Creative Labs' Zen Micro MP3 Player - State of the Art in Micro-Drive MP3 Players
Written: Nov 28 '04 (Updated Jun 11 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Great sound quality/volume, small, comfortable, replaceable battery, Sync's with Outlook, FM/voice recording, supports subscription services
Cons: Pricey, battery life doesn't live up to billing, mediocre documentation
The Bottom Line: This model's feature set and performance make it worthy of consideration by anyone considering purchase of a hard drive based mp3 player.
|
|
|
| nc10's Full Review: Creative Labs Zen Micro (5 GB) Black MP3 Player |
The Zen Micro is Creative Labs' new 5gb micro sized mp3 player, the result of a years worth of design, development and production. The end product of this effort is a "state of the art" feature set in the current micro hard disk mp3 player market (ie, the iPod mini, the Dell Pocket DJ, the Rio Carbon, etc). The user interface and attractive design are well thought out. The features which attacted me to purchase this model include:
5GB hard disk
Replaceable 12 hour battery, extra battery include (initial US sales, anyways, not sure about other regions)
FM radio with 32 station pre-sets,
Voice recorder
Syncs calendar, contacts w/ Outlook
USB hard drive option
MP3 and WMA support
Eye catching design, choice of 10 colors
98dB SNR
Well designed, configurable interface with touch controls
Support for DRM protected WMA files (from Napster, Walmart and other pay music download services), including support for the monthly "all you can listen to" subscriptions from Yahoo! Music and Napster.
A wired remote is not included, but is available separately for $20.
Creative Labs hopes the Zen Micro (and other Zen models) will not be another also ran in the hard disk based MP3 player race, a race that, so far, really only has one contestant, the iPod. Almost 6 million iPods have been sold, including 2 million in Q3 2004 alone. The iPod claimed a phenomenal 92% of the US market for hard drive based MP3 players in August of 2004 (ex sales of Dell's DJ models, for which data is unavailable). This market share dropped to 87% in September, but not surprisingly, most of the drop was picked up by the HP version of the iPod. The next most common brands sold were Rio, Creative, and Iriver, each with less than 3% of the hard drive based mp3 player market. Creative recognized the difficulties of becoming a real player in this market, and has taken about a year to design this player and gear up production. Creative brings the Zen Micro to market with high hopes and an expensive marketing campaign that is just starting to kick in as I write this review.
(Market references:
http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:DELL&story=200410261149_APO_V6337
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/11/03.2.shtml)
I had been looking at hard disk based mp3 players for several months, and was strongly leaning towards one of the micro models, Though they weren't much cheaper, and the storage space was much less than conventional 20gb to 40gb models, I liked the smaller size a lot. The feature set of the Zen Micro almost sold me, and when I received a letter from Compusa offering me 10% off any mp3 player, I proceeded with the purchase of a Zen Micro, paying a healthy $225 plus tax.
Setup
Creative has made the "open the box" experience with the Micro memorable. The Zen comes in a pure white box with almost no markings except the words Creative Zen micro. For prominent "in store" display the box has slip cover that shows the 10 different colored versions of the Micro. But once that's gone, all you see is white, clearly reminiscent of Apple's iPod and other products. In the box is the Micro itself, a plastic shell with belt clip or desk stand, ear buds, usb cable, software cd, two 680 mah Li-Ion batteries a short manual, a quick tips guide, a sheet with support options, and a recommended speakers and accessories list. The first Micro's being sold are being labeled Limited Edition, which, for US buyers, means the extra battery. The faceplate of each Micro is one of ten (mostly bright) colors, but the back and sides are a high gloss white plastic. The earbuds are white, the usb cable is white, and the plastic shell/stand/belt clip, and manual are all pure white. (I assume you're getting the idea..).
Setup and installation is straightforward. Creative Labs recommends you initially charge the player for 3 hours. The initial charging experience is even "zen like". The touch controls on the Micro face plate are marked with back lit blue lighting. There's also a thin blue backlit border around the Micro's face. When the Micro is charging, the blue backlighting slowly goes from bright to dark to bright. My work area is a dark room in front of an LCD computer monitor, so the first time I put the Micro on charge was a unique experience. (Admittedly it took a minute or two for me to conclude the changing blue lighting wasn't an indication of a problem.)
