Creative Zen Micro Photo user reviews (8GB, gray)

Pros Stylish exterior, good quality music, removable battery, flexible interface, user-friendly.

Cons Battery life is short, voice recorder is of a bad quality, screen is hard to view in daylight, hardware failures.

Summary I have owned this player for about 5 months and overall, I'm satisfied with the performance of the Micro Photo 8GB player.

It's beautiful and stylish (loving the blue light) and has a touchpad that can be toggled in sensitivity. The controls themselves may take a short time to get used to, but it is quite easy to navigate around once you get the hang of it. Most commands can be controlled with one hand; the Zen Micro Photo is convenient to use and pleasant to look at. The size itself is great for the amount of music it stores and it feels solid, smooth and clean.

The system itself is flexible and many options can be changed. The audio settings can be adjusted to suit your needs (may use out your battery more though, if you crank all the settings up). It also provides useful information about the player itself and the player settings (you can play around with themes, contrasts, display timers and menu configurations etc). Photo, clock and language settings are also adjustable.

I love the fact that the battery is removable - one of the things that Ipods fail in. Its less hassle to simply remove and replace the battery when needed; it's also easy to reboot the player in this fashion.

Importing media into this player is generally user-friendly and efficient (although can be tiresome if you plan to import over 500+ songs each time ... unless you have a music synchronizing program). You can also import image files that can be set as your background.

I've found the quality of the Zen Micro Photo music to be good, overall. Extra bass can be added to improve the bassline. The earphones that come with the mp3 have not failed me thus far (but the foam parts will eventually fall off after a short while). I've had no problems with the earphone jack so far, either.

However, about 3 months into the purchase of my player, I experienced a hardware failure. Checking up the website, I subsequently learned that the Zen has a good reboot/clean up/reset mode within it but -isn't- effective if you have a hardware failure. A few of my other friends who own Zen Micro Photos have experienced this same problem, too. Luckily my warranty had not run out and I brought it to be fixed. I expected it to take about 2 weeks to repair and/or replace, but within a week they managed to ship it back, all new.

Another thing I have to moan about is the battery life. Boasting a long battery life on the package, I got a lot less than I bargained for. This is because the player, whilst turned off, is still 'on' until it steps into the 'cold shut down' mode [where it does not use battery power, but takes longer to start up from a 'cold' shut down]. From the stanby mode to cold shut down, it takes about 24 hours -- that's a lot of battery life. However, the newer Zen Micro Photo players have the latest drivers and now it takes only 4 hours to get from standby to cold shutdown. Also, I would take the earphones out of the jack when not listening as this also was a contributing effect to the draining battery life.

The voice recording is, sadly, terrible. Yes, this is probably the least used feature but it can also be useful. It's also hard to record and have the earphones connected to the player at the same time as it can cause a lot of static.

The screen is hard to view in daylight. Though this really isn't a big deal at all, its just a minor setback in a waterfall of positive features the Zen Micro Photo provides to the user. I recomemnd this player, but I'd also treat it like a god because it can break quite easily.

Pros Superb Sound, Many Features

Cons Touch Pad Can Be Difficult

Summary This is a great player. The sound is superb; extremely loud. Synching music to the player was easy and very fast. All software is included with CREATIVE: Toolbox, Media Source, Removable Disc Manager & Much More.

Some people may not like the fact that this player does not support ALBUM ART. But instead you get 2GB more than most players with the same features and that means more music. Which to me, is most important. What ever the Photo Zen lacks in a player, I believe it makes up for with all of it's many features.

The only thing that took a little time was getting use to the the touch pad but you can easily adjust this to whatever sensitivity is best for you.

Pros Huge storage, FM recorder, Color OLED display, Great sound

Cons Music shuts off when viewing photos, short USB cable, poor controls design

Summary When I first heard about the Zen Microphoto (ZMP) at the end of 2004, I had a Muvo2 which I quickly dumped in June before the warranty expired.

I had to wait until Oct 05 before I actually got my hands on a ZMP - what a long wait!

I was immediately impressed by the cute design and click controls - however, it became problematic as even the simpliest of touch could distrupt the entertainment.

While it's true the ZMP has a button lock, the controls are too "BIG" (50% of the face plate) and the slighted touch can select the wrong button. And one shouldn't have to use the lock button everytime to prevent accidents. The best bet is to hold the unit skillfully on its sides.

The FM radio and recorder worked well - but doesn't have the pre-record feature nor does it label and tags songs on the fly as some others do.

The ZMP doesn't ship with a powercord which is sold seperately and very expensive - more than 10% of the unit's price.

You must use your PC to recharge the unit during which you cannot use your player to listen to music.

The USB cable is way too short - my USBs are all the way in the back of the PC where it is dusty and very hot. Perhaps this unit is meant only for PCs with the USBs in the front. However, it was only useful as a converted power adapter. Saved big too.

The old MuVo2, you could drag and drop files on the fly. With the ZMP, this is not so. You have to use a program to transfer music or use the ZMP file transfer mode to use it as a harddrive - gone is the simplicity of drag-n-drop. And oh, you don't share the same space - it's now divided.

The ZMP software works on my PC but failed on my notebook - so I tried to use the file transfer mode to download music from my notebook, but couldn't play it on the ZMP. You MUST use the ZMP software to download the MP3. Wish I had a MuVo2 with drag and drop.

The microphone is very poor. It works but you must be close to the sound. A Mic Jack would have been better or perhaps that tiny hole they drilled into the unit is way too tiny - not even the sounds can get through.

There should be a menu control to turn off or turn down the lights and or keep the screen lights low.

Other than these things, the unit is great, however, the EQ is just basic and oh, even though it's a MP3 player, the music shuts off when you view pictures. Several attempts have been made to contact Creative Labs to fix this problem. Currently, the only fix is this solution and it's easy as 1-2-3:

1. Select the music you want to play and style.
2. Press play.
3. Get a second ZMP to play the photos...
or just get an iPod (think about how much you'll $ave!

This means you are forced to watch photos is silence and it doesn't suffle photos at all. For these fancy features, you have to get an iPod Nano.

Even though we are in digital world, Creative has put us back in the silent movie era!
µ

Pros Vivid Photo Display and Superior Sound

Cons No MPEG movie capability

Summary Got this for my daughter. Didn't want the IPOD because we already have a ton of MP3's and despise the idea of being forced to use Apple's proprietary software etc...

Installed easily. Transfers quickly, Software is not to difficult to figure out.
Set the EQ for Great (I mean Great!) sound.
Menus and playlists are easy and intuitive (this was for my 10 year old).
Pictures look great. Only drawback I can see is that you cannot look through your photos while listening to MP3's. Also you cannot watch MPEG's on this. I wouldn't watch TV or a movie on it anyhow, but short funny clips would be nice to take along.

The battery has great life (I would guess 10+ hours). Even though cost was not a consideration the best part of all is, I got this thing on sale for about $179.00