Creative Takes on iPod Shuffle With ZEN Stone

[iMav]

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/4615_lowres_zenstone_black.jpg

Apple's iPod Shuffle is a simple and cost-effective (http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4138) way to enter the iPod kingdom. The tiny flash-based MP3 player is currently in its second generation and starts at $79.99 USD.
Creative is taking the fight directly to the iPod Shuffle with its new $39.99 USD ZEN Stone. The tiny 1GB player can hold up to 250 songs and can operate for 10 hours on a single charge (12 hours for the iPod Shuffle). A wide palette of colors is also available: black, blue, green, pink, red and white.



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[dtox]

PINK?? of all the colours in the world!! looks like a lux soap!! lol! :D

[iMav]

nahi theyv got black and others too i posted only 1 image ... a black is at the source ... btw the ppink did look like a soap bar to me too

[gxsaurav]

Creative is targeting the girlish market with Zen stone Pink :D

But, I kinda don't like it proper cos it is just like iPod shuffle 2nd gen "seriously small".

Oh & a Media player without a screen sux. Sandisk Sansa rox

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

well it's priced at rs 1605 in US so if they manage to sell it at bout 2k here then i think it'll be a very good choice :D

[Pathik]

If i had to choose btwn them i wd definitely take a zen stone..

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

If i had to choose btwn them i wd definitely take a zen stone..

me havin a nano here , gota say it's a LOT better lookin than the stone though but the only grudge is the price , the prices in the uS too are high n here in india , prices at authorised apple dealers r 150% of the us prices

[Pathik]

Yea man the prices r a lot more here.. Btw a friend just took a ipod video 30gb 4 10.4k.. Without bill.. With bill it was 18k..

[ambandla]

Yea man the prices r a lot more here.. Btw a friend just took a ipod video 30gb 4 10.4k.. Without bill.. With bill it was 18k..

are you kidding? With bill it is 13k at apple store, bangalore.

For 18k you can get 80gig ipod

[Pathik]

u sure... cos a dealer here quoted it for 18k...

[ambandla]

u sure... cos a dealer here quoted it for 18k...

Oh man. that's higher than the MRP, which be somwhere around 16.5k. Sue him :-)

[Pathik]

lol.. but anyways it doesnt matter cos he got it for 10.4k...
still the shopwala fleeced him.. :D

[aditya.shevade]

^^ I bought iPod nano about 3 weeks ago. And I am lovin' it.... Sound quality rocks....

[aryayush]

It is certainly not wearable and it looks larger to me than the iPod Shuffle. So it loses out on two important points - size and wearability, but has a heavy edge in the price department, which is the most important point.

But, I guess, people are ready to do away with a screen to have the pleasure of owning a cool iPod. I doubt a lot of people will be so desperate to buy a Creative player. Face it, the iPod is hot, while the others are not. Teenagers are the target market for these players and we all know which one most teenagers would opt for. :)

[kumarmohit]

Stone !!! They have named it STONE!!! What are they thinking?

Frankly when Creative packed just a 60GB HDD in the Zen Vision W, I thot that Creative's mental faculties are bit disturbed but now I am sure Creative is a company gone nuts. Whats the big idea naming a player stone, stone conjures the image of something heavy so this thing regardless however light it is, its done for in this aspect.

I amd having my birthday on May 10, if someone hazards to gift me this 'thing' what will I tell my friends, that I got a Stone as birthday gift. Yuck!!!

[aryayush]

Yeah, that's another point. Good one.

Can someone ever imagine the name of this player becoming iconic!

[iMav]

well as for the name .... diamond is a stone, the motorola has pebble, so i think the name is good ... and as far as the size arya ... zabardasti koi bhi product kop bina dekhe hi verdict dena is not only un-fair but out right stupid

Out of the Box: It's the same size, same weight and it has the same capacity as the iPod Shuffle. The only difference? The price. Popular Mechanics shows you the first MP3 player that we're comfortable labeling and iPod killer.

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=824098647&channel=212469179

and ipod shuffle .... are u playing a game of cards ... shuffle .... wat does shuffle signify in a mp3 player ??? un-necessarily u want to find faults in anything non-apple ... keep doing it makes u look dumb and stupd .... use ur sense of discretion sometimes will be helpful

[gxsaurav]

It is certainly not wearable and it looks larger to me than the iPod Shuffle. So it loses out on two important points - size and wearability, but has a heavy edge in the price department, which is the most important point.

Creative Zen stone is both smaller (stamp size, have u ever seen that Rs 5 stamp?) & is wearable as it has a clip.

But ya, it sux cos it doesn't have a screen. That area on the side of control buttons could be used for a OLED screen.

Zen doesn't need any application to copy songs. Just open via Windows explorer & copy paste songs. Since it acts like a removable storage it can be easily used in Linux too as USB Mass storate device. Could there be anything simpler then this? I mean, you can use any media player to sync songs even Winamp or amarok

Teenagers are the target market for these players and we all know which one most teenagers would opt for

No you don't. I don't think you have done some market research in India for that. Don't forget there is no Pink shuffle. :D, boys like flashy thing. Men like sensible things :P.

One of my friend have an iPod shuffle 512 MB & he throw it out in 2 months cos he was sick from lack of screen & iTunes was bogging his laptop with 512 MB RAM. He bought a Walkman phone :p

[eggman]

He bought a Walkman phone :p
Nice decision hes taken........

[blueshift]

haha...that does look like a soap.

The sound quality of an iPod might be superior but I think now most of players have more or less the same quality.

This Creative player is definately good at that price.

[iMav]

the stone took a lot of bashing coz i put a pink version .... iv put the black 1 ;)

[gxsaurav]

Lolz...Lux soap I mean Creative Stone.

[infra_red_dude]

well, the credit of making portable audio player hugely popular goes to ipod, surely. they were great back then when they were intro'd as they were something different. but not anymore. u haf similar and better products out there..... according to me ipod is pure hype. zune is much better... and iriver has better players.. so many in the market. they give the same or better audio quality (personal experience), provide better earbuds and most importantly are cheaper! .... and again from my exp. i can say that the shuffle is the crappiest thing in the world that shares its name wid the most popular music player (ipod)....

but all my praises for the nano.. its a great product!

[gxsaurav]

iRiver clix 2 :drools

30 FPS AMOLED scrrren at 320X240 res..coooool

[aryayush]

well as for the name .... diamond is a stone, the motorola has pebble, so i think the name is good ... and as far as the size arya ... zabardasti koi bhi product kop bina dekhe hi verdict dena is not only un-fair but out right stupid

Out of the Box: It's the same size, same weight and it has the same capacity as the iPod Shuffle. The only difference? The price. Popular Mechanics shows you the first MP3 player that we're comfortable labeling and iPod killer.

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=824098647&channel=212469179

and ipod shuffle .... are u playing a game of cards ... shuffle .... wat does shuffle signify in a mp3 player ??? un-necessarily u want to find faults in anything non-apple ... keep doing it makes u look dumb and stupd .... use ur sense of discretion sometimes will be helpfulI am really sorry! It looked larger to me and there is no clip visible in the picture. It is really looking better than the iPod Shuffle in all aspects then (because Apple's really excels in user interface design and the Shuffle doesn't really have any user interface to speak of). :)

[gxsaurav]

Clip for Zen Stone + Skin to prevent from scratches. (http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=217&product=16573)

Even the stone has no UI. Just darg & drop, & play.

hmm.....Where is sony's answer? They made few such players with OLED screen of 4 lines