This is horrible, the fun is out of it. The site has become slow, lethargic and extremely difficult ...
This is horrible, the fun is out of it. The site has become slow, lethargic and extremely difficult to navigate.YYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!
Member since:05.02.2009
Reviews:63
Members who trust:18
I never had a great respect for Creative’s audio quality, in a sense they are know to have at best ‘above average’ and normally ‘average’ audio quality. None of their audio products has ever reached, forget about over running, the standard set out by the best up there. This new Creative ZEN Stone Plus is no exception only that you get a speaker system, whose sound quality is not more than what you can expect from speaker so tiny, as a bonus and only that.
The Upgrade to Creative Zen Stone plus, keeping the same price tag with upgraded accessories without charges. Providing silicon skin and detachable clip for the skin plus the standard ear-bud, instructions and of course the USB cable. I thought it was an inch from the Shuffle and Clip. The skin is a quality one providing openings for USB cable and the speaker.
The new Zen Stone plus is a look alike of the Zen Stone with Speakers. The one laudable addition is the attractive matte finish, except the front buttons, so less prone to finger prints and scratches only replacing the gloss of its predecessor gaining hardly anything in terms of professionalism that it lacked when it had the glint.
It’s amazing
how a company enjoying such high reputation can churn out products of mediocre quality on such regular basis. Is it they have problems with information technology at its crudest form (I mean user feed back, please)? Or is it they have serious R&D problems? May be they are not serious at all about this particular wing? It really makes me wonder!
This stuff, which, in spite of the ravishing matte finish, still looks dumb, is just useful while listening to podcast in the car, the speaker on the back of the Zen Stone Plus makes it worth.
DESIGN
The main controls are on the front of the player but now the play/pause button is right on top (unlike its sibling), logical deviation. The surprising deletion is the physical ‘shuffle mode’ and the play mode is painstakingly accessed ever so slowly using the sluggish menus of the system. There is no ‘hold’ button in spite of its obvious problem it’s preferable.
Still there is a sexy looking 64x64 OLED screening smug up there on the left with a hackneyed blue-on-black display and does what a display of such size is capable of doing. A good implementation of graphic display into such a tiny stuff and the icons are large enough and useful too.
FEATURES:
The new Stone Plus supports, as its sibling, MP3, AAC and WMA files, and claims to play Audible downloads and copy-protected content, though I am very sorry, couldn't get any of Audible's formats to work; neither audiobooks nor subscription downloads would play. Funny though there is no support subsciption support services such as Nepstar but the one bought-to-own from such store plays nice and cool! There is no way to select individual tracks but the library is reshufflable and can visually navigate the album, a big bonus no doubt. One very pleasing feature is the Voice recoder allowing upto 10 hours recording on one go and saved with file names as the recording terminates. These recorded files can dragged and dropped to the PC or browsed usng built-in navigation. The FM radio with 32 presets is another addition and ofcourse the celebrated little speakers are there taking the audio notches higher. But it is insane, these are bound to fall in the hands of early teenagers and imagine a situation in packed bus or any public transport for that matter, I promise those journeys will less ejoyable, although they are hardly enjoyble, will be difficult or even traumatic.
AUDIO PLAYBACK
Nothing much there standard which you are supposed to get. Repeat track, Repeat folder and Repeat All. Then the usual shuffle options.
But there is annoying problem with shuffling for the simple reason the shuffle mode works by creating a shuffled play list and then playing it. What happens when a track is skipped ? Simple, end up with exactly same order of song and a brand new one for each track ! May be there are people who will love this but I will prefer any day the Sansa Clip randomizing.
While deleting there is a problem, you can not delete a whole folder, one track after another. So the option in the playback menu “delete the current play song”. I don’t have time deleting one at a time!
TRANSFERING MEDIA
It works with, I mean it is supposed to, since the Stone Plus Speaker is MSC and mount as removable drive like the flash or pen drive So the usual method of simply copying and pasting wonderfully. Naturally it can work just as simple external storage device. But it will take a hell of a lot of time to fill the baby up full, rate is 1-2MB per second and most of times even more. I mean some times it gets on to my nerve.
SOFTWARE
Go to the folder named “Starter Pack” situated on the root. There is The Creative Media Lite which is totally unnecessary for normal use, the drag and drop does the job just as well. But it is not use less, the Creative Media Lite is required for functions like volume limiting, transferring contents of protected media and updating firmware. Moreover it rips music also but very unsophisticated, “crude” if I may use the word. CD ripping requires dedicated software.
INTERFACE
It carries the legacy of Stone Plus in a sense that the lethargic, laggy and hard to use interface problem has hardly been taken care of. The menu is slow but not that slow but lag is not as much one second, not fast that much is sure. New inclusion in the interface is the speaker option. It is hardly intuitive.
I find the issue of constantly scrolling through the menu annoying, oh my god Scroll “cancel” or press the music icon go to “now playing” get a pause on the music.. I don’t know!! The persistence of scrolling to “cancel” to get out is absolutely boring far better is the “Home” button of Sansa Clip.
Another pointless illogical and annoying feature is the programmable short cut button. Do you switch modes that often? Does any one jump from Music/Radio/ Clock that often to have programmed short cut?
SOUND QUALITY
The equalizer is really a big problem. It sounds hollow flat and the lower frequencies are real bad, meaning the bass it poor. The equalization issue is based handled by Sony because the Sanasa Clip also has the same problem. It is bound vary with the headphones in use. The quality of sound is at most “above average” hardly having control over the audio spectrum. The sound lacks detail, depth and clarity.
THE SPEAKER
It’s a pleasant surprise. For its size its exceptionally loud, okay it’s a little better than those some cell phones have.
BATTERY
It’s one of the welcome feature. One full charge gives a cool 10-11 hours playback along with listening to the radio and speaker. Otherwise it gives a whooping 20 hours.ROBLEMS I FACED
Extremely painful to navigate the manus.
Starts auto playing as soon as you select a folder
No preselection is possible making the screen useless
The software more often than not load
The loading process is painfully slow
Customizing the equalizer might lead you to ‘x’ number of problems.
This is what I feel about Creative Zen Plus for you. Already I have spent quite some time. Please read the review and I would really love you to prove me a pessimist.' ''Note: Oh yes for got to tell you the price. Its okay.'''
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) Av Output to plug to a TV, built-in speakers, easy to use. Come with very good earphones (-) Does not come with power supply (easy to charge from the PC though), av cable is sold separately
The simplest way to share your music.The ZEN Stone MP3 player with built-in speaker ... more
makes listening toyour favourite music even more fun. You can choose to share yourtracks using the speaker or to listen using earbuds. Either wayit's so simp
Postage & Packaging: £4.39 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Jun 23rd, 2009
exceptional by (11%):
very helpful by (89%):