Before you plug the Micro into your PC to transfer tunes, the software should be installed. This includes several applications, with somewhat overlapping functions, along with Windows Media Player 10. These app's include
- Zen Media Explorer - an easy to use interface to the Zen Micro, for ripping cd's to the Micro, for creating playlists, syncing with your PC, etc
- Creative MediaSource Organizer, an all in one organizer/player/cd burning/file converting/cd ripping program
- Creative MediaSource Player
- Creative MediaSource Audio Converter (for batch conversion of audio files)
- Creative Removable Disk Manager, for setting up your Micro to be used as a USB drive
I find that the most useful software is the Zen Media Explorer. From there I can rip and transfer tunes from cd's to the Micro, create playlists, sync data or tracks between the PC and the Micro, or play songs on the Micro over my PC's sound system. Setting up a playlist from here is easy and intuitive, but I've found creating playlists on the player itself using the touch controls to be tedious and time consuming. I went ahead with the Windows Media Player 10 installation, and I find that it also recognizes and supports the Zen Micro.
Listening to the Micro....
Earphone specs:
Freq range 20hz to 20,000hz
Impedance: 32 ohms
Sensitivity: 111db
MP3 Playback Specs
Signal to Noise ratio, up to 98db
Freq Response, 20Hz to 20kHz
Harmonic Distortion, below 0.1%, (Creative doesn't say at what output, though)
I like the included earbuds a lot. They're slightly larger than other earbuds I've used. Like most others, they have a cloth covering, but in this case the covering is very securely attached. The cloth, at least the part that fits against your ear, has a thin foam backing. When you set the earbuds in place, this foam backing seems to compress slightly, and allows the light earbuds to fit in comfortably, but fairly tightly. So, unlike most earbuds I've used, this fit blocks out a some of the background sound of your environment, further enhancing the listening experience. It doesn't block out so much that you can't listen to a person speaking directly to you, but for earbuds, they do pretty well. The earbuds handle the high and mid frequencies quite well, and bass is at least adequate. The Micro offers 8 equalization options, including a 5 band custom equalizer, though even if you maximize the bass, its not overwhelming.
Most every MP3 player I've listened to lately sounds very good. I doubt my listening skills are good enough to distinguish between the Micro, the Rio Carbon, the iPod mini, or most of the other "name brand" mp3 players. I can report that I am more than satisfied with the sound quality, even at maximum volume. I did set up my new mp3 player and my old player, a pretty good (circa 2001) Nomad II which used smartmedia cards, to play several 1970's and 1980's rock tunes (Charlie, REO, Kansas, Survivor) and switched the earbuds between the two players playing identical tunes. The Nomad II equalizer was set to normal, the Micro's to off, in attempt to set each at its default setting. I didn't notice any difference in background noise (non detectable to me), but the Micro's sound seemed a little fuller, brighter, and a little more realistic with better stereo separation. I wouldn't notice the difference between the two players without listening to identical tunes back to back.
The volume control on the Zen can be adjusted from 0 to 25. Settings of about 7-14 are comfortable for listening in quiet rooms and offices. A setting of 20 is very loud, and 25 approaches, but doesn't reach, painfully loud. However, volumes on settings above 20 or so are easily loud enough to deafen your ears after listening for a while. The lowest volume that works for me in quiet rooms is about 5.
My ultimate test for volume is whether or not this player is loud enough for me to listen to while mowing my yard with my Sears 6hp push mower. The Zen Micro easily passes this test, more so than any other player I've used.
Controls, User Interface, and Appearances.
The Zen was carefully designed to ensure that its form and appearance would be key selling points. The Zen is 2" wide, 0.7" thick, and 3.3" high, and weighs 3.8 ozs (slightly shorter, but slightly thicker and heavier than the iPod mini). The Zen Micro appears to be solid and very well built. The front, which comes in one of ten bright colors, is flat, which the back, which is high gloss white in color, is slightly concave with curved edges and corners. The front corners are much more square. I find that this form fits easily in my right hand, and with the iPod resting against my fingers, I can easily access and use all the touch controls on the face of the unit. The on/off/lock controls switch is the only control switch on the top of the player, where you'll also find the mike, usb port, and headphone jack. The lock setting is critical to this touch pad based player, otherwise any touch to the player's face would cause a change. The face of the Zen Micro is broken into two sections, a 160 X 104 pixel, 1.25" X 1" b&w LCD display on top, and 6 touch controls below the display. The back slides off of the Micro, to allow battery replacement similar to a cell phone.
The touch controls include
(1) play/pause
(2) next/fast-forward
(3) previous/rewind
(4) back to the previous menu/screen
(5) options (which is context sensitive, ie if the screen is displaying info about the tune you are playing, the options are choices like Remove, Lookup Artist, View Details, Save as playlist, etc. If you are listening to FM radio, the options would be Record Radio, Name Preset, etc.)
