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Creative Zen Stone Plus review
July 5th, 2007
Well my iPod has been replaced, by Creative’s Zen Stone Plus (ZS+).
Everyone seems to think it isn’t available yet, but you can buy it direct from Creative on their website, so I’ve no idea what’s going on there.
The basic features are:- UMS (Appears as a drive on your computer and reads music from folders. E.g. No WMP or iTunes required. Works on XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Linux)
- OLED screen
- 2GB (Enough for 1000 songs, they say)
- FM Radio
- Built in microphone for recording
In short it’s an Apple Shuffle with bells and whistles, and, best of all, for the same price (in the UK at least), £50-ish pounds after shipping. A pile of loose change weighs more and takes up more space in your pocket. As it’s flash based you don’t have to worry about it getting knocked either.
The controls are Ok, not the best ever, but this is where reviewing it is tricky. You can use it like a Shuffle and ignore the screen and it’s fine, and having the screen gives it an edge over the Shuffle. If you compare it to larger players then it’s a bit clunky.
The main menu has eight items, Music, Radio, Microphone, Recordings, Settings, Lock and Cancel. Now I’ve only listed seven because the eighth, Options, moves around. Pressing the menu/select button (the circular one in the middle of the ring) brings up the menu and displays where you are. Pressing it once to the right moves you to the Options menu for that mode.
This is where things get a bit odd. By default, the Music (MP3/WMA) option just starts playing, and remembers where you were when you turn it off. By going into the Options menu you can select the album to play, but there’s no artist choice I’m afraid. The odd thing is, every move on this menu causes it to start playing the selected album. In other words, you can’t select the album you want to hear without it starting to play it, as well as all the others you move through to get there.
As I’ve already mentioned, if a full size player did this it wouldn’t be acceptable, but compared to the shuffle I think it is, as this isn’t even possible on it.I haven’t had a chance to use it enough to say whether they manage to get 9.5 hours of playback yet, so I’ll have to come back and fill in that bit when I have.
The FM radio sounds good, and you can easily switch between preset (up to 32 stations) and manual tuning. The microphone is pretty sensitive and can pick up my voice clearly when held at arms length.
The OLED screen is nice and bright even on the default 50% setting but you can’t use it as a torch like you can the iPods, but whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to you.
Being a UMS device means you can just plug it into any machine and drop music onto it directly. It does support DRM protected WMA files (not ‘Plays for Sure’ ones though) but then you have to use Creative’s software to upload them. This means that you can use it on XP, Vista, Mac OS or Linux without any problems, but for some reason the Creative site and the box both state that you require XP SP2.
The players transfer speed is odd because while it reports to being a USB 2 High-speed device (480Mbps) it doesn’t seem to transfer any quicker then about 12Mbps (1.5MBps). I’m guessing that to keep the cost down Creative have used slow memory, which on a 2GB player isn’t too painful, but something that might affect your decision to buy if you want to use it as a small flash drive as well.
The only real design defect is the USB port. The fact that it sticks out a bit isn’t the problem, even if it does ruin the smooth, stone like shape. The problem is that when you have the device plugged into your machine using their short (about 1.5″/50mm) USB cable the screen is either against the desk or the front of the case where you can’t see it.
Altogether I think it’s a great little player, and I’m glad that I brought it over the Shuffle. I’m guessing that Apple will bump the Shuffle up to 2GB on the next update, or they might fine themselves loosing some sales. Or maybe not, since it isn’t an iPod of course :P.
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Back, but not quite here yet…
May 16th, 2007
I got back from a very relaxing holiday to a big problem. I’m not going to saying anything more about it until it’s been cleared up but I don’t really feel like writing much so things will stay quiet for a while longer yet.
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Off on holiday
May 4th, 2007
In case anyone’s wondering where I am, I’m off wandering around the Lake District for a week (back on Sunday 13th May).
I’m not sure exactly when I will get back, but I’ll be spending ages sorting out photos to go onto Flickr anyway :), so it’ll be a while before I post again.
I’m planning to post a lot more when I get back since at the moment I seem to end up with lots of draft posts but never post them.
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Great description of the N800
February 13th, 2007
I think one of the closing comments in the Ars Technica review of the N800 sums things up quite nicely…
My experience with the 770 in 2005 was mixed. It was like getting to know a popular but empty-headed cheerleader in high school—very nice to look at, but not a lot going on upstairs. Stretching that analogy a bit, using the N800 is like finding out that the cheerleading captain is also a straight-A student.
I’ve had my N800 for the last 2 weeks now. It’s a great little device as long as you remember that it’s not a Laptop/UMPC. If you expect it to do everything that a laptop will do you’ll be disapointed. On the other hand you could buy 2 or 3 for the price of a normal laptop, it weights a lot less and runs for longer.
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