Zen and the Art of Creative MP3's (Creative Zen Micro 4 GB)

Member Name: josarah

Product:	Creative Zen Micro 4 GB
Date:	05/09/05 (722 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, Has a display screen

Disadvantages: sensitive touch pad

It was my birthday in June and I was getting excited about what I could do with the money that pours in (at a trickle) from my relatives. We had a trip to France camping coming up and I always feel that taking CD's is a bit of a waste of space in the car. On this note I decided that we should really look at purchasing and MP3 player which would enable us to take more stuff essential to camping, and more importantly bring more wine back with us :o)

My search for MP3's began on Ciao and I read around a variety of reviews and asked the reviewers some questions which I needed answering. The most important question for me was 'How can I play this in my car?' but more about that later. I visited Curry's and had a look at a few but was really impressed with the chunky little Zen Micro thingy that fitted comfortably into the palm of your hand. This was the one!

After searching the internet for decent prices I went onto the Creative website and actually ended up purchasing the little beast through one of there approved stores, and at the cheapest price I had seen as well, thumbs up from me. The player cost me £135 delivered which I though was a fair price.

For those of you who don't know an MP3 player allows you, with a range of software (depending on the type of player) to take you CD's or downloaded music and transfer them onto the hard drive of an MP3 Player which then has the capability to output sound. MP3 basically means making audio files smaller without a loss of sound. I've done some research here and found out that you basically shrink the size of file by a factor of 12 with MP3 technology. This means that you can fit more music in a much smaller space. If you're thinking about buying an MP3 player you won't need to know much more than that. I'm no techy and am really not the best person to tell you about such matters, suffice to say that it works.

My MP3 player actually arrived on my birthday (good organisation!) and I was really exited to get it out of the little box and see what we had got. Within the box you get a charger, headphones, belt clip, stand, carry bag and a protective cover that the player slides into. You also get a CD which contains the software for transferring your files onto the player, the instruction booklet and a USB wire for transferring files to the player. Well I'm the kind of person that gets impatient when I get new things so I couldn't wait to get started. Unfortunately I had to wait for the thing to charge so I had a bit of a peek at the manual. After about 2 pages I was bored and wanted to play again. The only thing left for me to do was load the software onto my home PC.

Upstairs I went with CD in hand. The software was easy to load and didn't take that long either. On opening the programme (Creative Media Source) you find a load of windows that may look slightly confusing. Not to worry though they are all there for a purpose and with a little playing around you will soon get used to it all.

So the software is installed, it's mainly white and grey which is a bit drab in my opinion but it works well and that's the main thing I suppose. The first thing you need to do is to transfer all the files that you have stored in your regular PC files. If you use Windows Media Player and have already got a fair amount of music on your computer you will have to import tracks form 'My Music' in bulk. This doesn't take a massive amount of time and Creative Media Source supports the Windows Media Format (WMA) as well as MP3 so that makes it doubly easy as you don't need to change the file types.

When first importing track you just need to put everything onto Creative Media, but as time goes on and you get more tracks you will need to add them individually. This can be a bit of a pain as finding 3 songs amongst 2500 can be a bit awkward. I found that when I download new songs I put them in a folder with the date on then transfer the whole folder across. A bit convoluted I know but it works for me.

In Creative Media Source you are able to make playlists and sort tracks into groups. I have only dabbled at doing this as it is quite time consuming although if you have the time to spare it would be quite worthwhile as you can sort tracks into multiple playlists for a whole variety of occasions.

So, you've loaded all your music up and are all set to transfer it onto your player, what next. Well next up you have to connect your player to the PC with the USB wire provided, then select tracks and add them to your player using Creative Media source, easy really when you see it. I have found that adding tracks doesn't take all that much time at all and you can fill the player in about 3 minutes (quite fast really).

So now you have all your music on the player you're ready to hit the road, hang on a minute, how do you work it?

The Creative Zen Micro doesn't have any conventional buttons, rather it has a touch sensitive pad that acts as buttons and a slider. The first thing I did was to turn the sensitivity of this down as it is actually quite difficult to get used to. You can then start exploring the players menu's and functions.

There are a variety of menus that you can access on the player. The first menu is where you can select the mode of the player; for example you can look at your music library; see what's playing now; change the play mode, use the FM radio (which in my opinion isn't really worth it as it gets almost zero reception) or select Extras where you will find options to change the date and time, look at your calendar which I believe you can synchronise with Microsoft Outlook, or select microphone and record interesting stuff that you would like to hear back again.

The main reason however for having bought an MP3 is surely to carry your music around with you so that's what I'll focus on now. With the Creative Zen Micro you can play your playlists that were created on your desktop PC or choose music by genre for example (although it's a bit hit and miss as to what gets placed in what genre). The selection I mainly use is All tracks which allows me to access all of the songs on the player. I can see what I am playing on the LCd screen that takes up about 1/3 ofthe front of the player.

Within any of the selections you can touch the options button and search further for specific tracks by title or keyword. You can also search for other track by the same artist, bookmark the track or add it to an existing playlist. The most useful feature I have found must be the play mode. I have my play mode on shuffle all tracks mainly as I like a variety of music, I know I like everything on the player as I put it all on there so it doesn't really matter what comes next. You can however choose to play just the selected track over and over on repeat should that take your fancy.

A word about the shuffle option; I have found that there seems to be a bit of repetition of artists when I am shuffling my music. It seems sometimes that every other song is by the same band. It's not too much trouble however and I believe this is a feature that happens with all similar devices. It can be a bit annoying though if you want something else on, as you have to keep tapping the forward key.

I currently have over 1300 songs on my MP3 and have used around 2/3 of the total space so I reckon I could fit around 2000 songs on. This I find to be plenty of room, although I have reduced the quality of some tracks that were large files. The memory size is 5GB and should really be enough for your average punter.

So what do I think?

The Creative Zen Micro is a really cute little thing. It comes in a variety of front colours although the back is white, probably to look a bit like an iPod. The player is comfortable weighty, you won't forget you have it on you at anytime and therefore you should notice if someone were to lift it from you pocket.

For those of you who need specifics the player is about the length of your finger by about ½ a finger wide, not specific I know but who carries a ruler around with them all the time? The player is backlit by a neon blue light that comes on when you press any buttons, the light does dim however after a time of inactivity.

It does take a while to get used to the touch pad buttons and 3 months down the line I still have the touch pad on the least sensitive setting. That doesn't matter though as I can use it that way and turn the sensitivity up if I need to in the future. For those of you who are likely to carry the player round in your pocket, there is a hold sliding button that you can use to stop inadvertent button pressing.

For me the Creative Zen Micro is a really useful device. I was able to take all of my CD's on holiday with me and play them through some cheapy speakers that plugged into the headphone jack. It also enables me to have all of my CD collection played through the stereo by connecting through the back of the stereo into the headphone jack.

The battery is stated to last 10 hours and I have never found battery life a problem, I bought an in car charger so I can charge up and play at the same time. If your battery severely dies you are able to buy replacements from many suppliers, something that I believe you can't do with the iPod.

I am also able to play the MP3 player through the car via a small FM Transmitter, although these aren't strictly legal in the UK they are very common and provide a decent enough sound through the car speakers. For someone who drives a fair amount I find this satisfactory for my needs.

In all I can't imagine what my life was like before this little beast. I love my music and the Creative Zen Micro lets me carry it all round with me so a full 5/5 stars from me.

Summary: An MP3 player to rival the iPod but with the added extra of a removeable battery.

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