How do you compact more than a pound of digital multimedia features into an 8 ounce package? Creative Labs probably won't tell. However, you can enjoy the handheld, easily navigable results of their digital craftsmanship for under $399 this month.

The Zen Vision is only about 50% larger than the original Apple iPod, and almost half the volume of its predecessor. Magnesium is used to keep weight down and case integrity up. This unit is a mighty handful of media playback power. Over 2/3 of the faceplate is LCD screen.

This is truly a 3rd generation media player. From Creative Labs, the company which pioneered digital music on the PC over a decade ago and delivered the first family of hard drive MP3 players and Flash players (way ahead of Apple's iPod products). It's 30 GB capacity translates into about 15,000 songs, dozens of thousands of photos or up to 120 hours of digital video.

Another brief history reminder - Creative was the first to engineer a Windows Media compatible Portable Media Player design over two years ago - it was Microsoft's extended polishing up Windows Media that delayed its launch into 2004.

At a time when many media player makers are optiing for the cheapest cost, lowest function screen possible, Creative has pulled out all the stops. A 640 x 480 Transflective screen delivers smooth menus and song titles, and super-crisp digital slide images and video playback. Most observers estimated the screen to be four inches or larger, but it actually measures just 3.7 inches diagonally.

Weighing 8.4 ounces, and measuring 4.9 x 2.9 x.8 inches, the Zen Vision is small enough to slip into many shirt pockets and is a fraction the size of its video predecessor (and not much larger than Creative's own music players). The flat finish magnsium case comes in matte black or matte white versions.

The $399 Zen Vision sports a 3.7 inch 640 x 480 pixel (Shappix) BriteView transflective screen which not only looks great with its backlight on, but is easily navigable in bright sunlight or room light, greatly extending battery life. The standard battery provides about 13 hours of music playback on a charge, 4.5 hours of video.

A cable (supplied) allows the Vision to source a large screen color TV for music,, video or photo slide show playback. The screen generates 250,000 colors, making slide shows look much like clear, bright back-lit film transparencies than "LCD photos." Business users might enjoy using the Zen Vision for presenting handheld slide shows or displaying them on a nearby TV screen or video projector.

Video file support includes MPEG2 (most portable players do NOT support this most pervasive of video file formats) and MPEG4 simple profile video formats including Dvivx, CviD, WMV, AVI and MPJEG along with TiVoToGo.

Creative's engineering team has always prided itself on its dedication to using quality silicon chips for audio playback. The Zen Vision delivers 97dB of of signal to noise ratio, enjoyable through headphone jack, external amplifier or the Vision's own built in mini-speaker. That speaker also serves for the Zen Vision's alarm clock function.

The best enhancement - media navigation. Intuitive, aided by a trio of finger-tactile button groups. Three clusters of buttons provide easy back and forth navigation of the Zen Vision's media control menus. A clever thumb-nail sized navigation ring makes most media selection easy - accomplished using a central "OK" button. An upper pair of buttons provide Menu/Back and Menu Options. The lower cluster provides play/pause rewind and fast-forward functions.

Voice recording and FM Stereo recording (32 station presets) is supported. Radio or internal microphone recording (up to 10 hours per session) is possible. Consumers can later split a recording (yes, you can find the specific sections of a multi-hour radio talk show or music program, if you like) and slice out just the sections you want to keep.

Host PC syncing (for media file management and subscription music services rights management) occurs through USB 2.0, transporting your personal ripped media files, videos or popular music subscription service playlists (Napster, Rhapsody, Music Unlimited, Yahoo, MSN and others.

A Plug&View Compact Flash (1&2) slot is on the Vision's side, allowing fast transfers to media or data to and from the Zen's 30 GByte hard drive. An optional slide-in adapter supports an additional 17 popular memory card types. An area of the hard disk can be user selected and protected for data backups and file copying.

Supplied VideoValut PVP and Windows Media Interface CDs allow quick selection of your own PC audio, video and photo content or enable quick ripping of new media files to the Zen Vision. A built in organizer function syncs up with Microsoft Outlook.

Unlike many other multimedia players with internal battery compartments, the extended life Zen Vision battery swap slides off and on in two seconds.

Optional accessories include an extended life Li-Ion battery, IR or wired remote controls, multi-memory card adaptor, screen protector and PC docking station.

How could the Zen Vision player be ANY better? In a future iteration, it might do its own video encoding from external analog sources or camcorder sources, for those who are not always PC centric.