Creative Zen Micro 5GB vs. Apple iPod Mini 4GB
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Apple iPod Mini
Transferring Files
When connected, the iPod Mini appears as a removable drive. To transfer music, however, you need iTunes.
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Creative Zen Micro
Transferring Files
There are three ways to transfer music to the Zen Micro. One is using Creative MediaSource, while the other two make use of the Zen Micro Media Explorer. In the Media Explorer, there are two options to transfer music, "Import Music" and "Organize Music". "Import Music" shows an interface similar to MediaSource, while "Organize Music" brings up the "Music Library" and lets you drag & drop music files. MediaSource also allows you to drag & drop, but I counted "Organize Music" as a seperate way to transfer music because it is the only way to transfer non-English songs that will display correctly.
Below is Creative MediaSource, and the "Import Tracks" screen.
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And this is Media Explorer, and the "Import Music" screen.
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And finally, the "Music Library", and it's "Settings" screen to transfer non-English songs.
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Transfer speeds
The following table shows the time taken, and average speed to transfer music.
| Device | MB Transferred/Time taken | Average write speed |
| iPod Mini 4GB (iTunes) | 100MB/19secs | ~5.2MB/s |
| Zen Micro 5GB (Media Explorer) | 106MB/60secs | ~1.7MB/s |
| Zen Micro 5GB (MediaSource) | 106MB/73secs | ~1.4MB/s |
| iPod 4G 40GB | 140MB/21secs | ~6.7MB/s |
| Zen Xtra 30GB (MediaSource) | 163MB/41secs | ~4.0MB/s |
The iPod Mini is a speedy performer, beating even the hard disk-based Zen Xtra. I did find it curious as to why the Zen Micro was so slow. Note also how Media Explorer is almost 20% faster than MediaSource. I contacted Creative on this matter and as I had suspected, it was to do with indexing the music files. The reply was that "it's normal that the speed of data transfer in Removable Disk mode is higher, as when you're transferring music, the player does have to index/add these files to the Music Library. We are always working on improving these times, but there will be a difference there."
3 June 2005 update: Using the latest firmware, drivers & MediaSource, the Zen Micro gives a better speed than before, at about 2.9MB/s.
Benchmarks
The following graph and table show the results of the benchmarks done using SimpliSoftware's HD Tach.
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| Device | Max read speed | Average read speed |
| iPod Mini 4GB | 8.5MB/s | 5.6MB/s |
| Zen Micro 2GB* | 10.1MB/s | 6.8MB/s |
| iPod 4G 40GB | 18.7MB/s | 14.7MB/s |
* The Zen Micro only allows for a maximum of 2GB partition to be used as a removable drive.
Surprisingly, the Zen Micro actually has a better read speed than the iPod Mini.
Remarks
The iPod Mini is convenient because the instant you connect it to your computer, it works as a removable drive, and the space you can use is up to you. However, you can only use the iTunes software to transfer music. Generally I have no problems with iTunes. However, there are times when it can get rather sluggish. But at least iTunes is stable.
Creative offers more ways to transfer music. Unfortunately, I kept encountering a bug which would hang Media Explorer, as well as the Zen Micro.
I need to also add that users who want to transfer Japanese or Chinese songs will have to do additional work. iTunes requires the ID3 tag to be in Unicode format for it to display correctly on the iPod. After searching a bit on the Internet, I found this nifty little software called Convertz. It can convert ID3 tags easily between GB, Big5 and Shift-JIS. More importantly, it can save ID3v2 tags in Unicode.
For the Zen Micro, only the Music Library interface can transfer Chinese or Japanese songs correctly. The good thing is, the Music Library can accept GB or Big5 text. You just need to specify which language before transferring the files. Unfortunately, there is a distinction between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, and it takes a little trial and error to finally get your music displayed correctly. Of course, you could also use Convertz, and once in Unicode, Simplified Chinese will display correctly even if you select Traditional Chinese, and vice versa. But again, the Music Library is the only way to transfer such songs. Using the "Import Tracks" or MediaSource will display gibberish on the player.
So while having a few different ways to do something may be good, I would rather Creative standardised everything and put it in one interface.
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