Creative Zen Photo gives you 20GB of sleekness

With Christmas coming and almost by pure coincidence, Creative has launched its bid to grab the attention of digital music player buyers with the new the 20GB hard drive-based Zen Sleek Photo.

The player’s 262,144-colour OLED screen will display JPEG digital images only. Users can select from one of at least eight colour themes for the player’s UI, and apply a downloaded picture as the background image.

But as a music player, the Zen Sleek Photo supports the usual MP3, WAV, WMA and WMA DRM formats. Fancy yourself a music engineer? Well you can adjust the sound to your liking using the integrated five-band equalizer, or by selecting one of eight pre-set Eqs (for those of us who do not know what treble means). It also has an FM radio and a voice recorder that can all be controlled using a vertically oriented touch-sensitive strip. The same type seen on the original Zen Sleek and the older Zen Touch.

The unit measures 10.1 x 5.9 x 1.7cm and weighs 157g. On board is a rechargeable battery capable of delivering up to 19 hours’ continuous playtime on a single charge. And if you do manage to run out of juice, the battery can be charged via USB.

Creative said it’s also offering a docking cradle as an optional extra. The Zen Sleek Photo is available for around £220 in the U.K.