Home > Consumer Reviews > Creative Zen Stone Plus 2 GB MP3 Player (Red)

I picked up this device expecting a great alternative to an iPod Shuffle after having fallen in love with the Creative Vision M. After a couple of hours playing around with this, I was really disappointed in my purchase. This turned out to be the most problematic Mp3 player I've owned.

The most annoying thing about this MP3 player is the laggy interface. If a song is being played and you try to click through the menus, there is literally a 3-5 second lag time before the screen updates. Before it even has a chance to update, the menu would sometimes time-out and go back to the "now playing" screen, and you will have to start all over again. The latest firmware update doesn't resolve this issue and the only solution I can think of is to pause your music before you go into a menu.

If you press the next button really fast to skip through a bunch of tracks, the device would lag up, taking 3-5 seconds to go through each single track. It would forget how many times you pressed the button after a certain number of presses. For example, pressing the next button 20 times at 0.5 second intervals might only result in 10 tracks skipped after approximately 30-50 seconds of lag time.

Another big problem is poor battery life. You can only get about 8 hours from a single charge. Also, if you fully charge the device and just leave it turned off and unplugged, the battery would drain itself out completely within a week. I thought the clock was responsible for this but even after disabling it, I experience the same problem.

I don't think it's worth mentioning the positives since these three problems I've mentioned cripple the device so severely. I am surprised that Creative allowed their name to be placed on such a horrible product.

I highly recommend that you stay away from this Mp3 player and instead, consider the Sandisk Sansa Clip which is an excellent alternative.

I've had this for over a year now, and have gotten hours and hours and hours of use out of it.

I use it only for audiobooks, as it plays the wma audiofiles that OverDrive Media uses - which is what my local library uses as their download provider for audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks has changed my commute from a chore to something enjoyable and relaxing.

A few things: I do NOT have it display the date/time. This gives it a longer battery life. I did invest in a couple of mini-usb cables, which I have in my office(s), so that I can charge it at work. You don't need the software to charge the player, just the cable. I did put on a wrist strap, mainly so I could easily find it in my purse.

I have not had issues with the creative software, but I am only using it for audio books.

For a simple, basic player for overdrive wma audio books (since I got this they now have mp3 books ... but the wma are smaller, so I still prefer them), I recommend it.

As I can't speak to the software for music, or how it plays music, I am only giving it 3 stars.

Product's pretty good. Got what I wanted & what I paid for. Only annoyance is the shuffle logic is ridiculous. Every time the player is switched to shuffle mode, it plays almost a fixed sequence of songs. Otherwise, everything else is quite good.

I was so excited with i got my Creative Zen Stone. Yes the charge life was horrible, but that was not much of a concern for me. I liked the fact that it was small and perfect for working out. Overall i thought it was a neat little gadget until it suddenly stopped working after 2 months. I attempted to turn it on one afternoon and the creative logo appeared on the screen and wouldn't go away. I could not access my music and the device would not turn off . I'm highly disappointed...i expected more from this company.

It's a great little mp3 player. It's basically a shuffle. You can make folders but that uses up more space so it's basically organization vs. amount of music. Plus definitely get a little case for it because mine got scratched up pretty quickly and I was very careful. I guess because it's such a small screen one or two little nicks are very annoying.
You can choose language, sound settings (according to genre and there's a custom setting), there's fmradio with tons of presets. It's definitely worth sixty bucks! I recommend it.