Creative Zen Stone with Speaker review

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