Last year I bought an MP3 player for my birthday, a 5GB Creative Zen which was about all I could afford at the time. Over time it started to annoy me as I had to select some of my CD's to be banished to obscurity (ie not be put onto the player). Now I love a variety of music and after a year this was really starting to annoy me so I had my eye out for a replacement, larger capacity player. Over a few weeks I narrowed my choice down to another Creative or an I-River. As I had already owned a Creative I wanted to stick to that make although the 2 players had similar reviews, capacity and capabilities. In the end I plumped for the Creative and set out to find myself the best deal and player possible.

Opening the box was a bit of a challenge. Is it just me or are some boxes designed to be tricky to get into, or to get stuff out of. It seems to be a recurring problem for me and I'm starting to doubt my all round capability in box matters. Once in the box you will find a manual, CD, charger, USB cable and headphones. You also get a pouch for keeping the player in whilst you're on the go. This was a bit of a disappointment for me, the pouch was very cheaply made and although it does do the job it was designed for I would have expected something a bit higher quality from Creative.

Once you have uploaded, downloaded and ripped all the music you want to put onto the player you can then transfer it to the player. This is a quick process and even I (the most impatient person in the world) didn't get annoyed at the time it was taking. There are a couple of ways in which to put music onto the device. The first is to synchronize the player through WMP selecting the tracks you want. The other is to simply drag the albums from 'My Music' to the player which will show up once plugged in under 'My Computer'. Either option is easy although I did find the drag and drop method more convenient as I could transfer albums with one action.

Anyway, now you know about the player I'll give you some personal opinion of it! I find the Zen Sleek a lot easier to use than the Zen Micro. The buttons are 'positive buttons' in that they actually press down and aren't on a touch pad. The scroll bar is still a touch pad but I have never found a problem with it, you can turn down the sensitivity of the touch pad scroller if you need. The player is fairly quick to respond after you have pressed a button and you don't need to wait an age for it to start up or do what you have asked it to.

The player also contains an FM radio which picks up all the major stations. You are able to record from the radio also, as well as using the player as a voice recorder. Handy if you like that sort of thing but I use mine for music and photos in the main. If you need to transport files from your PC around you are able to do this with the player by portioning off part of the hard drive as portable storage, this again is not a feature I use and I wouldn't recommend buying the player for this feature alone as there must be cheaper things to buy that are built for that purpose. It is a useful capability to have however, just in case.

My second gripe is that the player does not have a removable battery as the Zen Micro does. This was really reassuring as I knew that if my Micro battery failed I could just buy a new one but this is not the case with the Sleek Photo, a shame I think although I haven't had any problems with the battery life at all, in fact, the battery has been nothing less than amazing, easily covering a couple of days driving (really long days too!).

Should you have any problems with your MP3 I wholly recommend the Creative technical support who replaced my Zen Micro after about 10 months when I broke it (I think) or it malfunctioned. A new unit winged its way to me with 4 days, no questions asked, a truly excellent service.