Home > Consumer Reviews > Creative Zen MicroPhoto 8GB MP3 Player - White

The creative zen MicroPhoto white has a good music storage capacity of around 4000 songs and a battery life of around 15 hours from creatives rechargeable and removable lithium battery. The use of coloured menus and inovative vertical touch pad make this mp3 player extremmely easy to use. The creative has a built in voice recorder so you can record those boring lectures and it also has a built in fm radio, that allows you to preset up to 32 of your favourite stations and if you like to listen to your morning shows at night then the creative lets you to record the show for playback later on. Other features of this mp3 player are a choice of 8 equaliser presets to fine tune your listening, use the device as a portable storage device and why not synch your calendars and contacts from microsoft outlook. In all of this so far we are overlooking what creative see as one of the main selling points of this mp3 player and that is the units ability to store and display photos on creatives vivid colour display and i confirm this is an excellent feature. The creative can play the following audio formats; mp3, wma, janus, wav, ima adpcm. In order to use the creative you need the following specification: microsoft windows xp (service pack 1 or higher) / XP 64-bit, Intel Pentium II 350 MHz or AMD K6-2 450 MHz (Pentium III 450 MHz or higher, 64mb ram, USB port, CD-ROM drive with digital audio extraction support. In the box you get Zen MicroPhoto, earphones, rechargeable Lithium battery, USB Cable, Pouch, Installation CD and Quick Start Guide. The unit lost a star for a couple of reasons for example: no charger or wired remote so charging is only available through usb but this can be sorted as a charger and remote are available at extra cost and In my opinion the fm radio on the creative is flawed as it can barely pick up stations however I recommend this unit as on mp3 playback the unit sounds exceptional. If you can overlook the cost of the missing accs and dont want the creative for the fm function then the creative is definitly a heavyweight contendor.

What a lovely player! Syncs perfectly with Windows Media Player or the supplied Creative software. Photos look nice on it although you can't view them and listen to music at the same time. Maybe a firmware release in the future will change this?

8Gb is a lot of space for such a small player. You can partition various sizes of the drive to use for data (not music) storage.

The touchpad seems a lot easier to use than on the previous Zen Micro and it has a kind of matt feel to it instead of glossy.

All in all, a great machine and a fine alternative to the all conquering iPod.

What an amazing little player. I have read some problems with this player and its software but it worked perfectly from the box despite DHL lobbing it over my garden wall!
If you are thinking of getting this player treat yourself to the remote and the charger. The battery doesn't last long so be warned.
It took me no longer than 1 hour to install the software and load 636 tracks. This product is quality

I got this player about a week ago after i had spent months researching mp3 players read all the good and bad things about Ipods, creative, Iriver etc etc i was not even sure if i should get an 4, 6, 8, 10,20 or 30gb player? the only thing i was certain of was 'i didnt want to be one of the apple ipod crowd' and im glad im not, in the end i opted for this little beauty, as for some criticisms that i have read on web sites about this player its beyond me some people just complain about the smallest of details, ok the touch pad is a little tricky to begin with but you soon get used to that, my only gripes would be is you cannot see whats on the display outside in daylight unless you cup your hand over the screen or go somewhere a little darker and the lock switch is too close to the headphone jack but im not gonna lose sleep over this, the sound quality is supurb and if you want to get around the EU volume cap then just download the US version of the latest firmware reload, reboot and hey presto you will definatley notice the difference in volume, trust me you wont want it on the maximum.
This player looks and feels great especially with the neon blue glow and every ipod owner i know who have seen this have been surprised at how good this player is, its a shame most people are brainwashed into thinking ipod is the only mp3 player worth getting.
well done creative this is a winner for me even if others dont it is.

Ok so compared to the zen micro not really much difference- scroller easier 2 use and seems to be made of a nicer material - this time there's a coloured screen but the photo storage is a bit silly. When u use your photos as wallpaper its difficult to see the titles - the earphones are still far 2 big for my ears so I have to use horrible black ones - what i am disappointed with also is the fact there is no craddle or charger included with the microphoto!! I think also the software is a little more difficult to use in comparison with the simplicity of the zen micro

Nevertheless, it's 10 zillion times easier to use than that darn itunes with ipod - oooooo its driving me to insanity - zen micro uses media player and doesn't have a stupid libray to be updated!!

The memory is also a lot larger than the new ipod nano!

So overall, the downsides are the earphones and fact that this is stillquite a chunky size but the upsides is the simplicity and memory.

I can only hope that the battery life will last longer than my original zen micro and that the headphone socket wont break like my old micro.