The Creative Zen Sleek ($220 street), an industrial-looking 20GB MP3 player encased in silver-colored brushed aluminum, is roughly the size of a fourth-generation 20GB iPod but has a slightly wider screen. As with the Zen Micro, you control it with a touch strip surrounded by five clearly labeled buttons. Sound quality is very good, the interface is reasonably easy to use, the player is compatible with online subscription and download services, and you get a few handy extras. Assuming you can find the player for a decent price, don't use a Mac, and aren't into looking at tiny photos, it's worth a look.

The Creative Zen Sleek ($220 street), an industrial-looking 20GB MP3 player encased in silver-colored brushed aluminum, is roughly the size of a fourth-generation 20GB iPod but has a slightly wider screen. As with the Zen Micro, you control it with a touch strip surrounded by five clearly labeled buttons. Sound quality is very good, the interface is reasonably easy to use, the player is compatible with online subscription and download services, and you get a few handy extras. Assuming you can find the player for a decent price, don't use a Mac, and aren't into looking at tiny photos, it's worth a look.

The design—which reminds us somewhat of the Dell DJ series—certainly alleviates worries of scratching or fragility. The silver-and-white color combination isn't our favorite, and we're not sure how sleek the Sleek is, but at 2.3 by 4.0 by 0.7 inches, it does fit nicely in the palm of your hand. The buttons, located just beneath the 2-inch monochrome LCD (backlit with blue LEDs), are arranged in Creative's signature layout—very simple and uncluttered.

The Now Playing screen is remarkably similar to that of the iPod, offering info about the track and play mode rather than nitty-gritty details about the file, such as bit rate, file type, and the like. This keeps it clean and nonthreatening for newbies, but you can still use the contextual menu button to access finer details about the file. You can also configure the main menu to include only the items you wish to see, and in the order you want.

The Sleek is fairly easy to use, and its intuitiveness rivals the iPod's. You use the touch strip to move up or down in lists, tapping the center to select items. We like that you can adjust the sensitivity of the strip, which is a bit over-responsive at the default settings and can take some getting used to. And we really love the ability to search for tracks by keyword or letter, though the touch strip does make browsing large collections easy enough.

There are some helpful contextual menus, but as with the iPod, you have to go back to the main menu to access the equalizer settings while you're playing music, which is a little annoying. And occasionally there's a lag when you access something that's not already in the memory buffer, select a track to play, or skip tracks.