(6) the Touchpad Scoll/select panel.
The Zen Micro's controls are surpisingly intuitive for a unit with this many features, but I'll admit that most users will need to refer the manual a couple times during the first few days of use. The one "make or break" or "like it or not" feature of the Zen Micro is the touch sensitive control pad used for scrolling thru menus, changing volume or adjusting settings.
Typically each time I pick my Zen to start using it, I'll tap the menu back button a few times to quickly take the Zen from the default "Playing Now" screen back to the Main menu. This main menu can contain up to 28 choices, which the user defines (I have 9 items on my main menu). These menu choices set how and what the Zen should be doing. The choices include selections that would be expected, like FM Radio, Microphone, Music Library, and Random Play, but also choices you might not expect, like Most Popular and Rarely Heard, which causes the Zen to cycle through the tunes on player that have played either most often or least often, or Album of the Day, where the Zen chooses an album to be played. Note that since the Zen tracks how often each tune is played, you can see how often each tune has been played, or get a list of the top 20 most frequently played tunes.
Usually I'll scroll through the main menu items and select "Random Play" (all tunes), and start listening. Or I might select Music Library, and scroll through the options there (albums, all tracks, artists, genre, playlists, etc, and choose to listen to tunes from a certain artist or from a playlist).
It took me a couple of days to get used to the touch pad scroll pad. To use the scroll pad, you should press on it firmly, and slide your finger up or down the pad to scroll up or down a list or adjust a setting. For example, volume adjustment is done via the scroll pad. Anytime you use the scroll pad when the player is in the default "Playing Now" mode, a volume scroll bar shows on the screen, and you adjust the volume by sliding your finger or thumb up or down the touch pad. If you are in one of the othe menu's, and want to select a desired selection from a menu, you lift your finger, then tap on the pad like clicking a mouse. Initially, I was very careful about using the touchpad, and would barely touch it while sliding up or down. No matter which sensitivity setting I selected for the touchpad, this confused the Micro, and it sometimes misinterpreted my sliding finger as a tap, and selected something I didn't want. I finally realized it was important to press firmly against the touch pad when scrolling, making easy for the Micro to detect when I was lifting a finger to tap a selection. Once I started doing this, I found I could scroll easily and accurately with one hand, and using the touch pad has now become intuitive and comfortable.
The Forward and Back controls are also fairly intuitive. Tapping Forward or Back when a tune is playing takes you to the next or previous tune. Pressing and holding one of these causes the Micro to fast forward or reverse within a tune. This effect is incremental. The longer you press the Forward button, the faster it moves forward, allowing you to move forward just a few seconds, or a few minutes, accurately and quickly. In FM radio mode, the Back/Forward buttons scrolls the Micro through the Preset stations.
Voice and FM Recording
The Micro records voice in mono with a 16khz sampling rate using ADPCM compression, using about a reasonable 30mb of disk space per hour of recording, with each recording up to ten hours in length. These wav files can be transferred to your PC as .wav files, and Windows shows the files have a bit rate of 64kbps. With 5gb worth of disk space, the Micro will hold well over a hundred hours of voice recordings, if that's how you'd choose to use the space
The mike port on the Micro is a small port, 1-2mm diameter, on the top side of the Micro's body next to the USB port. The port is not covered or hindered by the beltclip case, if you choose to use that case. The microphone is fairly sensitive, in a large room, it will easily record a person speaking 20 feet away. I tested the range of the micro outdoors, counting out loud as I backed 40 feet away from the Micro, which was laying on a table with the microphone "running". I spoke somewhat louder than I would in a normal conversation, trying to simulate a teacher or speaker in the meeting. Even at 40 feet away from the Zen Micro, the recording was loud and clear enough to listen to. If you want to use the Zen to record a teacher in class or a speaker in the meeting, it should be up to the task. Be aware that any noises close to the recorder, hand movements to pick up the recorder or paper shuffling, will sound much louder than a speaker several feet away. The Zen is a little slow at closing recordings, once you stop the recorder, the Zen takes about 5 seconds to close and save before you can ask the player to do anything else.
The quality of the voice recordings is pretty good, approaching the quality of AM radio.
