Now to the main event. The music player, I have to say, is quite as I expected. Great sound quality and loud enough to drown out the erratic horn blowers that plague our fair cities. Without the foam covers the earphones are a bit uncomfortable to wear and the sound quality lacks a little something. So don’t lose 'em. But the earphones even by themselves are really good if you want to use them on any other player you may have. The Stone Plus is compatible with MP3, WMA, Audible and WAV file formats.
Now for the bad part. The player is painfully slow. And maybe that’s an understatement. It takes forever to scroll through the menus and even longer if music is playing. Although Creative allows for simple copy-pasting of files into its directory and a File View option that shows you the folders available, it doesn’t allow you to see what songs are inside those folders. The moment you move the selector to a particular folder it immediately starts playing that folder.
In other words, response time on the Zen Stone Plus is just too slow. It doesn’t end there. Even if you’re copy-pasting files to and from the player it’s still just too darn slow.
The Bottom Line
The Zen Stone Plus is a great player as it is. Even the FM pickup is good. At a price of Rs. 5,000, it’s a great buy for a 2GB player, except for the fact that it’s super slow. It could be an issue with just this piece I got for review, and I really hope it is.
But the music quality is really good and with the presets and a customizable EQ option with Bass Boost, it can only get better. There’s also a range of six colors to choose from to suit your mood and fancy, so go out and get one!


