Creative Zen Vision M 30GB

I wish I had read some of the forums devoted to problems with this player before I bought it!!

After only eighteen months, it will not recharge and Creative's suggested 'fix' of a firmware update will not work because my PC now refuses to recognise the player when connected via a USB cable (despite it appearing in Windows Explorer).

Altogether, a big disappointment & I'm replacing it with an Archos 5

I love this Creative Zen Vision M 30GB. I am visualy impaired and I am still able to use display and navigate using the touch pad and symple buttons. Sounds great and I love the fact that I have thousands of my favourate songs avalable at any tiem. However, I have had some problems with the software and my device has now crashed and I am not able to reload it. I am looking to get it fixed or replaced.

Easy to navigate through the menu, Brilliant screen for watching movies, Very reliable, leaves my sons ipod standing.. This is a brilliant piece of kit, I would rate it much higher than an ipod in every respect. Well recommend Creative Zen Vision M 30GB.

Make sure you read this before you buy any Creative player' .

I have always been a fan of Creative and a bit anti-i Pod. I have 6 daughters and all have been bought a Creative player over several years. The older players seemed to last for ages but the most recent (last 3 years) have all failed after just over a year. They ' re particularly weak on the headphone/earplug socket which is bound to get some wear. We've tried all sorts of models, hard disk versions and solid state. The kids love them when they're working but we're all walking away to find something better. None have lasted more than 18 months which is rubbish.

The most recent was a Zen Vision M, which lasted 13 months. It did start to misbehave before that but we weren't sure what it was. Turns out it's a definite hardware fault which can't be repaired economically. In this case, the problem ' s not related to the earphone socket. My daughter is very careful and it has been beautifully looked after and is spotless. I tried appealing to Creative because it seems unfair that something which costs £00's lasts just over a year. They were only interested in selling me a new one. Incredibly, even then they won't offer any kind of extended warranty on their products. That doesn't say much for their confidence in the technology. They clearly feel it's OK for us to buy a new player after a year or so, no matter how much it cost.

So, whilst I still am a fan of the creative players and would still buy one, learn from my experience over a number of models. Make sure you don't buy one unless you can get an extended warranty with the player. You need one which will give you a new (& up to date) one if the player breaks, at no cost. Don't risk anything less unless you can afford to be disappointed or, are going to throw it away and buy a new one next year.

Hope this has helped you or saved you some heartache.

I'd never trust Apple again, but the Creative is fantastic. Quite simply it's the thinking-man's (or woman's!) MP3 / video player.

The Creative ZEN Vision M 30GB is a must have object for the music lovers.You can easily upload your music into the vision m (I hate the itunes way of uploading...creative system il more and more easily to use).It reads mp3, avi, jpg and many other kind of files and it can record audio files. Finally it can play radio very well, without the need of any accessory.

Would recommend the Creative ZEN Vision M to anyone - its a class bit of kit have looked at similar players and none are as good as this - had mine nearly 2 years with no problems.

The Creative ZEN Vision M is awesome! Wide screen easy to watch music videos and dvds. Sound is awesome and the mic to help record yourself singing dramatically is a great help. Way better than the ipod!

I love my Zen Vision M and use it every day. Reliable, good battery life and great video viewing screen. The only down side is the computer software, not hugely intuitive. It's definitely 'fool proof' but doesn't allow much flexibility in moving or renaming files. Overall though, definitely one of my favorite gadgets.

I have had my Creative for just over a year and I would be lost without it! I chose Creative over an Ipod as it is easy to 'plug and play' enabling me to get copies of some friends' music using Windows Media Player and not have to have I tunes as Ipod users do.

Unlike some users, I found the touch pad easy to use with an easy interface.