The Zen Stone of old will now be available in blue, pink, champagne and black colors, as well as in 1GB or 2GB flavors, and besides the novelty speaker, not much has changed. The Zen Stone Plus will also get the mono speaker treatment. The higher end models will be available, as before, with an integrated FM radio, voice recording capability, OLED screen and in either 2GB or 4GB varieties.

The new players will ship with a silicon skin; a sports armband and carry case keychain will be available separately. According to the CEO of Creative "It's hard to believe that such incredibly small players can have a speaker that sounds so good..." Beyond possible, we would have to say. The 1GB model will ship this February in Japan, retailing at 4,980 yen ($48.) Further pricing and shipping dates are not available at present. [Creative]

Follow the jump for some hands-on reviewy nuggets and 12 red-hot pictures.

Performance-wise the Stone does what it should. However, like most of the competition, Creative's earbuds are one-size-fits-some. I for one can't keep them in my ear. But I pretty much toss the earbuds that come with music players anyway. In addition to the headphones, the package comes with a USB cable as well.

There's essentially zero setup here—it's a USB disk with a standard folder structure. The manual suggests that "for the full experience" I should download Creative Media Lite software at creative.com/zenstone. I skipped that, because I like unfettered access. It takes a little over a minute to dump each album (I was using 192Kbps MP3s). In addition to MP3s, the Stone takes unprotected WMAs and purchase-only WMAs. The manual says charging takes about two to three hours, and since its just mini USB, you can probably charge it with a RAZR or BlackBerry charger instead of on your computer.

When we introduced the Stone, we mentioned a folder-skip switch. If there's anything that differentiates the Stone from Apple's shuffle, it's the ability to store multiple albums and jump from one to the next. As you can see in the gallery, on top of the Stone there's a switch with icons for shuffle and repeat plus a green Play button. When you thumb the switch to that green button it snaps back, having jumped to the next folder. I put three folders within a larger folder entitled MUSIC. It basically treats the loose contents of the master folder as a fourth folder.

Is the Zen Stone better than the shuffle? I suppose that depends primarily on how many DRM songs you have purchased from iTunes. I will say this, though: the $39.99 Zen Stone currently offers the better cost-benefit ratio, and not a lot of room for disappointment. – Wilson Rothman

Creative Zen Stone Video Review [Gadgets Town]

Creative's $39.99 1GB Zen Stone will be out this month, in six colors: black, white, red, blue, pink and green. Follow the jump for details, plus some very sweet photos you may not see anywhere else.

For $40 you get the 1GB player itself, about half the price of that other screen-less multicolored baby flash player you may have heard about. Creative says it will get 10 hours of playback from a fully charged internal battery. It's a basic USB-drive drag-and-drop interface.

The clip will cost you $9.99 extra. "What clip?" you ask. You know what clip.

Other accessories, shown below, include a keychain ($12.99) and an armband ($15.99) In July, Creative will introduce TravelSound Zen Stone, the tiny docking speaker system shown below, for $39.99. Powered by two AAA batteries, it will run for 20 hours.

The Stone supports MP3, WMA and WAV files plus Audible formats 2 and 3. It supports for-purchase WMA DRM files, but doesn't support portable subscription WMAs. On that subject, Creative told us:

Subscription support would have required much more processing power, which would have increased the cost and price of the player. We felt that the vast majority of folks would have 1GB of non-protected content and so it would be best to go with the great price of $39.99 instead of trying to support everything and offer a more expensive player.

The Stone is obviously a marketshare move against Apple (there, I said it) and SanDisk. But it's also a statement about the flash-memory business. Creative told me that because they are buyers of flash memory, they can get all Mortimer & Randolph Duke and stockpile it when the price is low, like so many pork bellies. The gist is that makers of flash, such as SanDisk and Samsung, suffer more at the mercy of the market. It's an interesting point, and at least a plausible explanation of the $39.99 Stone price point.

I think this is a good place for Creative, playing hardball at the "value" end of the flash-player business. Creative products have always been stylish, but this whole DRM thing has really thrown the company for a loop. In this segment, style counts almost as much as price—just think of the SanDisk revolution of 2006. Whether or not you can sync to iTunes doesn't matter nearly as much in this part of the playground.

A few weeks ago, I held one in my hand, and I liked the feel. The Stone is smooth and little, a skipping stone maybe, but certainly not something you could use to slay Goliath. More of a PEBL pebble, some have said. Still, I like the name. After all, it's the condition most of my favorite musicians were in when they recorded their finest work. – Wilson Rothman

Creative Labs Corporate Information [Creative]