Journal: My Portable Music Player

A few months back, I bought a Creative Zen Micro. (I am rather non conformist at times) I had an iPod G3 a while back, it was nice, but not a great as everyone makes them out to be. I was rather impressed, though, with my father's Nomad Jukebox Zen USB2.0, although it was bigger than the iPod, I loved how it sounded. While looking for a new MP3 player, I took that into consideration. I did not want another 20 gig player as I had a real hard time filling up my iPod. So I had three players to choose from at the time, a 4 gig iPod mini, a 5 gig Rio Carbon, or the 5 gig Zen micro. (Note, The Zen Mirco and iPod Mini are available in capacities up to 6 gigs now) A few things I took into consideration were: price, the aesthetics (both visual and tactile) of the unit, the ease of use, the software interface, battery life, features, and finally sound quality (note, I never had a chance to test the Rio Carbon myself, so it will be omitted in some areas, also note that the iPod Mini at the time of purchase was limited to the 1st gen 4 gig) First off, pricing was odd, from the manufacturer, all three cost the same, however, in a retail environment, the iPod was almost always more expensive (commission's a bitch). However, as it was possible for me to get them all for the same price, all three tied here. The aesthetics of these players are stunning, visually, all three are impressive, in my hand; however I found that the Zen Micro felt the nicest, as it has a curved shape to fit your hand. With twice the colours as an iPod mini, plus the colours are more vibrant (still are). The mini, while visually appealing, did not fit my hand as nice. And I will admit, I am a sucker for anything that glows blue as a bonus. Winner: Zen Micro Next up: ease of use. Let's get this out of the way; I don't like the method the Carbon uses for menu navigation. Done. I would also like to say that I have not seen, let alone used, anything as easy as the click wheel. However, I found that the vertical scroll pad on the Zen Micro almost as good, after you fiddle with the sensitivity. I don't mind the lack of tactile buttons (I thought it was cool on the iPod 3G, and still are on the Zen Micro) on the Micro, however, many people prefer the iPod mini's tactile feedback. Winner: iPod mini On to the software interface. First on the unit, the iPod's interface is good, the Zen's was better. Everything where I would want it, plus the Zen has another button that opens a Context menu that is different depending on where you opened it from. This context menu provides shortcuts to important player functions. For example, in the Now Playing screen, if you open the context menu you will have the following menu items: Seek To, Set Bookmark(save the exact location you are in a song, with the playlist), View Details (View the full info tag, file format and quality), Lookup Artist (find other songs by the current artist), Remove (Removes song from now playing list), Save As Playlist (Lets you save the Now Playing list as a custom named playlist), Play mode (Random, repeat, etc), Volume (although it is not necessary to use this option to change the volume here, this option is omnipresent so you can use it to change the volume without having to get to the Now Playing screen). In the All Tracks menu, the following options are present: Find Track (Enter all or part of a song name, this finds all matching tracks and displays them), Keyword Search (this is different than the find track in that instead of entering the name, then searching for it, it browses through the list as you type a name in), Add to selected (adds track to now playing list), View Details, Delete Track (deletes it straight off the device) and Volume. For me, these extras are great, for others, they might not be needed, in which case, the iPod's simplicity is nice to have. On the PC side of things, iTunes is great, the Creative Software is good for getting a large chunk of music on your device for a quick start, and WMP10 is good for syncing new music. Winner: Creative Zen Micro, for unit side, tie for computer side Next up: Battery life. iPod mini's battery life blew (8 hours), and you know it. The second Gen's is way better at 18 hours, but that was not an option. The Carbon has an astounding 20 hours of battery life. The Zen has a modest 12 hours. But Creative had another trick up their sleeves, the Zen has a removable battery, plus, at the time, a campaign where the first 350000 (IIRC) units worldwide came with an extra battery, brining my unit up to a much more impressive 24 hours battery life, plus no fear when the time comes that the Li Ion battery will no longer hold a charge. $40 for a new Zen battery, or send in the iPod for $99 (sure you could do it yourself, but most people don't want to). Winner Zen Micro Features. The iPod has a contact list, calendar, clock, alarm clock. So does the Zen Micro. The iPod has games; I never liked them much, except for the song guessing game. The Zen has a FM radio, microphone. Both can operate as a removable hard drive. The iPod has several EQ presets, the Micro does as well, however it also has a five band graphical custom EQ mode. I find the micro's features more useful than the iPod's in the areas where they differ (If I missed any, please tell me) Winner: Zen Micro Sound Quality. Possible the easiest area to screw up on, I used a pair of Sony headphones, loaded each player (minus the carbon) up with the same 320kbps MP3 recorded using LAME. I then went into a quiet room, and had a sales clerk (yes they let me load up a test song, no they did not have a carbon) stand behind me with the micro and iPod mini, selected one at random, without me knowing which one, plugged the headphones into the player, and I listened to the song. He then repeated it with the other player. I then said if the first or second one sounded better, then turned around. The Micro sounded better (not by a huge lot, but noticeable to me) Winner: Zen Micro So there you have it; that is why I have a Zen Micro, and why I love it. --Sidewinder