Amazing mp3 player at a great price (Creative Zen Stone Plus with Speaker 2 GB)

Member Name: schismrule

Product:	Creative Zen Stone Plus with Speaker 2 GB
Date:	25/01/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very light, feacture packed, great price, looks great

Disadvantages: Annoying power button, Cheap headphones

I bought this mp3 player around 2 months ago as I was after something smaller and lighter that I could take to work, as my current 20gb iriver mp3 player was just to bulky and heavy to have in my pocket all day.

I chose this mp3 player over others as it was very small, looked nice and with 2gb would also be plenty of space to keep enough music to keep me entertained for a month or 2 before changing it. Also the final deciding factor was the price, it cost just £24.98 from curry's which strangely enough was 1 penny cheaper than the normal Zen stone which has less features such as the lack of LCD display and I believe has no radio.

My first impressions on opening the box were very good, the mp3 player looked very sleak in all black and although made of plastic the construction felt very sturdy and it did not feel cheap at all. One of the most surprising features is the weight, it is so light it feels no heavier than the average memory stick. It also comes with a nice rubber case to keep it protected which does spoil the looks but who cares when its going to be in your pocket most of the time! There are also a pair of cheap earphones in the box which I have never used as I have a high quality pair but I can imagine they are no better than the average cheap couple of pound headphones. This is the only let down on the product but is not really an issue when the mp3 player itself is cheaper than a decent pair of headphones!

Putting music on the mp3 player is simple just plug the USB cable into the mp3 player and it will show up on your computer as any memory stick or external hard drive would and you can just drag and drop files into the music folder, there is also a recordings folder where any recordings you have made with the inbuilt microphone are saved. Plugging it into the computer is also how you charge the mp3 player as it does not come with any other charger (although you can buy wall chargers for it as the connection is a standard mini b)

The quality of play back from the mp3 player is just fine and sounds good with decent head phones, there is also a bass boost which I personally don't use but you can tell the difference when its turned on. The battery is built into the player and has excellent length, it lasts around 15 hours on a charge that takes around half an hour. There is also a built in speaker that is of average quality but for a speaker so small its never going to be great, its of about the same quality and volume of a phone speaker.

The navigation of the menus etc. on the player is very simple and controlled by the buttons on the front, you can scroll though the options on the player such as the radio, stopwatch, recorder and change a number of settings such as randomising the music and repeat and also changing the function of the hot key on the top which can be set to do a different function.

One of the only problems I have with this player is the on/off command, to turn on the player you have to hold down the power button for a good 3-5 seconds which is just annoying. Also to turn it off you have to hold down the button for a few seconds which is more understandable as you don't want it turning off in your pocket all the time.

Overall its a must buy and is worth way more than the price tag considering how feature packed it is!

Summary: A must buy!

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