It’s a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it’s still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 – I don’t know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.
It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.
Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.
P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
I’ve just done a quick search and you can get a new battery for those for about £12.
And there’s a 6 minute tutorial on yt showing how to replace the batteries. I’ve had a quick watch of it and it looks very easy, it’s only the battery that is very lightly glued in. The rest is just screws and clips. It looks like you just need a small screwdriver and a thin plastic prying thing.
I wish you hadn’t told me that, because I’m sorely tempted. I’ve rarely used in in the last few years, though, so it’d merely be for nostalgia purposes, and that’s not enough reason.