Customer Reviews

Creative Labs NOMAD 6 GB MP3 Player Silver

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I got my Nomad Jukebox (NJB) just over three weeks ago. I am a committed MP3 fan, and I have owned both the Rio 300 and Rio 500 players. The NJB is, far and away, the best player on the market in terms of durability (Rios don't last in my experience), price/capacity ratio, playback options, and recording. If you have gotten this far, you probably already know all the specs. Here are the glitches I have found, and some solutions I recommend.

1. In my opinion, the battery life is the biggest limitation of this product. This device is a portable harddrive, and it eats power. As a result, Creative provides two sets of four 1600mAH rechargeable AA batteries. They look like normal Duracells, but a standard disposable battery contains about 750 mAh. This is milli-amps, a measure of the storage capacity of the battery. Four Duracells would probably last about 10 minutes in this thing. In short, you need super-batteries to run the NJB properly and the company gives you only two sets. Each set, when fully charged, get **optimal** play life of four hours. Plan on less. If you travel a lot, like me, and want the NJB for longer trips, you need to buy extra batteries and an external charger. (It comes with a cigarette-lighter adapter for the car)

To optimize you batteries with the NJB, buy extra sets of 1600mAH batteries, and an external charger. Get a charger with a conditioning feature that fully drains the battery before recharging. You can run the Jukebox with no batteries inside, just connected to the AC. I always run my NJB on AC when available, and only charge my batteries in an external charger.

2. There are some annoying problems with the NJB that the company plans to fix soon. A few a really important for DJs who might want to use this for dance mixing. There is no A-B looping feature within a track, and the NJB places a pause between tracks that you cannot eliminate. These will be fixed, appartently in future firmware upgrades. My advice to people looking to use the NJB for DJing -- hold off the flurry to buy now, because the features you want are still a few months away.

3. There is another annoying problem that really irks me. The NJB can only recognize one song title, even if the album and artist are different. So if you want to put Ella Fitgerald's and Billie Holiday's version of "All of Me" on your NJB, you have to rename one of the tracks, e.g. "All of Me 1" and "All of Me 2" This is annoying, especially for classical music and jazz fans.

4. The cool headphones are not very loud. Many NJB users I know have purchased headphone amps to increase the sound. I am not much bothered by this, but you if like LOUD headphones, you need to buy another gagdet to get the most out of this.

5. Perhaps the biggest design flaw is that the reformatting function for the NJB is triggered by pressing "play" and "stop" together. Since they are the two largest buttons on the player, this was a mistake. It hasn't happened to me (you have to respond Y or N to "reformat?" ...I'm not that brave..) but this seems like a stupid mistake.

6. Plan on several weekends of CD ripping. I still have 2GBs to fill after intensive copying sessions.

7. You can not upload files with the .mp3 extension from the NJB back to your computer. But you can upload files with the .wav extension from NJB to computer, and you can simply add the .wav to any file on the NJB with the enclosed software.

8. As for the enclosed software, PlayCenter 2, its an adequate CD ripper/Mp3 encoder. Creative didn't spend a lot of time on the software. If you have a favorite encoding software, don't chuck it until you check out Playcenter. Its really weak, especially with multiple file transfers.

9. You need a pre-amped mike to record on the NJB. Basically this means a mike with a battery in it. I have one, and have made one recording. The recording is awesome, and very simple to do.

All in all, the NJB is GREAT. I love it, I use it everyday. but there are some glitches that will be fixed in future upgrades, or at least you should be aware of.

I actually *have* one of these units, which was released nationwide on Sep 10th! I've used it a few days and overall, I LOVE IT! Obviously, the good point about it is you can store most or all of your audio collection in this lightweight, tiny unit. The software is easy to use. Downloading is fast 15Mb/minute... (about 15x realtime). Unit is easy to use, and it seems pretty rugged. Display shows lots of info and is nicely backlit. Let me re-iterate: This thing is GREAT! You've done your research and know why you want it, so it may be more useful for me to nitpick the downsides:

>claimed battery life (I haven't tested it): 4 hours is ridiculously short, and you can't use regular alkalines as backup. Conventional DC adapters won't work either --not enough juice.

>no song scan: Despite it saying on the box that you can scan thru a song, you cannot. This makes it painful to listen to audio books with hour-long chapters --if you stop, you have to go back to the beginning of a chapter! I suspect they can and will add this feature in their next downloadable firmware update.

>no reordering: you can't reorder songs on the active playlist...not a big deal...

>uncomfortable headphones: they sound fine, but clamp my head way too tightly! They should fold for portability too.

>a bit pricey: have to worry about it getting stolen...shop for a good price ;)

>accessories not available yet: would love the remote control that they're hinting at offering in the future. A protective case where you can actually *use* the unit while it is in the case would be great. Patience...

tip: turn off 'Novice Mode' or menu navigation will be SLOW.

These are all small nitpicks! Buy one and you'll have fun!

All in all, this imperfect player is the clearly the best MP3 player on the market in terms of both value and functional convenience, and for that it deserves 5 stars.

