Creative Zen Micro 5GB - Dark Blue Best Buy

Quality - 27 Sep 2006

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Brilliant player...simple as that. I've had mine a year and a half and have had no problems what so ever. Whilst my ipod mates are sending theirs back,battery problems,scrolling problems, frozen screens, this little beauty has never failed me. PLUS, if you've kept up with the media storys, apple nicked creatives idea for the scrolling. Don't hesitate with this one, get it! Simple installing, simple cd ripping and you get access to grace note which recocnizes cd's in your pc so you dont have to keep typing in the tracks,albums and artists from your cd, it recognises it! Can't praise it enough!

Amazing! - 09 Sep 2006

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

I have had one of these for over a year now and thankfully no problems! Try not to be put off by other peoples bad experience. My daughter's ipod nano had headphone issues, she is now on her second in 6 months, not to mention what happens when the battery reaches the end of it's life ! I bought my husband an iRiver which was good to start, then the display went and you couldn't navigate the menus, so I sent that back and got him one of these instead! Mine came with a mains charger; his didn't. The Creative Mediasource player is very good, I download from iTunes, burn to Cd and then rip on the PC, a bit longwinded but it works and iTunes is great. The FM radio works OK, I even managed to tune into some stations whilst on holiday in Turkey - they were pretty clear. Like most modern electricals the Micro can have it's funny turns (yes, it has frozen on occaision and I take the battery out), a bit inconvienient but on the other hand this is a great player and even my husband finds it easy to use and he is terrible with this kind of stuff!

I could have done better... - 15 Mar 2006

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

I bought my zen micro in april 2005 for £150 and to be honest, i could have found better MP3 Player for £150.
When i bought it, my zen micro worked great. All i had to do was get used to the touch pad which took about a day and for the next few months it was fine.
At around september last year (2005), though, i found that the earphone socket was becoming a bit unreliable (moving the earphone socket in the plug stopped the sound coming from one of the earphones) and gradually this got worse and now the sound barely comes out of either earphone. I've tried using different pairs of earphones but this doesn't work either.
Other problems are that the switch can come completely off (i've lost my switch and have to use a paper clip to turn it on!) and the battery life is disappointing.
So be warned! I dont reccomend this if you're like me and use your MP3 Player a lot but expect it to last long too!

Great but ultimately Unreliable - 11 Jul 2005

0 out of 1 found this review helpful.

I bought by Zen Micro in January and was very pleased with it at first. It sounded great, looked great, had a good battery life, was well specified and was compact and light but it broke down after 1 month due to a loose wire in the headphone jack and firmware was prone to crashing even before that. Granted Creative's customer support were excellent and I had a replacement within 1 week but 2 weeks later the same thing happened again. Once again Creative customer support were very helpful and I decided to give them another chance. The next Zen Micro lasted up until this morning. Yet again the headphone jack is broken. Whenever the headphones are in and nothing is otuching the bit going into the jack, the sound is fine but if anything touches against it, the sound cuts out. I'm now going to try and get my money back. The firmwre is also still prone to crashing. By the sound of things I'm not the only one to have problems. Its a great MP3 Player, but theres no point to it if its just going to break down.

It's great..... until it breaks!! - 14 May 2005

12 out of 12 found this review helpful.

I love my Zen Micro, I just wish it would stop breaking down on me!!

I haven't had any problems with battery life, touch pad sensitivity or with the software. The player looks nice, the sound is great and there is more then enough space for my entire CD collection, despite the player being so small. Also, despite not being that great with computers, I still found the whole ripping/ MP3 conversion process (I'm not sure of the exact technical terminology!) easy with the aid of the software provided.

However, the problem that I have had though is with the headphone socket. I got my first Zen Micro in december, and it functioned perfectly. That was until one day when, whilst I was listening to the player, the headphone socket went completely. Everytime I touched the cable or so much as moved, the sound became completely distorted and sounded oddly like I was listening underwater. Admittedly, I had changed the white headphones supplied to my own pair (which weren't bright white and therefore didn't announce to the world "hey I have an i-pod!", for safety reasons)but I didn't really think that this would eventually effect the player.

In reading the other reviews, I couldn't help but notice that many were written days after acquiring the player, however the problems didn't develop for me until after I had had it for a month or so.

I got a replacment, stuck with the white headphones and after a about 3 weeks the same thing happened again!!! And what annoyed me is that I was so careful with it, I never even had a chance to drop it or anything to give it a reason to break!

I am now on my third Zen Micro in 5 months. Maybe I should just give up and get an i-pod but, in all honesty, I don't want to! When my Zen Micro is working,it is great, and I like it much better then the i-pods. It just annoys me that i spend half of my time watching the thing like a time bomb, waiting for it to break again.

If you want a more reliable product, get an i-pod. They are more expensive, but I haven't heard a single complaint about them from anyone I know who has one. On the other hand, I know two people who have Zen Micros- one has had no problems at all and thinks that it is great. The other has given up after his third replacement and is now demanding a refund.

My advice would be not to bother, as it seems to be a kind of lottery with them. You either get lucky and end up with one that runs smoothly with no problems, or you end up spending half of your spare time trying to contact Creative Customer Support, and wishing you had just followed the crowd and given in to Apple.