Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB ready to kick ass

Creative's Zen Micro was a pretty good competitor to Apple's iPod mini and today Creative launched an impressive new portable media player: the Creative Zen Vision:M which is a clear attack at Apple's new iPod 5G.

The design has been ripped off a little bit from the iPod but I must say it looks pretty good. The Zen Vision:M will be available in white, black and green and features 30GB storage capacity. The player measures 62mm x 104mm x 19mm and weighs about 166g with the built-in li-ion battery included.

It features a large 2.5-inch 262,144 colour 320 x 240 pixels LCD display and supports more video formats than the iPod. The Zen Vision:M has support for the WMV, MPEG1/2/4, DivX 4/5 and XviD video formats and obviously it also supports a bunch of audio formats including MP3, WMA and WAV. You can also use it to display JPG photos up to 8 megapixels.

Media support:

MP3 (320kbps VBR)

WMA (320kbps DRM)

WAV (16 bit /48kHz)

WMV ( 320x240/700kbps and 320x240/436kbps)

MPEG4 and DivX 4/5, XviD (- 720x480/3mbps and 640x480/2mbps)

MPEG2 (640x480/2.5mbps and 640x480/2mbps)

MPEG1 (640x480/1.15mbps and 352x288/1.15mbps)

Motion-JPEG (640x480/2.5mbps)

JPG (8 megapixels)

Other features include: FM tuner, voice recording, FM radio recording, USB 2.0 support, Microsoft Outlook schedule, to do list and calendar synchronization, ...

The player has a battery life of approx. 14 hours for music and 4 hours for video files. Based on the features and the looks I believe it may be a very good alternative for the Apple iPod. The only drawback may be the size of the Zen Vision:M. The new player from Creative measures 62mm x 104mm x 19mm while Apple's iPod G5 measures only 61.8mm x 103.5mm x 11m. So the new Zen Vision:M 30GB is almost twice as thick as the iPod.

Creative announced it today in Japan for 39,800 yen (approx $329) and I guess it will be available worldwide within a couple of weeks.