Zen Micro Photo Wins 'Best of CES'

Creative's Zen Micro Photo took honors for "Best of CES" in the audio-to-go category, making it the third year in a row that Creative has won an award from the annual electronics show. The Zen Micro Photo is meant to compete with Apple's market leading iPod Photo, which was released in the fall of last year.

Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative took the opportunity in a statement to boast over Zen Micro Photo's buzz at CES 2005. "The success of the original Zen Micro has been so great that it was tough to deliver an encore in such a short period of time. Yet we blew everyone away when we unveiled the Zen Micro Photo and won the 'Best of CES' award for the third time in a row," he said. "The judges for 'Best of CES' had never seen anything like it."

The Zen Micro Photo has a 262,144-color 1.5" OLED screen, and can hold up to 7,500 JPEG photos or 3,000 songs on the largest model, which has a 6GB capacity. Two models will be available initially: a 5GB version for $299 USD and a 6GB model for $349 USD.

However, the largest Zen Micro Photo will still be more expensive when compared gigabyte-for-gigabyte with the smallest iPod Photo at 40GB, which runs $499 USD. At $58 a gigabyte, an equal-sized Zen Micro would be much more expensive than the 40GB iPod Photo, at $12 per gigabyte.

Both models of the Zen Micro Photo expected to ship in the second quarter of this year.