While the Zen Stone takes on the Shuffle, the Zen V Plus is all geared up to give a bunch of players a good deal of sleepless nights (viz. iPod Nano, SanDisk Sansa, Samsung Z5 and such). Reason being, the Zen V Plus has thrown in all the works, and still manages to have a catchy price. While the skeptics might want to think that there has to be trade-offs in this ordeal, there aren't any. Well, with an exception of minor gripe with the screen quality, which could have been better.

The overall design is a pleasing sight-small and different. The navigation, with this bare minimal design player, is smooth and quite responsive. Even the buttons are tactile and feel good while operating. Coming to the features, the Zen V Plus scores really well on all that it has to offer (Music, Video, FM, Photos, Line-in encoding etc). The quality of music playback is well above average, with handy presets and custom equalization. The bass in particular is quite impressive.

So how long a company can the Zen V Plus be to you on a long journey? Our tests let us conclude that it can go a good 16 hours before the battery dies on you. That is for the music, which is the primary function of the Creative Zen V Plus.

The Creative Zen V Plus is recommended to all music enthusiasts looking for a good looking and performing audio solution, with extras bundled and performing good as well. The price, as it is, is a steal. Go right ahead with the buy!