It’s a momentous occasion. I’ve just purchased my second mp3 player. Why is this momentous you ask? Well, because I’m predominantly cheap. And mp3 players are predominantly not. I also already have an mp3 player which is ancient in terms of mp3 units, but still works just fine. It’s the Archos Studio 20. It weighs about 20 pounds (at least it seems to) and it has a two line display like something off of a calculator. However, it also uses a regular old laptop hard drive, so I’ve removed the 20 gigabyte one that came with it and replaced it with a 120 gigabyte drive. Eat that iPod owners! I scoff at your measly drives! My Archos holds practically every song I’ve ever heard, and it sounds good. Admit it… you have drive envy now. I don’t blame you.

But anyway, the missus has put in for an mp3 player for herself. And she didn’t want an upper body workout just carrying it around, so the Archos was out. I spent a little time looking at models and options and we sprung for the Creative Zen Sleek. It’s about average in size, has got a 20 gig drive and is ‘cute’ according to Mrs. Ruiner, which you know is always a deciding factor for me. Why not an iPod? Well, it’s trendy, which I hate, it requires iTunes, which I also hate, it’s also expensive, which I REALLY hate, and I also subscribe to Yahoo!’s subscription service. The Zen Sleek works with that service, so I went with that one. It’s sad that we have to pick our player based on what service has what format, but that’s a topic for another day.

So for my quick overall impression of the Zen Sleek… I really like it. It’s got a few quirks about it, but all-in-all, it was a good buy and a unit that I recommend. I can’t say that I have a whole lot to compare it to. I’ve played with an iPod and I’ve read about many of the other models, but I haven’t extensively put any of the others through their paces. So I can’t really compare a whole lot. If any competing companies would like to send us a demo player for to us to play with, we’d be glad to give it a go and report back to our visitors So rather than try to compare, I’ll just give you the rundown about using the player and comment on things that I’d want to know about if I was considering this unit.

First off, getting music on the drive is a snap. You have to install some crap on your machine that comes with the unit, but you can use Windows Explorer to add music or you can use their little utility they provide. I skipped that and used Explorer. You don’t get a drive letter, but rather you a little “Creative Zen” icon. You drag your music there and it adds it to the drive and updates the internal listing of artists, albums and songs based on the ID3 tags of your mp3’s. It also detects items that are not music. If it’s a picture, it will move it to the “pictures” directory so that you can view them on the player. You can also use it like a portable hard drive, but you have to have the Creative crap installed on any computer that you want to get the data on to. So that’s a little quirky, but I do like that I can drag and drop from Explorer. It’s also USB2 which is fast for transfers. The Archos is USB1. Wanna’ know how long it takes to load 120 gigs over USB1? 37 hours!!!

Second is the navigation. It’s got a touch-sensitive slide bar. This took me a little while to get used to. Once I got the hang of it, it was fine. Is it the best interface ever? Hardly, but it works, so I’m okay with it. Personally I don’t see how this is any better than scroll buttons. In fact I probably would have preferred that, but this works fine and it’s not really a hinderance.

Third is the display. It looks good, is easy to read and allows you to set your own wallpaper etc. You can view pictures on it, but not while you listen to music, which is odd and seems rather arbitrary, but so what. You aren’t going to either buy or not buy this unit because of that. Now it would’ve been cool if it would have shown the album art while a song was playing, but it doesn’t. The missus is a photographer, so the photo thing was pretty cool to her, and that was a bonus.

That’s pretty much it for the main features. As far as the trivial things, it has a few cool menu features, such as a ‘Shuffle All’ on the main menu and not in some buried place. It also has an ‘Album Of The Day’ feature which is kinda’ neat. It also tracks listens, which some of the other players do as well. And of course the sound on the thing is really good. One complaint is that the volume control is kind of weird to work since it uses the slider. Easy to accidentally make it ear-piercingly loud. Luckily I’m half deaf from too many years in bands, so it’s no biggy to me.

So that’s my view of the Creative Zen Sleek. It’s a really nice unit and it’s pretty cheap. I got mine at Wal-Mart for $165. I’m pleased with the purchase and most importantly… so is the missus, who had no problem picking it up and using it without reading any of the manuals or asking me what to do with it, which says a good deal about the simplicity of the unit. So if you are in the market and are thinking about the Zen Sleek, go for it. In the meantime, I’m sticking with my 120 gig player. So, if you see me out rocking the Archos, give me a shout out. You’ll be able to spot me as the guy wheeling his mp3 player in a wheelbarrow. And if you are an electronics company and want your mp3 player reviewed… bring it on!