Creative Zen Micro 5GB vs. Apple iPod Mini 4GB
Page 9
Creative Zen Micro
Navigation System (Continued)
Now the "Extras" menu.
Date & Time. You can set an alarm, as well as customise the date and time format.
Next, the "Microphone", which is the voice recorder. The bars on the right are the volume monitor. I think that is a great feature as you can tell if what you are recording is too soft, or too loud.
While recording, pressing the "Options" button brings up the following. Once you "Stop" a recording, the player will take some time to process the file.
Next is the organiser function, which you can sync with Microsoft Outlook.
And yet another interesting feature, the removable drive. You can partition a certain size, up to 2GB, to be used as a removable drive.
Creating the partition can take quite a long time, depending on the size.
Next we come to "System".
"Information" displays, well, information about the player.
"Audio Settings", with the 5-band Custom EQ.
"Player Settings". You can configure a "Sleep Timer" of up to 120mins.
"TouchPad" lets you turn on or off the "Clicker", and set the sensitivity of the TouchPad.
"Configure Menu" is yet another iPod feature now incorporated into the Zen Micro.
Finally, "Language" lets you choose the language of the player.
Going back to the main menu, pressing "Options" gives the following, which can configure the menu, change the order, or reset it to the default.
Remarks
The iPod Mini has a very simple navigation system, with few extra options. It does the job, and is one of the reasons why the iPods are so popular over Creative's Nomad Jukeboxes.
Creative learnt from its mistakes, and the Zen Micro's navigation system is the best I've ever used. On one hand, it is as simple and straightforward as the iPod Mini's. But use the "Options" button and a wealth of extra functions can be used. I particularly liked the ability to do a keyword search of my songs. Previous Nomad Jukeboxes allowed you to search, but in a simple way. That is, searching for "Fo" would show all albums/artists/songs that begin with "Fo". The new keyword search means searching for "Love" would match any album/artist/song that contain the word "Love". Very useful indeed.
In terms of features, the Zen Micro matches all of the iPod Mini's, most noticeably with the "Organizer". In addition, the Zen Micro features an FM tuner and recorder, as well as a voice recorder.
Also, one thing to note is that the Zen Micro, while it has a slightly smaller LCD display, is actually of a higher resolution. So non-English text appear better, as shown below. The screen on the right is the iPod Mini.
This may not be an issue for most users, but for those who have Chinese or Japanese songs, this would be something to consider.
| Previous |