BIOS: Technology Means Business

Creative's Zen Sleek is being billed as the next MP3 player to create a huge stir amongst music fans. It has good looks with its brushed metal highlights and big (albeit mono) screen, and sports a 20GB hard disk drive and built-in FM tuner with recording facilities. Playback support and connectivity options are limited, but this is a solid choice in terms of style and sound if you're looking for something more individual and don't fancy having the ubiquitous pair of white headphones poking out of your pocket at the gym (no names mentioned!).

Pros: Solid build quality; 20GB HDD; FM recording; built-in mic
Cons: Mono screen; basic file support; no line-in or line-out ports

Creative's new portable digital audio player sports a durable aluminium and glossy white finish, and is relatively easy to use. In fact, the Zen Sleek's (Best Current Price: £175) appearance and controls are almost indistinguishable to Apple's iPod, especially considering the location of its vertical Touch Pad controls and blue backlit display.

However, putting the iPod similarities aside, the attractive Zen Sleek is one of the better players to emerge from the Creative stable. And just like its predecessor, the Zen Touch, it's bound to upset the Apple cart because it's more than a match for the mighty iGods of this world.

The Zen Sleek (59x17x101mm, 157g) does everything the pricier iPod can and more, including a rather nifty FM radio (87.5MHz to 108.0MHz, 100kHz intervals) with recording facilities. Its 20GB hard disk drive can store up to 10000 songs in WMA format or around 5000 as MP3s, with quick and easy downloads from a computer at up to a song-per-second via USB 2.0 - perfect for a quick pre-jog update.

The player's battery life is also impressive, offering playtimes up to 18 hours from its non-removable rechargeable battery, and it has a built-in mono microphone for voice recording. In theory, you could therefore listen to Bill Clinton's hefty audiobook (approximately 6 hours), William Shatner's entire back-catalogue (around 3 hours), a fistful of Pink Floyd concept albums (just under 7 hours) and still have enough juice to enjoy Hear'say's greatest hit (around 3 minutes). If you want...

Controlling the Zen Sleek is a snap, although at times it's not clear which button you're supposed to press. The super-intuitive vertical Touch Pad gives natural, one-handed fingertip management of all the player's functions, and the 2-inch blue backlit display is ideal for fiddling with your tunes under the covers. The buttons even light up a cool blue when touched, so you'll always be able to access your music comfortably in poor light. The only downside is that the buttons are a little noisy when clicked, which soon becomes irritating when scanning through audio tracks and FM radio channels.

Supported playback formats are relatively limited and include MP3 (up to 320Kbit/s), WAV (up to 48kHz), and WMA (up to 320Kbit/s). WMA files with Digital Rights Management (DRM) 9 and 10 are also supported, unlike Ogg, AAC and ASF files. The Zen Sleek doesn't support video or image files either, so it can't be used to show off your holiday highlights to friends and family. Voice recordings are saved in IMA ADPCM (16kHz, mono) format, while radio recordings are saved in IMA ADPCM (22kHz, stereo) format.

Connectivity options are also limited. In fact, they're almost non-existent. All you get is a standard 35mm headphone (25mW per channel) and High Speed USB 2.0 port. There's no FireWire or line-in port for recording directly from external A/V sources, and no line-out port for playing back audio on a dedicated digital audio system. You don't even get a remote control on the earbuds (available as an optional extra). There is, however, a connector at the bottom of the player to connect the matching white power adapter so you don't have to connect it to your computer for charging.

Playback from the Zen Sleek is impressive, with good tone and bass levels. It has a respectable Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of up to 96dB, channel separation up to -70dB, frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz, and harmonic distortion output of less than 0.1 per cent. The supplied earbuds are reasonable too, having a sensitivity of 111dB (±5dB) and impedence of 32-Watts (±15 per cent). [7.5]