Creative Zen Stone with Speaker review: Creative Zen Stone with Speaker

Creative's Zen Stone got a decent write-up from us when we saw it last May, but it's back in 2008 with a teeny speaker built in to its iPod shuffle-bashing internal cavity. Is this what the shuffle was missing, or was it absent for good reason?

7.5

Creative Zen Stone with Speaker

The Good

Sound quality (through headphones); price; easy to use; battery life.

The Bad

Speaker has limited applications; few audio formats supported.

The Bottom Line

The built-in speaker may have few real-life applications, but it makes room for a more capacious battery, and it takes nothing away. For that reason, and because of its tiny price, we can't help but think this is a stunning alternative the iPod shuffle

Design
The Zen Stone looks more like a pebble than a chunk of stone, and Creative has done away with the gloss that coated the normal Stone, instead opting for a gorgeous matte finish. Aesthetically, it's identical to its speaker-less brother, but it's now 3mm deeper with that internal speaker.

The Zen Stone now features a speaker on the back, which teenagers on the bus are going to love

There's no screen, so navigation requires patient reliance on the player's ability to play appropriate songs for your mood. You skip through your little 1GB or 2GB collection of audible treats with four-way controls that are as pleasant to use as something of this size could be. Unlike the shuffle, there's no built-in clip, although a silicon case comes in the box as standard and includes a clip.

Features
Thanks to its ludicrously low price, the Stone's main feature is its distinct lack of features. It's a simple player that does a simple job -- playing music. There are no equaliser options, no playlists, no quirky extras. This really can be a positive thing, though. If you're after something where you can just hit play and forget about it, this diminutive little contraption may be for you.

Supported music formats are MP3 and WMA, plus protected WMA. Sadly, there's no love shown for DRM-free iTunes Plus downloads -- unlike the Zen Stone Plus with Speaker -- and Audible downloads are not supported, unlike the iPod shuffle. Still, songs can be added using drag and drop through Windows, or by using Windows Media Player, so that's something.

A little switch on the top of the player lets you shuffle the playback of songs or repeat them all in a pleasant continuous loop. The 'folder skip' button jumps to the next folder of music stored on the Stone, so if you don't want to hear an album you don't need to skip through all of its tracks to reach the next.

This is all a mirror image of the original Stone, of course, but what we've now got is this little speaker wedged in the back. Now, if you've ever ridden a bus when it has a group of music phone-loving 14-year-olds on it, you'll understand how infuriating their incessant recycled pop sounds when blasted through a tinny loudspeaker. If they find out the Zen Stone is both affordable to them and comes with a bonus speaker, we're never going to be able to endure a bus ride again.

Performance
Even worse for post-teen bus passengers, the Stone's speaker sounds exactly like you might imagine: fairly loud and extremely bright. It'd be great for listening to a podcast in the car or enjoying some soothing Capercaillie in a tent at Cambridge, and we appreciate that. But the only other uses are going to be exploited by teenagers, and that makes us very nervous indeed.

With a good pair of earphones plugged in, the Stone's speaker keeps quiet and it's easy to hear Creative's trademark audio quality emanating from the tiny player. It's got the power and sound-quality of any £100-plus player, and is noticeably better than the iPod shuffle. If this is what you're mainly after, though, you'll get that from the original -- and more affordable -- Zen Stone.

Battery life is rated by Creative at an impressive 20 hours -- a full 8 extra hours over the shuffle, though this is without the speaker blasting away. We'll have an update on this when we've finished exhausting the battery in numerous conditions. Check back soon for this.

Conclusion
If you're a teenager and just love annoying everyone on a bus, consider saving a few quid for this little player -- we can personally guarantee it'll exacerbate the anger of old people ten-fold, potentially to the result of an amusing mid-journey hissy fit.

For everyone else, it's handy for listening to podcasts in the car but real-life uses for the tiny speaker aren't numerous. Still, it's cute and the battery life slaughters the iPod shuffle and the speaker-less Stone -- reason enough to consider it as a great second player, and for £30 it's hardly going to break the bank.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday