apple top of the class

If you have a 1GB Apple shuffle you will know how great these are, I have just upgraded to a 2GB simply because I had filled my 1GB and was having to delete songs to fit new ones on.
Once you are set up with itunes importing your fav tracks from your cds is extremely easy as is deleting songs you get fed up with. I haven't actually downloaded from the itunes site as I have so many cds anyway . I use mine with sony headphones and with any cheap ones I have and the sound quality is excellent in either case. I did treat myself to a seperate sony ipod charger so i am not tied to charging on the computer. If I was buying a shuffle for the first time I would choose a 2GB if I could afford it as like me you would probably end up upgrading sooner or later.

This is a fantastic bit of kit.

What can I say, this is the second Archos this year being an upgrade from the AV500. I bought both from QVC as I think they are better value for money plus you can try them for a month before making your mind up. When I first turned it on I said WOW and went through everything on the screen and said WOW again. It is so easy to use and fast just touch the screen and its there, I have since put loads of music on it and the sound is good through the built in speakers but fantastic with ear buds. I have also put about 20 films on it and yes WOW again the clarity is fantastic I use DVDFAB platinum to put the films on the 500 and the 705 and found this to be the best software I have used for the job and again so easy to use. Don't hold back and get one you will not be disappointed and you also have the WIFI that is also easy to set up but I was a bit annoyed to find I had to pay £20 for a plug in so I could use the browser. This is a fantastic bit of kit.

A Quality Product

The thing that strikes you with this player is the quality of the build. First thing is it's very small and very solid. The display is very bright and clear and rolls smoothly across the screen. On another reviewer's advice I had downloaded the software a week ago from Logitech. I plugged everything in, followed the on screen messages and had it all working in less than two minutes.

The remote is also solid and the controls intuitive. The sound is fine for Mp3 but putting the sound through bigger speakers does highlight the fact that mp3 is a compressed format. If you compare bitrates of 96 to 320 you will hear the difference.

good but not perfect

This is a good little MP3 player. Good points include:

- Very quick charge time
- Decent battery life
-Same amount of hard drive space as iPod Shuffle, but you get more flexibility in how the songs are played back
-No annoying Sony Sonic syncing software
-Good sound quality
-Looks good.

There is only one bad point:

If you use Media player instead of simply dragging files to add music, the player can only play the album songs in alphabetical order. If you drag and drop them the player recognises the number prefix to the track name and thus plays them in the order they were intended by the artist.

I was initially really pleased to discover that the device was recognised by Media player as I thought it would make syncing easy and allow purpose made play lists.

The fact that when using media player the track order is different from thast intended by the artist might seem like a minor point (and, to be fair, it is), but for a musical purist, it is really annoying to not be able to hear the album in the correct order when using media player to sync.

I have searched the web but not found a way round this yet, if I am missing something obvious I would like to know!

Great little gadget

Bought this to use for singing rehearsals and lessons.

Whilst it's not Abbey Road, it's perfectly good enough to capture two guitars and three voices to see what needs changing/fixing.

Singing teacher and other members of the group are now getting one after hearing mine.

Admirable.

Perfect first player for kids and technophobes

How easy is this player! On Christmas day I took it out of the box, plugged it into the computer (it charges itself through the USB), Windows XP recognised it, I dragged some songs onto it. Job done.
No software to download, not even a CD in the box! It also plays licence protected WMA (in other words anything downloaded legally from other than itunes). The Philips PSS I got last year for my other daughter did none of the above.
Well done Creative making such an easy device for such a good price . And it had to be white.

Random play problems?

For hardware design and build, this is fantastic. Major problem though: the random play setting doesn't seem to work. Whatever I do I get certain songs repeating at far more than a probable rate, it is incredibly annoying. I think I've tried all the options so looks like I'm going to request a refund. Currently using it as a portable storage / transfer device - not good.

Great for music!

