Digital Trends

Creative ZEN Stone June 3rd, 2007 | by Nino Marchetti

Features and Use

Priced as a budget MP3 player, the Zen Stone plays music quite well. Even at high volumes, the music did not sound distorted. This is nice, considering that many inexpensive players sound as cheap as their price tag. One area in which Creative did drop the ball, however, is the earbuds. Though they are of solid construction, they quickly became uncomfortable in my ears and needed to be removed. You are well advised to use your own earbuds — a common issue for most portable audio players on the market these days.

With its 1GB of flash memory and no expansion card options, the Zen Stone is rated to store 250 MP3s encoded at 128kbps. It is also capable of storing WMA music files, including those which fit the Windows Media DRM 9 protected format. It is not PlaysForSure compatible, though, meaning you won’t be able to enjoy subscription music content from some online music services. It can, however, play back Audiobooks downloaded from Audible.

Since the Creative Zen Stone lacks a display screen, you’ll need to manage music files (and other data files as well, since the Stone doubles as a USB mass storage device) through your Windows computer. You can do this in one of three ways: drag and drop through a folder window, Windows Media Player, or Creative Media Lite. This last option is free software that must be downloaded from the Creative Web site — annoyingly, no CD is included with which to install this software or the detailed user guide (this also must be downloaded). While I understand that it’s a budget player and all, it would still be helpful to have the software at least on the player so I can drag and drop it to my computer.

Transferring a CD’s worth of music to the Creative Zen Stone through Windows Media Player 11 took about 1 min, 20 seconds for 55MB of music files — respectable over a USB 2.0 connection. While I can see using WMP for this type of process, you definitely miss out on a few features by not using Creative Media Lite. These include setting a volume limit, downloads of firmware updates (though you can do this manually through Creative’s website), and a simpler way for safely disconnecting your USB player from the PC.

The default way to charge the battery on the Stone is through the mini-USB port. Sadly, I could not play music from the player while charging it. Once fully charged, the player did get over nine hours of playback, which is mostly in line with the 10 hours advertised by Creative.

Digging into the playback style of the Creative Zen Stone for a moment, you’ll find the player is designed to play music in alphanumeric order. To this end — unless you set your music in order exactly as you wish the player to play it back— you will want to make sure each album is in its own labeled folder. This folder idea seems to be important to Creative, since they’ve built a skip folder control directly on the Stone’s body. You can create up to three levels of folders from the root, and if the Zen Stone finds tracks and folders in the same location it will play back the tracks first.

Conclusion

With a $40 USD price tag, the Creative Zen Stone is a pretty bare MP3 player. Those looking for digital audio players with advanced features like audio enhancement and OGG support will definitely want to look elsewhere, as will those who desire a OSD (on screen display) to control their entertainment experience. However, if you can get by these factors and don’t mind some minor annoyances like fingerprint smudges and lack of included software/advanced user manual, you’ll probably find the Stone to your liking. This player will serve especially well for those on a limited budget or those who desire something simple they can just slip into their pocket with minimal operating needs.


Highs:

• Quality sound for a budget player
• USB mass storage
• Easy to use

Lows:

• Lack of included software or advanced user guide
• Unable to play music while charging
• Included earbuds are uncomfortable