No larger than a pack of playing cards and weighing less than a mobile phone, the Zen Micro is Creative Labs' latest attempt to unseat the Apple iPod as the MP3 player of choice for consumers.

The ergonomically designed digital jukebox fits nicely into the palm of the hand and is available in 10 colours, clearly aiming to give the style gurus at Apple a run for their money in the Christmas market.

The Zen Micro has five gigabytes of storage capacity and can store up to 1,250 songs in the standard MP3 format, or 2,500 songs stored using the new compression standard called WMA.

This is slightly more storage than Apple's four gigabyte mini iPod, which can store about 1,000 CD-quality songs. But is behind the latest 40 gigabyte iPod, which has enough storage to satisfy even the most music-mad fan.

The Zen Micro has a radio and offers an impressive 12 hours of continuous high-quality music playback, similar to the latest generation of iPod and superior to the eight hours playtime on the mini iPod. Its battery is removable, a factor that should remove the hassle of sending the Zen model back to the manufacturer when the battery naturally dies.

Voice recording is also included as a standard on the Zen Micro, which can be used as an external hard disk by travellers.

Creative Labs clearly thinks its Zen Micro is a potential "iPod killer" and shrouded its launch this week in secrecy. This journalist was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement before seeing the model and no product trials were allowed prior to the launch.

"We estimate that the iPod has between 40 to 50 per cent of the MP3 player market and it is currently king of the pile," says Mr Paul O'Donovan, an analyst with Gartner who follows the market.

Creative Labs will hope shipment delays of four to six weeks experienced by Apple will enable it to make gains on competitors.

The key question will be whether consumers are prepared to trade the status of owning an iPod for cheaper but competent pretenders to its crown.

The Zen Micro costs €279.99.