This is one of the most popular of portable music playing devices and as such you will find alot of accesories and gadgets for it making it very adaptable. since all the music you use will be synced of your itunes it means you can just plug it in and let it charge while you listen to the songs of itunes wich is helpful. to the other review the ipod does not come with a charging bay it is charged through your computer alough you can buy a bay if thats what you want to use or a normal adapter. You dont need to get softwere from this package as the only thing you need is itunes avalible from the apple site. itunes will automaticly detect a conected ipod and if your setting are right it will sync with your itunes (you ipod will gain/remove song acording to whats on itunes) so just keep your itunes upto date and your ipod will be too. hope that helped

expensive but worth it

What I wanted - a simple device to backup and store all my music collection and other media so they could be accesses from the sofa via the TV.
The Achos is great for this and relatively simple to use once set up. You need to buy the docking bay and figure out how to play music via the TV and the HiFi at the same time (basically set up docking station for the TV and connect HiFi via the headphones jack)
it doesn't get 5 stars because

* The instructions are terrible. There is a short paper overview document but the detail is on a set of pdfs installed on the machine. The instructions are not exact enough and don't cover some basic tasks.
* Synchronisation is not exact or and this causes problems with file names and carefully crafted playlists.
* When watched on the TV it has a slightly 1995 look to it. A good look but just dated.

CLIX2...A league of it's own!

I bought my clix2 from Amazon last november [ for quite a lot more than current Amazon price]Having previously had an ipod I did not want to go down the itunes road again...considered creative...ultimately allowed myself to be guided by a friend with a lot more experience than I who knew I didn't want to compromise on quality,and settled on an 8GB clix2, a lot more expensive at time than comparable units by other manufacturers, but was I blown away by this little gem. Visually Aesthetically pleasing and oozing quality.The clix2 is absolutely user friendly, simple windows media player drag and drop made me wonder why I'd put up with iTunes for so long. The sound quality is also superb, although like all MP3 players the sound can be dramatically improved by getting a decent pair of phones /plugs.That is not to say the supplied earphones are poor they're not,they supply a good sound but there was a noticable improvement though sennheissers, which only delighted me even more. No hint of crashing either [yet], more than can be said for many friends owning both creative and moreso iPod.The extra I paid was worth every penny and with the now much reduced price, you can't go wrong.If I lost it tomorrow I'd replace it with another straight away, no hesitation. I bought the docking cradle separately from ebay, it was new and used [probably once!...for good reason!] luckily I only paid £13, I think the normal new price is close to 50. It is far too small and quiet to be of any use whatsoever unless you do your listening in a soundproof cubicle and you have 20/20 hearing.
The clix2 though really is the business for someone who like me wants pure quality and without iTUNES! I use and recommend the silicon case to protect this baby,she's worth it.

Speaker great, FM radio poor

The main reason I bought the Creative Zen Stone Plus with built in speaker(pink) was the radio and that built in speaker. The radio is a waste of time though. Reception is very poor even though I live in an area with a very strong FM signal. All the other radios in the house have crystal clear FM reception (including the FM radio on my partners Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone). If you have the patience and can put up with very loud static while you shuffle about the room seeking that elusive hot spot, you might eventually find one. Don't move though or you'll lose it. No good then for listening while walking the dog. I wondered if my player was faulty and contacted the Creative Support Team two days after purchasing it to discuss. After some rather stilted and weird email communication from them (they didn't read my email properly regarding the problem nor did they actually answer any of my queries) I took it back to the store and they happily exchanged it for another one. The reception on the new one is slightly better but not by much. I have decided to live with it (even though i am not happy and have since noticed that somebody else has notified of the same problem on the Creative web site user discussion forum) because I really love that speaker...it really is fun! Obviously it's a thin sound but never harsh. Music or spoken word you find yourself getting totally immersed in the listening because somehow, despite its size it manages to deliver real ambience. It's loud enough too in most environments as long as it's less than an arms length away which is fair enough. The microphone is ok for recording as long as the source is right next to the mic. Anything else it doesn't pick up. No good for recording lectures as I have seen bandied about by the manufacturers! As you might have read elsewhere, the way files and menus are managed on the Zen Stones is not ideal. However, as far as i know no other player has this built in speaker so there's no other option if you want this feature. Supplied software is excellent and easy to use, the player feels gorgeous tucked in your hand as so small and screen very clear. Creative should sort that radio out though because it really is not acceptable. I have had to take this into consideration with my rating.

