This is Creative's smallest music player yet. It's also one of its cheapest, costing less than £30.

No surprise, then, that its feature set is basic to say the least and highly reminiscent of another certain player.

The 1GB Zen Stone is the size of, well, a small stone (large pebble), though it's too light to go pond skimming with.

We tested one with a mirror-finish black, but there're also white, blue, red, pink and green flavours. Although the device is entirely plastic cased, it's reasonably resistant to scratches.

The control panel is very simple, with a ring of four buttons and a recessed play/pause button in the centre. The latter doubles as a power switch when held down for a few seconds. At the left-hand end of the front panel is a single LED, which displays red, green and orange with a variety of flash sequences to indicate different functions, such as play, download and battery status.

On the player's top edge is an input for the standard, Creative-issue ear-bud headphones, which are OK, but with a rather dead mid-range and little bass. A good pair of noise-cancelling headphones will improve reproduction as the player itself is capable of much better.

Next to the headphone socket is a slide switch to select between in-order or shuffled play. There's also a third function to skip the current folder – usually an album or playlist, which makes it more versatile than the iPod Shuffle.

The Zen Stone also sports a small USB 2 socket, to connect it to a computer where upto 500 mp3 or WMA tracks can be transferred via Windows Media Player. It’s also Playsforsure compatible, which means WMA files bought from online music stores such as Napster and HMV-digital will work without problem.

Sound quality is good, better than from the Shuffle, though battery life, at 10 hours, is two hours shorter. However, for a £28 music player, the Zen Stone is superb value and well reccomended.

Vista compatible: Yes