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.