Creative Zen Stone Plus review

Unless you commute to Venus, it's debatable how many hundreds of hours of music you need on your MP3 player.

Flash-based units like the Zen Stone Plus are a cheaper and more practical alternative to hard disk players if your storage requirements don't run into tens of gigabytes. At 50 quid, the Plus goes head to head with Apple's own budget player, the iPod shuffle - except that while Apple products are rarely discounted, you can get the Zen for under £36.

Unlike the minimalist shuffle, the Zen Stone Plus makes sure you get your money's worth. Compared to the original Stone, the Plus keeps the small circular track skip, volume and central shortcut buttons, but doubles memory capacity to 2GB and adds a small LCD screen. This gives track information for the song you're listening to and provides an interface to navigate through your folders. There's even a graphic equaliser. The screen takes a lot of the guesswork out of skipping through your tracks, unlike the shuffle.

Other neat features include an FM tuner and a built-in microphone for voice recording.

To transfer music, you plug the Zen into your PC using the supplied USB cable and drop files onto it. Both Windows XP and Vista will recognise it without needing drivers, and plugging it in also recharges the battery, which you'll probably need to do at least once a day if you listen a lot. 2GB allows for roughly 500 songs, depending on the quality of WMA or MP3 compression you use.

The supplied earphones are large and uncomfortable, and sound quality was poor, with smudgy bass and harsh treble at high volumes. Switching to a pair of £30 noise-blocking earphones showed what the Zen Stone Plus was capable of, with good bass and surprisingly articulate mid-range.

Even after budgeting for better earphones, the Zen Stone Plus offers excellent value. It may not be quite as sleek, but it beats the iPod shuffle on ease of use, capacity and sound quality. It's available in a range of bright and glossy colours, too.

Author: Chris Lee