The Zen Micro is also a capable FM receiver, and includes the capability to record from FM stations. The Zen will scan for all the stations with clear reception, and add those as presets. In my case, this was 21 stations. You can delete or add stations to these presets, for up to 32 in total. You select stations from these presets by using the forward or back button to switch from one preset the next. Unfortunately, if some presets are not assigned stations, the Zen still forces you to go through those presets when stepping up or down the preset list, a minor annoyance. On most of the stations that the Zen assigned to presets, the sound quality was clear and bright, what you'd expect from FM. You can tune to other stations with less clear signals, stepping through the FM frequencies, and also add those weak stations to your presets.
The Micro records FM in stereo with a 22khz sampling rate, also using ADPCM compression, using about 80mb of space per hour of recording. When the FM recordings are transferred to my PC, Windows shows the wav files have a bit rate of about 180 kbps. The quality of these recordings is very good. The recordings don't quite have the full sound of listening to cd's, but are fairly true to the original FM source.
Downloading to the player
When I first started using this player, I immediately transferred about 20 audio cd's to the player. I timed transfer of a few of those cd's to benchmark transfer capabilities of this player. When you use the Zen Media Media Organizer to rip cd's and create music files on the Zen Micro, it performs the following actions
- Connect to the Gracenote CDDB service to identify the cd and tracks.
- Rip the cd
- Encode the files to mp3 (or wma)
- Transfer mp3 files to the Zen Micro.
I have a cable internet connection, USB 2 ports, and a 52X LiteOn CD Writer which I use for ripping cd's on my PC. This allows the Zen software to rip cd's quickly, get Gracenote data quickly, and transfer data quickly. But, I was still impressed with how fast I could rip a cd and transfer mp3's to the Zen micro. The time required to identify a cd and its tracks(10 tracks with a total play time of 37:36 minutes) using the Gracenote cddb service, rip the cd, encode to 128kbps mp3 files, and transfer to the Zen was only 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Most of this time was required to rip the cd's.
On a second cd containing 41:10 minutes worth of music, I completely separated each step of the ripping and downloading process. The Zen Software was able to rip the cd, encode and save the mp3 files on my hard disk in 2 minute and 15 seconds. I then was able to transfer the 9 mp3 tracks from that cd, about 38 mb in all, from my PC to the Zen Micro in about 17 seconds, just about 3 seconds per file, for a transfer rate of over 2.2 mb per second.
Syncing with Outlook
You can sync your Outlook calendar, task list, and contact list with the Micro. The micro will only pick up the next two months worth of calendar data. The Micro displays conventional calendar months one at a time on the small screen. Days with events, meetings, etc are marked. Selecting one of those days brings up the events from that day. Scrolling through the days of a month to select one can be a bit tedious, and I wish the calendar would carry more than two months, but it can be helpful. The contact lists works well, brings over phone numbers, addresses, email info from outlook. I've sync'd 70 contacts with my Micro. Once I select the contacts option, it takes about 3-4 seconds for the list of contacts to open. The Zen Micro will also sync contacts with Outlook Express, a nice touch for home users.
Using the Micro as a USB drive
One of the Micro's options is to set aside part of the hard disk to be used as a USB drive. Selecting this option allows you to set aside (partition) 128mb, 256mb, 512mb, 1gb, 1.5gb, or 2gb of space for use as a usb drive. You can't play music files from this drive. When I set up a 512mb partition on Micro, it was instantly recognized as a new drive when I plugged the Micro into my PC. Since I have lots of drives and partitions on my PC, the next available drive letter was N:, which was assigned to this drive. One you tell the Zen Micro to set up a partition for storage, you can use it just like any other usb drive. Plug it into the usb port of any computer with Win XP and it will show up as an additional drive.
This drive won't the fastest on your system, but the speed will be at least competive with good flash memory drives. When I transferred 75 image files, 47.4 mb worth, to the Zen Micro from my PC, about 45 seconds were required, a speed of a little over 1 mb/second. Large files can be written at much faster rates. I was able to transfer a 350mb video file to the Zen in 72 seconds, almost 5mb per second. Read speeds for small files are much better. I took the Zen micro and plugged it into the USB port on a second PC, where it was also recognized as a new drive, even though no Zen software was on that PC. I was able to transfer the 75 image files to that PC in 15 seconds, a transfer speed of about 3 mb/second. The 350 mb video file was transferred to the second PC in 50 seconds, indicating a read speed of 7mb/second. These numbers are close to what the benchmark program SiSoftSandra reports for this drive, read and write speeds of 3300 and 950 kb/sec respectively for 256kb files, increasing to 7600 and 3300 kb/second for 64mb files.
