Electronics : Creative Zen Stone Plus 4GB Black

Rating: - Terrible
Awful. Terrible battery life and wont fast forward through tracks. Must be defective or just a huge disappointment.

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Rating: - Huge let down
I bought this as a "Shuffle" machine to complement the 1Gb Stone I use to listen to new music. Having been delighted with the 1Gb over the last year, I went straight for the 4Gb version. It's hopeless - needs resetting every few days, the battery life is pathetic and the volume control makes it impossible to strike a balance between too loud and too quiet. Creative have bitten off more than they can chew here - the original minimalist 1Gb version was excellent.

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Rating: - Creative swindle again!
This is my second mp3 player from Creative. Never again. I had a Micro which packed up and got no help from Creative - and you have to phone overseas to speak to someone, and then they argue with you for ages. They offer you 10% off a replacement player, which still means they're making a healthy profit out of your misfortune. Then you get a new player from them and that's not very good either. Battery life is useless. Customer service is awful. I will NEVER buy a Creative product ever again. It's almost as though the product is designed to fail as soon as the warranty period runs out. Stick to a good product brand.

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Rating: - Cack
Worked fine for 6 weeks then the battery simply died - it would light up when charging but that was the only sign of life. Sure its cheap, but there's a good reason for that! Total waste of money.

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Rating: - Does what I need it to, but not all it claims
I do love my new Creative Zen Stone, but I only wanted a tiny mp3 player to put my favourite tracks on to so that I can carry it around easily and listen to everything on shuffle. It's brilliant for that. (I already have a 30GB Creative Zen vision for *all* my music.)

I haven't bothered with the headphones, as I have a much better set. I reckon Creative should break the mould and offer their mp3s without headphones for those who are clued up to the `the headphones that come with mp3 players are usually duff' fact of life. There is some background noise but I only notice it between tracks and that's only if I'm paying attention. If it's noticeable all the time, it's a good sign you're damaging your ears with the volume you're using.

The radio's naff, so I don't know why they bothered with it. I haven't tested the recording capability.

It feels snug in my hand and is lovely to look at; I'm a sucker for the blue screen display.

It didn't need to big itself up as much as it does - if they'd kept the specs less grand there would be many more satisfied customers, I think.