Creative to launch Zen Sleek Photo this week

Creative has prepared a rival candidate for the very popular Apple iPod Photo. The company is expected to launch their new digital music player Zen Sleek Photo. They would be hoping to take some of the customers of digital music players away from the Apple during the upcoming holiday season especially for the unit, which comes with the ability to display photos.

They are expected to launch this product in the retail market sometime next month and the prices are expected to be around USD 280. It would have a capacity of 20 Gigs and would add photo-viewing capabilities to the Creative MP3 player lineup for the first time. The device would also be the first to highlight company’s maiden foray into providing support for specific music services on the devices.

Zen Sleek Photo would be capable to work with Napster To Go and Yahoo Music Unlimited. These are the music subscription services, which enable the users to listen to unlimited number of songs for a particular period of time for a fixed fee per month. Apple lacks this service and Creative aim to take benefit of this fact.

There are more features on this device, which the Apple iPod lacks. Creative Zen Sleek Photo would also feature FM radio and voice-recording features. It would come in a brushed aluminum exterior case and the company claims that the higher end models would be capable of holding up to 10,000 songs or “tens of thousands of digital photos”. In addition, the battery backup is expected to be in the region of around 19 hours after a complete recharge.