Creative ZEN Vision:M vs Apple Ipod Video

I can not believe the unprecedented success of the Apple Video player when Creative have a far superior product for slightly less. The advantage of the Creative ZEN Vision are:

1) The Zen has a proper battery while the the Apple Ipod Video is slimmer to accommodate only a small battery with a couple of hours playback. [2007 UPDATE: Battery life seems to have improved with the newer apples]
2) All my WMA files work on the Zen!
3) Zen plays most video formats including the excellent Xvid (but sadly no H.264 the Sony PSP can). The Apple only uses MP4!
4) The colour screen of the Zen is capable of displaying far more colours and is much more vibrant and blacks more black.
5) I don't care for the FM radio but there is one.
6) I can plug it into any of my Windows XP PC and transfer files even without software or drivers.
7) Better Sound Quality from a Zen
8) You have to use Itunes to upload to your Apple

Due to a larger stronger amp the sound quality is better in the Zen Vision, however the supplied earphones require the bass boost to be on to prevent it sounding harsh. I recommend replacing them with wide bass heavy Koss Porta Pro (£30) or Koss KSC75 (£12) otherwise you may prefer more balanced Sennheiser PX100 (£30) or my favorite Audio Technica ATH-EM7 (£60). If you must have small earbuds the only ones I would use are Super.fi, Sure e3g or the non budget Audio Technica ATH range, but you are paying a premium for size.

When you have replaced the earphones in the Zen you will find the sound settings are wrong for them even with "EQ off" because the EQ is not level. All amps have some sort of equalization and they are never flat and when you switch off the equalization on the Zen it is way too enhanced with far too much bass and treble extension making the sound congested and distorted at higher volumes. Changing the EQ levels to flat make the sound far too dull and I find the best equalization preset similar to that of audiophile amps such as NAD or Merantz to be the "Acoustic" or "Classical" setting and with no bass enhancement.

If you do choose a Zen consider downloading MediaCoder that converts video in a fraction of the time it takes to convert using the awful video software than comes with the Zen. To take advantage of this read my video compression article to get the best video for as little space as possible.