Upgradeable firmware in a volatile technology is a comfort that is not matched by the two 100 MB plus competitors that I am aware of. It is about the size and shape of a portable CD player, but with it one carries the equivalent of an entire CD collection. At its present price, it is not that much more than a top of the line Rio or Nomad, yet it has more features and a spectacular storage capacity that does not require expensive flash cards. I've owned mine since the day it was released for sale in the U.S.A., and here are my observations regarding its other strengths and where it has room for improvement.

File transfer is a huge improvement over the parallel port apparatus of my Nomad I. USB is much quicker, and I have experienced none of the buggy transfers that sometimes plagued use of my Nomad I. Also, I would rather wreck a thing than use a manual. (I'm not lost, the road signs are all wrong). I have made recourse to the manual only once to use a feature of either the player or the PC software. This speaks well of a very thoughtful, intuitively lain out design. Finding and playing tracks is easy. One can browse a library of tracks by album, artist, title, or playlist. I find the ability to save and play lists of songs especially convenient as I like different styles for work or for working out, and I do not have to spend any thought or time at matching a situation or mood because I can simply load a list of songs. The player has many extras. I like the battery power meter, which reads in terms of percentage remaining, as well as the ability to turn-off the backlit display entirely or after a specified delay. Spatialization (the ability to make the sound seem wider or narrower in source) and effects that can make a track sound as though it were a live performance in a club, arena, opera house, or out of doors are schmaltzier items I neither use nor like. I do welcome the addition of a three band equalizer, which can be adjusted to set the midpoint of the frequency range. This can go a long way toward overcoming the weaknesses of a particular track or a particular set of headphones.

Adequate volume remains a minor issue, but the devise seems to play slightly louder than my Nomad I, and with ear buds it is fine for me on the street. Although the overall sound quality does not quite match the quality of my expensive, near audiophile quality home CD player, it is still quite good with high bit rate recordings, and I do plug it into my home stereo. I would never dream of doing this with the noisy output from most computer equipment. In fact, except when I sit down just to listen to music, this ultra convenient devise has become the primary player even on my home stereo. The supplied headphones are cool daddy-o "backphones" with one wire in to the left earpiece, so there is no dangling "Y" of wire hanging in the way. The phones fit behind one's ears like a pair of glasses and are connected by an unobtrusive strut that runs behind one's head, they are not in the way when removing hats and bike helmets, and they are comfortable (once you learn to put the strut behind your ears), but the sound is mediocre. Sennheisers from my home stereo make them sound absolutely sick, but of course there is a several hundred dollar difference in price. You may want to budget-in a set of your preferred headphones, or ear buds for loud environments.

Also, like the smaller Nomads, this player can be used to store any kind of file, so you can transfer files of nearly 6 GB to and from work or school with it, but like its smaller nephews, it will not allow you to transfer MP3 files from the player to another computer. I did not notice this probable nod to the music industry with my Nomad I until a reviewer noted it, but I imagine it could be quite irritating if you had a need for transferring MP3 files. Also, like the feature that convinced me to buy the Nomad I, this player has the capacity for voice recording (and, obviously, a much better capacity for long discussions or proceedings). However, with the Jukebox, a preamplified microphone is needed but not built-in or supplied.

Finally, the Jukebox's weakest point is that it does come with two sets of four rechargeable metal hydride batteries that recharge while the player is plugged into a wall socket, but you may need all eight batteries if you make a lot of house calls. It is a power pig. If I load a list then leave the player alone, I can get about 4 hours per set of batteries, but using schmaltz features, frequent fiddling with the controls, or especially rebooting will cut into this time significantly. Personally, I can comfortably live with the limitations, but the failure to use a lithium ion battery and the inability to use standard, alkaline batteries with the player irk me. Normal batteries drain in about one hour. The player comes with a carrying case that would be adequate except that there is no hole to plug in headphones while the player is encased. I would prefer a belt clip of some sort.

Loading music onto your MP3 player used to be an exercise in patience, math and frustration, with a close eye monitoring bitrates and file sizes so as not to fill up the precious 32 or 64 MB of memory.

Well, it's a different story today as we load up our brand-new Creative Nomad Jukebox, a 6GB portable audio player with enough memory to comfortably store about 150 CDs' worth of music.

We are not packing a picnic basket here, we are bringing the whole kitchen. With a fully loaded Nomad Jukebox, you could listen to music eight hours a day, every day, for two weeks without repeating a song!

And the unit's USB interface means you won't be teaspooning songs into the player, you'll be shoveling them in at up to 500k/s. It also means the Nomad Jukebox will communicate with both Windows machines and Macs right out of the box.

To make sure the transfer runs smoothly, Creative bundles their reliable, user-friendly PlayCenter 2 software into the package (SoundJam MP for Macs). We hunted through MP3 folders and added tracks to the transfer cue with ease as the USB connection chugged away.

One PlayCenter 2 feature we liked was the option of ripping CDs directly to the unit, preserving the computer's hard drive space.

OK, so we've completed a mass loading of about 500 MP3s onto the player. How difficult is it going to be to find them?

Very easy, in fact. The Jukebox lets you navigate through your library of songs filtered by artist, albums, genre, or playlists (based on the ID3 tags). Playlists are probably the best way to get a handle on the massive content. Playlists can be created on the unit itself, but to preserve battery life, we recommend building them through the software. