Creative Zen Stone Plus (2GB; speaker)

If you liked what you saw of Creative's Zen Stone Plus, you now have a choice on your hands: Buy the original 2GB model now for about S$99, or buy a version with a mini-speaker built into the back for pretty much the same price. Is this a decision you even need to make?

Design

The speaker-loving Zen Stone Plus looks just like its younger sibling--the Zen Stone with Speaker. It now features an attractive matte finish, contrary to the gloss of the original, but making up in professionalism what it loses in glint.

Main controls are on the front of the player, but unlike the original Stone, the play/pause button is now stuck on the top. We're sad to see the physical "Shuffle mode" switch has been removed, as play modes now have to be slowly selected using the system's sluggish menus.

Still, to make up for it, there's a cute little 64 x 64-pixel OLED screen sitting on the left. It's a simple blue-on-black display and does everything a display of this size should do. This is the perfect way to implement a graphic display into something this small, and the icons are just large enough to be useful.

Features

As before, the new Stone Plus supports MP3, AAC and WMA files, and claims to play Audible downloads and copy-protected content, though we couldn't get any of Audible's formats to work; neither audiobooks nor subscription downloads would play.

For listening to podcasts in the car, the speaker on the back of the Zen Stone Plus is ideal.
(click for larger image)

There's also no support for subscription services such as Napster, but any music you buy-to-own from such stores will play fine. You can also choose to have your library shuffled, and being able to visually navigate albums is a huge bonus, despite there being no way to select individual tracks.

We were pleased to see voice recording. You can record up to 10 hours of voice on a single recording and each is saved with its own file name as recordings finishes. Recorded files can be browsed through using the built-in navigation, or they can be dragged onto to a PC.

In addition to a voice recorder, an FM radio with 32 presets has been thrown into the mix. And, of course, there's the little speaker in the back that'll pump audio fairly loudly, though if this gets into the hands of teenagers on a packed bus, we're all destined to never enjoy bus journeys again.

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