Photo gallery: Creative Zen Micro (5GB)Such is the overbearing influence of Apple's iPod range that it has become the universal standard against which all new MP3 players are judged. Creative has stepped up to the formidable challenge however, offering the 5GB Zen Micro as a stylish-looking, feature-packed iPod Mini alternative.
Design
While the smooth contours and choice of colours certainly show the influence of design-savvy Apple, the Zen Micro has its own distinctive look. Trumping the iPod Mini's offering of five colour options, the Zen Micro offers ten hues to choose from, including Barbie-style hot pink along with more subdued options of dark blue, black and white.
Shunning the trend of gum stick-sized players with itty bitty buttons, the Zen is refreshingly solid and robust, fitting nicely into the palm of your hand. The blue backlight and onscreen display are rather familiar, but still look snazzy, especially in combination with the colour-coordinated remote control.
In defiance of its name, the Zen lacks the elegant simplicity of the iPod Mini's all-inclusive click wheel. The faceplate of the player is divided into touch-sensitive sections for playing, pausing and skipping tracks, as well as two navigation/menu buttons. The centerpiece is the vertical scrolling pad, which despite being described by Creative as "intuitive", takes some getting used to.
Features
Creative has really piled on the extra features in the Zen, with a radio, search function, voice and radio recorder, and the ability to allocate your chosen amount of memory space to the storage of files. This swag of additions makes the Zen Micro a more versatile unit than your average MP3 player.
A recurrent gripe from the iPod crowd has been the fact that the internal, non-removable battery tends to peter out far too quickly between charges. The Zen once again tries to one-up Apple on this issue, providing a removable Li-ion battery capable of giving an alleged 12 non-stop hours of musical bliss. Additional batteries can also be purchased, and with a spare one at the ready, you need never wait for the player to charge.
One feature that will be welcomed by Windows Media Player devotees is the support of the WMA file format. With the iTunes Music Store still unavailable in Australia, and legal barriers to the downloading of MP3s, WMA is the preferred format for commercial music download sites such as ninemsn and BigPond music. Zen's support of WMA means that it is easy to buy music online and transfer it straight to the player.
Performance
The first feature to go under the performance testing microscope was battery life. Manufacturer claims of how long a battery will last between charges are notoriously exaggerated, but the Zen managed an impressive run. With the battery fully charged, the player managed to run though almost 11 hours worth of songs - not far below the specified duration.
As with most hybrid devices, the Zen's radio reception is occasionally tainted by static, but functions well, and the auto-scan feature finds stations impressively fast. While it might get annoying to listen to all day, catching the last 20 minutes of Merrick and Rosso on the bus to work would be no problem.
The adjustable sensitivity of the touchpad sounded like a pretty cool feature, but setting it to high results in song-scrolling chaos. Most users will want to stick with the medium or low settings, although even at those levels, scrolling to the next song sometimes requires a careful nudge. One advantage of the vertical touchpad is the fact that holding a finger on the top or bottom edge will cause the songs to scroll up or down automatically. This avoids the potential for developing scrolling-induced RSI if you suddenly decide you want to listen to Zwan instead of Alex Lloyd.
While Apple's cool factor and market dominance may prevent the Zen Micro from ever eclipsing the iPod in sales, its host of features and solid performance make it an impressive alternative. If you're after a stylish player that goes the distance, fight the urge to automatically go for an iPod and take a look at this one. You may be pleasantly surprised.
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