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Hit 7 - Creative Zen Stone Plus 2 GB MP3 Player with Built-in Speaker and Clip (Black)
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List Price: $79.90
Our Price: $45.00
Your Save: $ 34.90 ( 44% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Batteries Included: 0
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Creative Labs
Color: Black
EAN: 0054651150997
Feature: Product Type - MP3 Player
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Creative Labs
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
Model: 70PF233009111
Publisher: Creative Labs
Studio: Creative Labs
Warranty: 1 year warranty
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Features
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Product Type - MP3 Player
Connectivity - USB
Memory - 2GB
- Voice Recorder
- Shortcut Button
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Creative ZEN Stone Plus with Speaker is powered with a built-in speaker, this means that now you can share your music out loud at the touch of a button. The perfect companion to avid sportsmen, the player captures personal bests with its stopwatch function, while letting you run to the invigorating beat of the music. Simply switch to radio anytime you fancy a change.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Awful for Audio Books
Comment: My iPod doesn't allow me to transfer audio books downloaded from my library's website due to digital rights management. This is why I bought this additional MP3 player.
I like the price and form.
But for audio books, this is terrible. It has extremely limited bookmarking. If you turn it off, you can continue where you last left off. But if you switch to another track and then return to the audio book you lose your place. If you connect the Zen Stone to recharge, you also lose your place.
And in the event that you mentally remember the track and time where you last left off, it may take you minutes to get back there. By holding down the forward button, you can scan within a track, but it just jumps forward about 5 seconds for every second that you hold the button down. My old VCR has more advanced searching features than this. At least my VCR speeds up when I hold down the forward button.
Finally, if you intend to listen to this when attached to your car stereo, be very careful about the buttons. I accidentally switched it to play through it's built-in speaker instead of the car speaker by pressing the pause button on top of the MP3 player. It's a pause button ... why should it also switch to the built-in speaker?
Customer Rating:
Summary: DON'T BUY CREATIVE!
Comment: The first mp3 player I bought was by Sony and it has worked pretty well, but since I didn't care for the design or the menu, I thought I'd buy a different brand this time around. The Stone really appealed because of its price, looks, and features. So I spent a lot of time reading reviews and despite the number of people that said theirs randomly stopped working, I still ending up ordering a Stone because of the price.
WHAT A MISTAKE! I started using the Stone right away and everything was going well. I laughed at myself for worrying. THE VERY NEXT DAY, my FULLY CHARGED Stone WOULD NOT TURN ON! I couldn't use the recovery tool that I downloaded from Creative either because when I connected the Stone, it wouldn't show up on the computer. MY STONE WAS DEAD WITHIN TWO DAYS OF USE!
So, there goes fifty bucks. (I bought the 2GB plus with speaker.)
Other reasons not to buy the Stone:
It is ridiculously hard to turn on and off and you have to press for way too long. The middle button isn't big enough or something. Whenever I try to turn it off, I end up turning up the volume super loud instead.
When you reach the end of a list, it doesn't go back up to the first one.
You can't choose individual songs in a folder.
Changing the mode it's playing (in one folder, on repeat, shuffle, etc.) takes way too long. I have to press the middle button, right towards options, down to play mode, and then up and down.
You can't browse music and listen to music at the same time. So let's say I want to go from my Carnival Ride folder to my Some Hearts folder. Well, as soon as I switch over to Some Hearts, Flat On the Floor is cut off because Wasted interrupts it and starts playing.
The clock doesn't work. When you connect the stone to your computer, it asks if you want to sync the time to your computer time and I said yes. Like an hour later, I checked the clock on the Stone and it reset. O_o Before my Stone died, I had synced it twice and both times this happened.
I think I've made my point. THE STONE IS A BAD BUY! So don't buy it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Cool MP3
Comment: This MP3 is very good. It is small, light yet heavy enough so that when you are holding it, you could feel that it is there. However the MP3 suddenly shuts off sometimes for mine. It has a lot of memory space. The speaker is quite good. The sound quality is very very good. Mine came with a sporty strap with sporty headphones and I am quite happy with it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazon sent me wrong ZEN twice!
Comment: I ordered a black zen stone. I recieved a white zen from amazon. I go to the post office return the white one. So finally my next package comes white again! Impossible to get any one on the phone. Thanks amazon. Next time Ill go to best buy. Love the zen even thou its white!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Please make an MP3 player for my dad
Comment: This little thing does so many things, it is incredible. But does it give you a good user experience? It depends. I can imagine a teen who has nimble fingers maneuvering over those little buttons and constantly changing menus, but I bought it for my dad who would like to listen to some recorded educational materials and to record certain lectures and messages. I searched all over to analyze the features and made sure this one does everything he needs, and some.
Well, I realized this isn't what my dad needs the moment I opened the box, and was certain about it within several minutes of using it. He will be frustrated beyond imagination by the constantly changing menu and tiny teeny buttons. In addition to the fact that everything is so small, the navigation menu is extremely confusing, not because of its poor logic or lack of logic, but because of the choice of multifunction multipurpose buttons that are made necessary because of the small size. You can never predict what the button does because not only does it depend on the context (meaning that what the button does depends on where you are at in the navigation system), it also depends on how long you hold it. Using this is almost like playing a game which requires your mind being engaged with an enemy and predicting your enemy's next move. And you enemy intends to defeat you, not to play with you. I got pretty good at that because I am used to this type of navigation and my mind intuitively follows the logic behind it. But not for anyone who is used to equipment on which a button does what its label says it does and nothing else.
Besides, the thing does not give you time to think. Whenever you hesitate just a little bit (say about 5 seconds of inaction), the screen goes off, and that changes the context of menu again. If during those 5 seconds you have been thinking hard what to do, whatever you have figured out has become invalid by this time. It is so fussy, using the thing is like having a conversation with somebody who is extremely impatient. And you can't change the behavior of the screen display. This is not the same as auto power-off feature, which you can adjust within the settings among multiple settings ranging from one minute to 15 minutes. The screen off is a fixed feature. It goes off in about 5-6 seconds (definitely less than 10 seconds) if you have not pushed a button. This is absolutely crazy. I can see the point of saving battery, but given how tiny the screen is, and with my fairly advanced knowledge of electronics, I'm pretty sure that increasing the screen-off time from the current less than 10 seconds to five minutes isn't going to cut the battery time by half. I would rather have something that needs to be charged twice as frequently but with a screen that can stay on for much longer and doesn't drive me crazy.
Manufacturers, listen, not everyone who may benefit from a modern digital audio player/recorder is a teenager or a gamer. Grow up please, at least design one product (among the hundreds) for someone like my dad.
I apologize for voicing such complaints that may seem strange to many of you who are used to this type of product designs. Also, I would be remiss if I don't balance my review by acknowledging its capabilities. If you don't mind its fussy "personality" of this little guy, he can be your very good friend because he can do many things, and does them very well. For example, one of the things that impressed me a lot is its ability to retain the playing location at the time you turn it off. It resumes from where you stopped it last time very reliably. I tried a variety of combinations of what you could do, but the MP3 player in this little gadget never failed to remember it's last position. This may sound strange to you, but this was one of the major frustrations I had with previous generations of MP3 players that were only suitable for listening to short music, but not anything longer like a lecture, a message or an audio book. In addition, despite its tiny size, the speaker is surprisingly loud. And the microphone and recorder aren't a gimmick. They aren't your high-quality audio recorder, but if you ever need to recod a live conversation or message, it does a quite decent job and will give you a clear recording as long as the speaker isn't too far away.
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