Vision:M has a cool option in its music menu called just that. Besides keeping track of your most frequently played songs, the DJ submenu also compiles a Rarely Heard list of tunes you haven't played in a while — a nice detail. Another perk is the My Shortcut button, one of the four "hard" buttons on the main controls. You can assign this button whatever command you want — shuffle songs, for example.

PERFORMANCE Digital music sounded perfectly fine on the Creative Zen Vision:M with the supplied earbuds. I pulled out my iPod to compare how it handled identical files (also using the Creative's buds). After playing a couple of tracks from various sources, including some MP3s ripped from Franz Ferdinand's self-titled debut CD, I thought the two players sounded nearly identical, with just a pinch of extra warmth and power from the iPod.

The Creative's video chops also impressed. I put it side by side with the iPod, and both screens put on quite a show. Images on the Creative were crisp and clear and a full 30 frames per second — about as good as it gets on a 2.5-inch screen (a cable for connecting to a TV sells for $30). And even though the Zen Vision:M's screen is more than an inch smaller than the one on its big brother, the Zen Vision, it had better color rendition and off-angle viewing.

But it's the little details that really bring the Creative Zen Vision:M down. Besides that annoying touch pad, its hard buttons need just a bit more pressure than the iPod's, making it more difficult to operate one-handed — especially since it's about twice as thick as the 30-GB iPod. The extra girth probably accounts for the Vision:M's superior battery life (4 hours of video instead of the iPod's 2), but I'd prefer something less unwieldy. The battery drains faster anyway, since the screen doesn't dim completely while playing music and the Creative Zen Vision:M portable media player won't automatically pause playback when the headphones are removed, as the iPod does.

BOTTOM LINE In trying to outdo the iPod, Creative only emphasizes why Apple is king of the mountain. Creative has had its greatest success when it's not trying to imitate the 'Pod, notably with the Zen Vision video player I tested last November. With Apple soon to release a video-centric iPod with a 4-inch screen, this would have been the perfect time for Creative to pounce first with an updated and improved Zen Vision. Instead, we get this ... wannabe.

Watch the Zen Vison:M in action!

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