Creative Zen Micro Photo (8GB) - the Best of Creative Yet!

The Creative Zen Micro Photo has been hailed as the best Creative MP3 player to date. Other than just being a great MP3 player, Creative Zen Micro Photo offers more than just about any other sub-$200 MP3 player available today. Available in multiple colors, the Creative Zen Micro Photo is stylish, a little hard to get used to, a great sounding player, a voice recorder, an FM tuner, a photo viewer, and also serves as a calendar and task manager that works with Microsoft Outlook.

An excellent choice as a MP3 player, the Creative Zen Micro Photo offers multiple features. The OLED screen is bright and viewable from all angles. It is also available in 10 different body colors. Compatible with most of the different music formats available today, the Creative Zen Micro Photo offers excellent sound and picture quality for its size. However, there are a few minor issues that take the Creative Zen Micro Photo a notch or tow below where it could've been.

The navigation of presented by the touch pad controls of the Creative Zen Micro Photo is decent, but not as good as many other players today. The touch pad itself takes a little getting used to, and the organization of the media on the player is not all that great. The other problem is the lack of music playing capability when viewing pictures. Although not a big deal, it quickly becomes a nuisance to have to stop the player every time you want to browse through your picture gallery. The Creative Zen Micro Photo also doesn't support album art which is another positive missed.

However, those are but minor issues with an otherwise excellent music player. The Creative Zen Micro Photo offers 8GB of space, but doesn't increase at all in size of weight from its previous less spacier versions. Measuring just 2.0x3.3x0.6, the Creative Zen Micro Photo is relatively small for a player with 8GB of capacity. The weight is an extremely low 3.8 ounces. The battery on the Creative Zen Micro Photo is another positive. Like the predecessors of the Creative Zen Micro Photo, the battery is still removable and user-replaceable. A min0USB connection, and a hold switch are also provided, just like the predecessors of Creative Zen Micro Photo.

The Creative Zen Micro Photo ships with a USB cable (used for charging and connecting), a pair of ear buds, a user manual, and a disc for installation. The extra applications included are Adobe Acrobat reader, Windows Media Player 10, Creative MedisSource software, a jukebox software, and most importantly, the Creative Zen Micro Photo application that allows you to make use of the photo viewer on the Creative Zen Micro Photo.

All in all, the Creative Zen Micro Photo is a solid bet for anyone looking for a MP3 player with loads of other stuff to offer, but still under $200. You can find the Creative Zen Micro Photo at CircuitCity and some other stores for a very low price (even under $180). Of course, there are other options available today, such as the Microsoft Zune that you might want to look into if you can afford to pay an extra $70-100/