News   Forum   Reviews   Articles   Where to Shop   Links   Polls   Submit News   DAP Shop  
Creative Zen Vision vs. Consus PMC-300
comment: 20 | Saturday, September 17 (2005) 09:11AM | Posted by Robert Sinke
We've been waiting for a detailed Zen Vision review for quite a while by now. Monsternet took up the task, added another PMP to it all (the Consus aka Mele PMC-300) and went full-blast on the in-depth'ism. Nice work there, brothers.


Verdict:

To sum up, the Consus PMC-300 is a decent newcomer to the Portable Media Player market. For its price, the PMC-300 offers somewhat of a compromise between price and usability. The Zen Vision, on the other hand, is one of Creative's best products to be released. It is almost everything you need in a Portable Media Player, and for a somewhat decent price tag too. In deciding the score to give the Zen Vision, I was torn between giving it a 9 or a perfect 10. It was a difficult decision, but I finally decided to go with the conservative figure and give it 9 out of 10.

(PMC-300 scores 6 out of 10). Almost a perfect score for the Vision then, huh? Sounds like we should give it a test run sooner or later as well.

LINK

Thanks, jgiam
Comments

watergrave

Comments: 287
 		Sep 17 (2005) 10:01AM  

awesomely detalied review.... IMO, 6 out of 10 though is harsh for the Consus PMC-300..
but beacuse Creative has proven it's worth and the name itself is a testament of quality i don't ,ind giving it a 9... but Consus did a pretty good job as well.. a 7.3 - 8 could be justifiable....



Allen
Location: Dub Vee Ooo
Comments: 1511
 		Sep 17 (2005) 10:44AM  

As nice as the vision looks I still think it has some serious flaws... first off the battery life for watching videos... 4.5 hours? How will I EVER be able to watch my lotr trilogy in that amount of time?! and the second bone I have to pick with this perticular player deals with the lack of ogg vorbis support.... with only 30 gigs... Im going to need all the space I can get to fit my movies on it... my point being vorbis is smaller and sounds better (in my opinnion) them mp3's... But besides thoes small flaws... looks like a good player



The Netherlands

Comments: 36
 		Sep 17 (2005) 11:01AM  

I like how they claim that creative was the first company to make a PMP and that all others are only copies of the Creative PMC. It shows they really know their stuff.

Second review to mention, and emphasize, the creative's very small viewing angle. If the lack of video encoding had not already put me of the creative that would have me worried. Also I think I have heard the gripe about it not looking as good on a TV before as well. Tv output should be firmware fixable but until it has been fixed another good reason to steer clear.

The Consus PMC-300 seems like a great choice for the PMP lover on a budget. Great player for the price but if you can wait the V43 would be better or if you can find it the I2 already is.



Scarpad

Comments: 65
 		Sep 17 (2005) 11:51AM  

The Battery time really concerns me 3 Hrs 35 minutes is not much. Also it's completely mac incompatible. My Mac mini and an external drive is where I house all my vids. I also have a PC but it's less convienient, plus I've always Hated Media Source creative software, the review made it seem like you had to convert the vid, what if I just want to drop in an Xvid? The Nice thing on the PSP is that it reads like a removable drive and you can just drop in the vids to the right folder, the vision won't recognize files copied in this mode. The vision looks nice but I think it's still not the PMP for me, plus no Widescreen.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2396
 		Sep 17 (2005) 12:02PM  

well i think i'll wait until its actually to judge it,but from the pics it looks really nice, the screen looks crisp,clear and defined.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2396
 		Sep 17 (2005) 12:37PM  

I'll wait till its actually out......god wish i cud edit my comments



Robert Sinke

Comments: 1221
 		Sep 17 (2005) 01:18PM  

don't we all, Dominic...don't we all.

Hey, I actually can .



rumos

Comments: 74
 		Sep 17 (2005) 01:31PM  

if companies like istation and archos would do some marketing (-> ppl would know about their products) noone would consider buying a zen vision.



gadgetguru

Comments: 1
 		Sep 17 (2005) 03:19PM  

This is really a hometown review...The reviewer (like Creative) being based in Singapore. While the Zen Vision is still a good product, how can he consider giving it a 10 (before settling on a 9), when he pointed out some glaring flaws (limited viewing angle - a big minus for me - as stated it's like showing it off to your co-passenger, and risk being called a show-off), slow video conversion time (one of the software is even trialware), fair battery life for both videos and audio (13 hours for such a big battery is poor, it should be in the range of 50 hours or so, after all the screen is off, just ask Sony).

Maybe a 8 (based on reading his review, since I don't have one) is more a fair score, but being considered near perfect, sounds like biased to me...



Mov

Comments: 5
 		Sep 17 (2005) 09:04PM  

I don't really agree with that,yes the review was from Singapore but do you know that there are more Creative haters than Creative Lovers in Singapore?I would say that they shouldn't compare Vision with Consus PMC-300.They should instead compare it with Archos..



Chirality

Comments: 57
 		Sep 17 (2005) 11:22PM  

The battery life is easily fixed with the extended battery. After all, even with the extended battary, the Zen Vision weighs less than the iAudio A2 and iStation V43.



