CREATIVE LABS (70PF108500038) Zen Micro 6GB (White)
The Zen Micro digital music player from Creative Labs packs an incredible 6 GB of storage capacity into a shell small enough to sit comfortably in your jeans pocket. It also rides nicely in your hand, with a palm-fitting profile and thumb-friendly front-panel controls. It's a bit shorter than an Apple iPod Mini, yet its rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides 12 hours of continuous playback--50 percent more than iPod Mini's. The Zen Micro is compatible not merely with MP3s and WAV files, but with WMA as well. Toss in USB 2.0 connectivity and you're looking at one spiffy portable music player.
 | But playing isn't all the Zen Micro does. You can use it to receive FM radio (with 32 station presets to keep your favorites at the ready), and to record, either from the radio or from live sources such as voice dictation or lectures using the built-in condenser microphone. Trimmed in a luminescent blue glow and with easily visible backlit buttons, this stylish orange player holds up to 1,500 songs (99 hours) at 128 kbps or 3,000 songs (198 hours) at lower-fidelity 64 kbps (MP3/WMA)--that's a solid week's worth of music listening, never playing the same song twice. Compatibility with Microsoft's WMA compressed-audio format grants access to over 2 million downloadable songs offered promotionally or for sale online. Perhaps the Zen Micro's coolest attribute is its DJ feature, which will shuffle not only all the songs you've loaded or all the songs on a given album, but also, at your discretion, only the tracks you listen to most or the ones you rarely hear, taking the work out of selecting your favorites or hunting out all the music you're still getting to know. |
| For navigation, the device features a vertical, linear touchpad designed to make searching through songs or playlists easy, quick, and fun. The unit's blue, 160 x 104-pixel, electroluminescent LCD shows key functions and song details at a glance, and you can even customize the main menu to keep right at your fingertips the features that matter most to you. Another of the Zen Micro's handy features is its personal organizer. You'll never forget an important anniversary with the onboard calendar, and it also includes a to-do list and a contacts list, all of which sync seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook (Outlook thus required for use of these features). Further, the device offers a sleep timer and alarm so you can drift off to sleep to the strains of one playlist and wake to a completely different one. The Zen Micro's removable battery is easy to swap with another fully charged battery (additional batteries sold separately), extending your listening by a half-day per swap. | 
Zen Micro's rechargeable battery is easy to replace. |
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Zen Micro's Removable Disk mode lets you connect your player to the computer and directly copy the files you need.
| Vertical touch pad
No more going round in circles to find the song you want, we all know that the quickest distance between two points is a straight line. Zen Micro's vertical touch pad and touch sensitive controls are designed to be intuitive so that searching through songs or playlists is easy, quick and fun - try taking a cruise down this strip.
Removable Disk
Store and transfer not only your favorite tunes, but important data files as well. Zen Micro's Removable Disk mode lets you connect your player to the computer and directly copy the files you need. Highest audio quality of any MP3 player
Zen MP3 players are renowned for their superior audio quality, and the Zen Micro is no exception. With an outstanding industry leading 98dB signal to noise ratio, you can achieve audio bliss with clarity as good as expensive hi-fi systems. That coupled with high fidelity earphones with dynamic bass response, the Zen Micro not only sets a new standard for sheer style, but for unmatched audio perfection. |
What's in the Box
The Zen Micro player, stereo earbud headphones, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, an AC/DC power adapter, a USB 2.0 cable, a belt clip, a stand, a stylish cloth pouch, an installation CD, a quick-start guide, and Creative MediaSource software.
1 Nice is an understatement
I've had the 4GB version of this player for more than 4 months and I'm very happy with it. I use it on an average 5 hours a day I hook it up to my Belkin FM transmitter in the car or to my Logitech 2.1 Speakers at home, I rarely use it with the earbuds, though they are much better than the ones you normally get with other mp3 players.
The Look & Feel:
I have the black one and the contrasting neon blue on the buttons add a very nice ambience. The light pulsates when you are charging it almost as if it were breathing. The player itself is tiny , it gets a bit bulky when you put it in the hardcase, which you need to do if you don't want to get scrathes on the back(its a nice looking back too ). It feels tiny in the hand without it. The stand that comes with it is very usefult to prop it up on the desk. The belt clip however is not very useful if you move around a lot. The blue backlit LCD looks really neat and is easy to read. The touch controls took a little getting used to but now I wouldn't change it for the scroll wheel.
The touch buttons are textured so that your finger sdon't slip which was very thoughtful.
Reliability & Build
I dropped the player once from about 4 ft, and it fell hard, but kept on playing. The hardcase they give with it must work well.
It feels solid and not flimsy like the carbon.