Battery Life
I've tested the player for battery life in a couple of ways. First, by leaving it playing a mix of 128 kbps mp3 and 96kbs wma files overnite, with with the equalizer turned on and the volume at 14. This was done after charging the zen for about 2.5 hours. I assumed charging was complete at this point since the blue pulsing backlighting which occurs when charging has started has stopped. The first two times I did this, the player went dead after a little over 8 hours. This was considerably short of the nameplate 12 capacity of the batteries, so I repeated the test after charging overnite, playing only mp3 files, with the equalizer turned off. For this run, the volume was set at 10, a comfortable volume for listening in a quiet room. In this case, Zen played for 9 hours and 40 minutes before stopping. Better, but significantly less than the 12 hours suggested by Creative.
It may take some time to break in my battery so that it will provide the maximum capacity. I'll repeat the test in a couple of weeks and update my review. For now, I can only report that the battery life is 8-9 hours under optimum conditions, and 6-7 hours under normal conditions.
UPDATE
Creative has released a firmware upgrade for the Zen Micro, which I've installed. Firmware version 1.01.03, addresses the following battery issue, according to Creative:
This web release enables you to upgrade your player's firmware, to enhance your Zen Micro experience.
It has been reported by some of our customers that they have experienced reduced battery life after charging their Zen Micro. Our product development team has researched these reports and determined that the users may have experienced this after they plugged their Zen Micro into the AC adapter that was already inserted into a wall socket with the AC power on.
While this is not the conventional way (Aside.....Its not???, thats how I do it...) to plug in a player for charging, we wanted to ensure our customers did not experience this problem, so we have developed a solution to address this which simply involves upgrading the Zen Micro's firmware. ...........
.........................
Fixes
* Improves battery life when the player is charged with an AC adapter already plugged into a live power outlet
* Improves touchpad sensitivity
* Resolves the removable disk detection issue after the memory space is changed in Removable Disk mode
* Removes extraneous sound occuring during playback of .WAV files
I've installed this firmware upgrade, and it does improve battery life, to almost 12 hours, using the "optimum" conditions I described, if you charge with the plug in charger. Charging though the USB cable only gives me about 9 hours however, which I can't explain.
END UPDATE
Support and Documentation
Creative´s support is pretty good. The website offers user forums which are very active. Both Creative and other users provide answers to lots of the questions. Once one the first day and once on the second day after I purchased this player, it locked up. I had to remove the battery, then restart. I emailed Creative, and received a prompt reply telling me to "clean" the disk on my player, providing the menu commands to do this. This appears to have eliminated the problem. What impressed me though, was the email I received two days later asking me if the fix worked, and requesting that I let him know if the fix worked or if he could help further.
I was a little disappointed with the documentation. The hard copy manual is short, though well written and illustrated. But the 12 post card sized pages only cover the basics. The pdf manual included is better and much more detailed, and it tells you how to do things very clearly and accurately. But the pdf manual does not always thoroughly explain what the options and settings do and how they work. For example, the manual tells you how to put the player in "album of the day" mode, but, so far, I haven´t found where it explains how that mode works. I found that if you are in "album of the day" mode, hitting the forward button takes you out of "album of the day" mode rather than to the next track on that day´s album, which seems wrong. This issue is minor, as most everything about this player is intuitive enough for users to figure out on the fly.
Points to Remember
1. The Micro supports mp3, WMA, and wav files. It will play WMA files with DRM encoding.
2. Real world battery life is 6-8 hours. Uses a replaceable lithium ion rechargeable battery.
3. Windows compatible only
4. A pouch and beltclip case/desk cradle is included, but no lanyard or arm band or remote is included.
5. The earbuds are pretty good, worth keeping.
6. Part of the Micro´s hard drive can be partitioned to serve as a usb drive. You can´t play music files from this partition, nor can you "drag and drop" music files to the music partition.
7. Sound quality and volume are excellent.
8. The voice recorder and FM recorder both work well. The recordings are saved as compressed wave files.
9. The Zen uses a hard disk to store music files. As such, Creative recommends: You should not subject Zen Micro to continuous shocks, such as those that are likely to occur while you jog or run.
10. The Zen Micro will sync with Outlook to pick up two months worth of Calendar data, contact information, and task list. Will also sync with Outlook Express (contact list).
11. Works well with the Yahoo! Music subscription service. The Yahoo Music Engine downloads tunes slowly to the player, its quicker to download tunes with the Yahoo Music Engine to your computer, then use the Creative labs software to move it to the Zen Micro.
Updates:
5/29/05 - Added comments about using Yahoo! Music Unlimited with the Zen Micro.
6/11/05 - Added link to a review covering the Zen Micro Remote
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 225
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.