Allen
Location: Dub Vee Ooo
Comments: 1511
 		Sep 18 (2005) 01:17AM  

Just what I want another acessory I have to buy to make the player decent




jgiam

Comments: 7
 		Sep 18 (2005) 07:54AM  

gadgetguru, I appreciate the comments. While evaluating the Zen Vision, what left me impressed was the way Creative managed to put everything together so nicely, in terms of visual effects and ease of use. The phrase "user experience" may sound a bit over-used, but seriously the Zen Vision gives a good "user experience". While the limited viewing angle may be a minus point, it is more than compensated by the fact that the Zen Vision uses a 640x480 screen, which makes watching rips of DVDs a real pleasure. You can encode the subtitles into the video, and still comfortably read them. The same cannot be said for 320x240 screens, which is the norm for PMPs.

watergrave, as I mentioned above, I think what's important is the "user experience", and the PMC-300 failed to give a satisfactory experience.

Mov is right. Just looking at HardwareZone forums, you can see for every Creative supporter, there are probably 9 who hate Creative.

I would have liked to do a round-up review of many other PMPs in the market, especially Archos'. However, I really cannot help it if the companies choose to ignore me.



The Netherlands

Comments: 36
 		Sep 18 (2005) 08:43AM  

Jgiam, I assume you are the one who wrote the review, thanks for comming here and giving your opinion on our comments.

I have a question. Why did you claim (or at least, clearly, hinting in that direction) that Creative was the first company to launch a PMP?



ninjaboy

Comments: 4
 		Sep 18 (2005) 09:46AM  

I wouldn't give it a 9 either - that's overly generous. And this whole thing ain't about love or hate of creative. A max out 8 for creative.. and keep the rating for Consus.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2396
 		Sep 18 (2005) 11:27AM  

have you used one ninjaboy?if so could u submit a review



Chirality

Comments: 57
 		Sep 18 (2005) 12:52PM  

I would still like to know whether the Zen Vision can play 640x480 videos at its native resolution or 853x480 videos with PanScan. The article left this sufficiently vague, saying that using the bundled software, only 320x240 is supported. But what about native VGA videos using a codec supported by the device? And what about WVGA material, is letterboxing the only option, or does the device actually do PanScan?



jgiam

Comments: 7
 		Sep 18 (2005) 08:19PM  

The Netherlands, it was actually from memory (there was quite a big hoo-ha in the papers at the time), so if I'm wrong do correct me.

Chirality, yes, it will play 640x480 videos at its native resolution. From what was mentioned at the Creative forums, the ZV can play videos up to 720x576.

For DVDs, this is more than sufficient because DVDs generally come in 720x480 (before correcting aspect ratio). The ZV will NOT do Pan & Scan. As mentioned in the review, there are only three video modes available: Original Size, Fit To Screen (letterbox) and Stretch To Full, which stretches the video to fully fit the screen, ignoring the aspect ratio.

Hope this helps.



Scarpad

Comments: 65
 		Sep 19 (2005) 08:03AM  

Jqiam, what's involved in getting a already encoded vid, say an xvid movie, on to the vision ? It sound's like you cannot just drag and drop it.



jgiam

Comments: 7
 		Sep 19 (2005) 08:09PM  

Scarpad, Using Media Explorer's "Import Media" option. The program will check that the video is compatible before allowing you to transfer. "Compatible" in the sense that, for example, it is MP3 and not AC3 audio.

As can be seen in the review, I intentionally used a downloaded XviD movie (Alien Planet), to show that already-encoded material can be used.



You must be logged in to make comments on this site - please log in, or if you are not registered click here to signup
Welcome
Username:

Password:


Remember me

[ ]
[ ]

Online
Guests: 44
Members: 0
On this page: 1
Members: 9194, Newest: woody

Chatbox
You must be logged in to post comments on this site - please either log in or if you are not registered click here to signup



TheDarkSide
Personally, I didn't buy any of those clips, great deal nonetheless - enjoy!!!!

DaHarder
TDS...

I couldn't help myself - In for 3 of those WOOTs - LOL!

DaHarder
Yea! It's here Android 2.1 for the DROID

TheDarkSide
Sandisk Sansa Clip 8GB MP3 Player for $32.99 on woot: [Linky]

Dominic
lol

Step666
[Linky]

TheDarkSide
Forgot the link: [Linky]

TheDarkSide
OMG!!!! I can't post the meaning of my name, but #2 & #3 is actually me. But, I did get a decent amount of action cause I'm great @#1,............

Dominic
That's great...my skills are average at best

Step666
Yeah but my one's true


Staff
Senior Editor:
Michael aka ssjmichael

• DAPreview N. America
• Publisher
• Marketing and Advertising


Contributing Editors:
Dominic aka Dominic

• DAPreview Europe
• Forum Moderator

Andrew aka DF

• DAPreview Asia
• Design consultant


Click on names for email and user ID for Member Profile

RSS Feeds
Our news can be syndicated by using these rss feeds.
rss1.0
rss2.0
rdf
DAPreview WebRing

Fan site for the Creative Zen brand of MP3 players


Fan site for the Cowon iAudio brand of MP3 players


Subscribe in a reader
User Reviews   Privacy Policy