Monday, January 24, 2005
DesignTechnica Reviews the Creative Zen Micro
Posted by James Fee in "ARTICLE" @ 03:00 PM
"Creative Labs has a couple problems they need to address before they can stand to compete with others in this market. First of all, something is draining the battery life from its player at increased rates, both when it’s being used and when it’s powered off. Getting four hours of battery life from a 12-hour battery is inexcusable. Secondly, while we love the audio quality from their ear buds, they are too big to use for long periods and will make your ears very sore. Lastly, Creative needs to polish their own MediaSource software and work on software compatibility with other Media Players like RealPlayer and MusicMatch. Here is our suggestion for Creative Labs: make a hard drive based digital audio player with only a few polished features and make sure it works well. Throwing in everything but the kitchen sink shouldn’t automatically mean it’s the best, it has to work correctly first."
If Creative really wants to overtake Apple as the leader of the digital music player world, they'll have to do a much better job. The only thing holding back WMA from being THE standard is the hardware. The Zen Micro is a huge advance from previous attempts, but it appears to fall short.
If Creative really wants to overtake Apple as the leader of the digital music player world, they'll have to do a much better job. The only thing holding back WMA from being THE standard is the hardware. The Zen Micro is a huge advance from previous attempts, but it appears to fall short.