Sound
I'm no audiophile but I was amazed by the clarity the player had, it was much better than the sound card on my Computer and louder too. I have had the ipod mini and it performs on the level with my sound card but the micro beats it outright.
Best of all the WMAs(I have a lot of them) sound great.
Utility
Its got a huge list of features including an FM Recorder a Calender and contacts list. Its not convinient to enter name of course but synchronise it with outlook and it becomes a gem of a address book. The songs recorded with FM are as good as the original signal. The interface takes 2 secs after you press record to show up but its actually started recording at the moment you press record.
Software
The software that comes along with it is not very intuitive but once you are used to it,it does the job well. Creating and modifying playlists is easy and clean.
There are 2 things that need fixing
First is the battery life. It will run for 6 hrs without problems with medium usage of the buttons.
Second might be a problem I might have with my PC but not too sure, when the player is connected on the USB and I start playing on it and also using the windows explorer, it sometimes pauses by itself and tries to synchronise with the PC during play, which is a bit irritating.
2 .....AWESOME PRODUCT.....
NOTE: this review is for the 5gb player. I wrote this lengthy review for that model, and it didn't show up and I can't re-submit it now. DARN thing! All the specs should be the same though.
I've been behind the times using the same portable CD player for the last 6 or 7 years... so this was really a BIG step up for me. Hopefully this review will be helpful if you have never owned an mp3 player before....
I have no idea how this compares to the ipod, but here is a list of the lesser known features of the zen micro:
PROS
+++ It tells you the number of tracks, albums & playlists uploaded. Total Mb & Mb remaining.
+++ FM radio.
+++ Removable battery & micro hard disc.
+++ If you're halfway through a song (or paused) & you shut it down (or it shuts down after being inactive for a while, IT RESUMES WHERE IT LEFT OFF in the middle of a song when your turn it back on again!! :-)
+++ You can change the idle shutdown time, backlight time, contrast, touchpad sensitivity, language (there are 15 languages installed!!)
+++ sleep timer
+++ You can personalise (configure) menus, much like with mobile phones.
+++ PLAY MODES: normal, repeat track, repeat all, shuffle, shuffle repeat & track once.
+++ You can find songs by albums, artists, genre, playlist
+++ DJ menu: album of the day, random play all, most popular & rarely heard tracks.
+++ There are 10 bookmarks, which I have absolutely no idea how to use, but it must be put onto this list anyway. ;-)
+++ 12/24hr time, alarm, calendar, date (several date formats and you can even choose between the following separators: space, dot, dash, slash)
+++ Variable microphone sensitivity.
+++ Organiser; tasks + contact lists. (synchronised with creative sync manager)
+++ Smart volume + Equaliser (numerous modes: Off, custom, acoustic, classical, disco, jazz, new age, pop, rock, or vocal)
+++ master reset. :-0
+++ track name, title & artist on LCD display.+ battery indication, and various other on-screen icons while a song is playing, such as EQ & repeat modes.
+++ Gives the length of a song as a bar graph so you can tell the progress of the song...
+++ A lot of stuff in the box: remote control, belt clip & cradle, pouch, usb cable, charger, earphones, software (easy enough to figure out).....
+++ Last but not least: a cool blue glow + white backlit screen!!!
+++ There ISN'T a one second delay between playing each song.
+++ My zen micro hasn't crashed on me yet (and I have been sucessful in crashing every computer product known to man, eg: my Ericsson T39m phone several times!)
CONS:
--- The touch pad can be annoying sometimes. So you either have to hold it by the edges when playing a song or put it on hold mode, otherwise your palm will set off a whole bunch of menus.
It's okay when you're using it though.
--- You can't hear any music while fast-forwarding through a song. I am used to being able to go by ear while doing this, but you can't do that with this thing. Maybe a future firmware upgrade will fix this issue? Please??! Creative???!!
--- I walked all around sydney and couldn't find this in *ANY* shop. So I had to buy it online. All the photos of the zen on the 'net are front on.... and I didn't realise until I opened the box that the back & sides of the zen micro were coloured WHITE!!! ARRRRGHHHH! I hate white! Aaaahhh well, I suppose I'll get used to it soon enough.
--- I find the lowest volume setting isn't all that low. I can still hear songs well in a fairly quiet room during the daytime. At 3:00am I think this might be just a tad louder than I would have liked. [This is with panasonic earbuds though]
--- You have to first aportion (partition) the HDD to be used as an extrenal flash drive. Available sizes are: 128, 256, 512Mb, 1, 2Gb. You should be able to just use whatever is available. This isn't a big problem though.
--- Earbuds are too thick for my ears. Wearing them is like stuffing a peanut lengthwise in your ear. It pulls your earlobes out.
--- There is practically zero information (on how to use the menus) in the instruction manual.