Unreliable and expensive

I loved it when I bought it, and for about 6 months it was the best £200 I'd ever spent, but then it started to go wrong, the battery would give up the ghost after about 20 minutes of video playback and if I tried to put it on shuffle it would get to about the 4th song and pack up completely and have to be reset.
I contacted apple and they told me to update the settings and restore it to its original factory setup (deleting everything I had on it, which was quite annoying).
I then made do with it as all I really do is play it at work and in the car but two days ago it completely blew up, the screen died, it would no longer update (the file is corrupt and unreadable, apparantly), and it also erased my hard drive.
If you buy an iPod you will love it for about a year, I guarantee you that but once the one year warranty has expired, things start to go wrong and you really wish you'd bought Japanese, can't go wrong with Sony.
I'm now then 5th out of 7 of my friends who have iPods to have them collapse under the weight of a few songs.
Don't waste your money.

Stylish and Functional

Bought one of these despite the large quantity of negative feedback on Amazon and was relieved when it lived up to my high expectations. I searched high and low for a docking station for my ipod that had a radio as well as the conventional ipod dock, there were very few to choose from.
Originally I bought the Pure Digital model which has a DAB radio but when I got this home and tried it the sound quality was very poor so it went back. JBL have an excellent reputation for high quality sound reproduction and when I heard this model in the shop it was by far and away the best I heard.
In response to other feedback:
The AM/FM radio works fine on mine, there is minimal interference and mine is located in my kitchen where there is a significant amount of electric cabling etc. The radio tunes in single digits now so no need to change setting for europe to get 97.9, 97.8 etc.
The only downsides I have found are the plastic adapters which you switch according to which ipod you have. My ipod is a nano and the adaptor for the nano doesn't fit my ipod so I have used one of the larger adapters which works fine.
As another review said supporting the back of the unit whilst changing tracks etc will stop damage to the connection between the two.
If you intend to use your JBL on time as a clock radio the backlight is very bright but locating mine in my kitchen this isn't a problem.
Apart from those minor drawbacks this is a fantastic piece of kit, you could confidently replace most mid range home stereos with one of these.

FANTASTIC- but buy a bag for it

I got this for my birthday a month ago and I have absolutely fallen in love with it. It is multipurpose- plays songs, has four great games, calender, clocks for all over the world, photos, contacts, stopwatch, and notes.

The sound quality is really good and the provided headphones are stylish and just wonderful.

DO NOT BE DECIEVED by the picture. The colour is no way near as tinny or horrible as it seems. It is a really beautiful, electric blue that you will fall in love with.

There is one bad thing- it scratches very easily- but only the scratches on the white parts actually show up. To stop the scratching, I would recommend a cover if you dont really care about the looks of your ipod (they make the ipod look bulky and not very nice), but what I have done is bought a small strapless bag with a soft inside which I put my ipod in. I find this works very well.

Whatever you do DONT just shove it into your handbag because it will get scratched.

Altogether, this is a great purchase, and fully worth the money

Great gadget

A great little gadget. I've had mine for ages and have had no problems. I use mine mainly to watch movies on TV with superb quality. Stores loads of movies.

Great value,easy to use.

Our 5 year has just purchased herself one of these. We have had trouble getting our pc to accept it but the laptop with vista recognised it straight away.

Our 5 year old has found it easy to use and the clip means she can't drop it, though we have had to change the earphones to headphones as they do not stay in her ears.

All round a cracking bit of kit,would reccomend.

Get the latest firmware

Worked perfectly, first time. If you make sure that you download the latest firmware version from the website (currently 1.19) and put it onto the micro SD card, you should have no worries. I'm using it with a 4GB micro SDHC card with no issues at all. Comes in a little box with a CDROM. Instructions are on the CDROM. It's the must have DS accessory.

Disappointed

I bought this thinking that it would play most files, but it required a purchase of another two plug-ins which do not come cheap in order for it to play mp4s or files from VCDs. The supplied case is also not worth mentioning, as it is of such bad quality it will break even before you cal slide the player in. The player itself is built quite well and well designed, but the same cannot be said about the menu sytem. Archos is really trying to squeeze more money out of you with sneaky tricks. Id recommend either the iPod (which I also own and works beautifully straight out of the box) or one of the video players from Creative.