There is really no easy way to say this, so I am just going to come right out and say it.  Honestly, I could not recommend watching video on any of these devices.  Their screens are all too small to really make it worthwhile.  If you plan to watch videos, then I suggest you look at the iPod Touch for a nice portable device, or even the Zune 120, which has a very nice screen as well.  For something a bit less portable, the Archos 7 is a fantastic option.

So there, I got that out of my system and I do feel better.  Now, forget I said it.  What we are going to look at tonight is how each of these compares to the others, and which offers the best of the bunch for watching video.  Really, this is going to be one of the shorter entries into the Listen To This series.  There is not a whole lot to it.  Let’s get started.

Let’s get started with transferring videos onto your device.  This is one reason I really do not enjoy watching video on mobile devices.  There are quite literally dozens of video codecs, formats, and sizes.  Get the wrong one and it will not work on your device at all.  This can result in a lot of frustration as you zip from one format to the next.  Reformatting video is not easy either.  I used Aimerosft’s video conversion tool for this.

OK, the iPod and Zune made this process as easy as possible.  As we have seen, they both have mandatory desktop components, which are the only way to load and control the content on your device.  This works well, because they both ensure that the videos are properly formatted.  They made the process as easy as possible, and I never had any problems configuring video for either of these formats.

Slightly more complicated are the Creative Zen X-fi and the Samsung YP-P2.  Both had optional video conversion tools which were available on their websites.  This made a huge difference with the Creative Zen X-fi.  As soon as I found the program and installed it, I was immediately able to convert my videos for playback on the Creative Zen. 

The Samsung was another story.  I downloaded the video conversion tool, which turned out to be the wrong tool.  It had been updated to a completely different system.  Which meant I would have to download the update as well.  Once that was completed, I loaded my videos.  Even after converting them (which still took some trial and error as only certain formats could be converted) the videos still did not playback well, as we will see.  This was an incredible disappointment.

The final two, the Sony and Sandisk Sansa, did not have a video conversion tool at all.  Well, to be fair, the Sansa did include a video conversion tool, but it did not work at all.  Every time I tried to convert a video, it just froze up.  So, in order to load video, I had to do some trial and error (and heavy reading of the instruction manual, which I hate doing) in order to find a compatible format.

Once you have loaded the videos, it is time to start playing them.  All of the players list your videos in an alphabetical list, with some displaying thumbnails, but not all of them.  While this posed a bit of a problem with music, it was no problem at all with video.  Even the largest players, with 16 GB of storage will not hold more than 10 or so videos at the most.  Not nearly enough to cause any problems with searching the list.

I used Gangs of New York, a fantastic movie about immigrants at the turn of the century in New York City.  One thing I did find, as sort of an aside, is that widescreen formatted videos should not be used to test these players.  Those black bars on the top and bottom use a lot of space.  I recommend sticking to the full screen formatted videos.

Let’s start with the Zune and iPod.  I thought both of these screens looked great.  Like I noticed with the Zune 120, I thought the iPod screen had a slightly truer color and contrast, but really that was pretty insignificant unless you looked at the two side by side.  The only problem I had with either of these screen was that both were simply far too small to make watching video enjoyable.  While you might be able to get away with using them for short clips, watching a movie on a screen this small can be almost painful.

The Sony Walkman Video and Sansa Sandisk Video both feature a much larger screen than the Zune and iPod, which made watching video a far more enjoyable experience,  I did notice, however, that these players both offered a picture was slightly less crisp than the Zune and iPod.  Not a lot, but enough that it was noticeable when viewing them together.  Still, in terms of actual enjoyment factor, these two topped the Zune and iPod, mainly because the screen really allowed you to see the video being played.

As with audio and music, the big disappointments of the bunch were the Creative Zen X-fi and the Samsung YP-P2.  I really expected better from the Creative.  It has a nice digital screen, which looked like it should be good at video.  The problem, however, was that the player just could not keep up with the video.  It was constantly digitizing portions of the video.  When it was not digitizing, I thought the screen looked great.  It was a good size and a pretty clear picture.  The digitized effect, however, ruined the experience, making the videos practically unwatchable.

The loser of the bunch, however, was the Samsung.  Remember that I formatted this video using the Samsung video conversion tool.  As you can see, however, the size of the video is all wrong, using barely half the screen.  Additionally, the contrast is so dark it is virtually unwatchable.  Other videos I tried made it through the conversion process in even worse shape.  As you can see, they were a complete disaster.  If you are interested in video…stay away from this one.

So, let’s try to put these in some kind of order.  Obviously, the Creative Zen X-fi and Samsung YP-P2 are at the bottom of the list.  The Zune and iPod both featured great screens, which were just too small to be enjoyable.  Had we been looking a a larger screen device, these would probably have been on top.  As it was, the larger sized screens on the Sony Walkman Video and Sandisk Sansa View turned out to be the best.  They were not as crisp as the iPod and Zune, but I thought they were close enough that this was not a significant problem.  In the end, the final ranking looks like this:

1. Sandisk Sansa View

2. Sony Walkman Video

3. iPod Nano (4G)

4. Microsoft Zune

5. Creative Zen X-fi

6. Samsung YP-P2

just by way of comparison, here are some pictures of the same video being shown on the iPod Touch and Zune 120.  These are essentially the same screens as the smaller Zune 16 and iPod Nano, but on a much larger scale.  As you can see, like I said at the beginning, if you are planning to watch video on your device, then spend the extra money on one of these devices instead of the smaller ones featured here.

Stay tuned as we will continue our search for the perfect media player by looking at photos, before heading over to hardware again for a look at battery and memory capacity, and more.  If you missed any part of this series, don’t forget to check out the archives, where you can read every installment. 

Related posts:

1. Listen To This: Photos
2. Listen To This: Battery and Memory
3. UMPC vs. iPod / Zune for Video Viewing
4. Listen To This! The Great JAMM Portable Media Player Showdown. Part 1: Introduction
5. Listen To This: The Big Finish