Amazon Product Description
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.
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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. |
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, a USB 2.0 cable, an installation CD, a quick-start guide, and Creative MediaSource software.
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(172 customer reviews) 298 of 307 people found the following review helpful
.....AWESOME PRODUCT.....,
April 18, 2005 Dr. Leslie Brown "Doc Brown" (Tenerife, Spain, Canary Islands.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creative Zen Micro 6 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
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...Read more
237 of 244 people found the following review helpful
Why I Decided to Buy A Zen Micro Instead of An iPOD,
May 11, 2005 PrinterPal (Mars) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Creative Zen Micro 6 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
I've been using the Zen Micro 6GB for about 3 weeks now. I spent some time before the purchase with a ZM and an equivalent iPOD. I chose the ZM for a number of reasons. Both are fine players, but here is what sent me to the ZM.
Design
ZM is sturdy, with an easy to read screen. Similar case volume to IP but thicker and shorter so feels more compact. I can nearly hide ZM inside my fist. (I have big hands). Case is very smooth. Replaceable battery is a huge advantage over IP. But, design is not as MOMA artsy as IP.
Battery Life
The first few charge/discharge cycles with the ZM were short, about 4-6 hours. But after that I started getting 10 hours at full volume, 12 at normal human volumes. Seems the battery likes to be conditioned a little. Do a couple of full charge and then fully discharge before recharging cycles.
Audio Quality
Playing compressed music on audiophile systems is a waste. So I used Sennhesier PX100s...Read more
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Bang for your buck.,
June 5, 2005 Sara Whitmer (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creative Zen Micro 6 GB MP3 Player Black (Electronics)
When trying to decide what new mp3 player to purchase, I was very torn between the Ipod Mini and the Zen Micro. In the end it came down to one thing: bang for your buck. In order for Mac to reduce the price of the 5 gig Mini to about $199, they stopped including a charger in the package. The Mini will still charge while hooked up to your PC, but if you plan on going anywhere for a day or two and will not have access to your computer, you're out of luck. Now you can shell out the extra $40 bucks for a charger, or you can use the $40 to purchase the Zen Micro (as in, there is less than a $40 difference in price, the Zen being more expensive.), which not only includes a charger, but an extra gig of space (about 200 songs) for a total of 6 gigs of space, a hard case to protect from the inevitable butter-fingers moments, and two attatchments for the hard case which enable the Zen to either clip to a belt or stand upright on a flat surface, such as a desk or table. The Zen also comes with...Read more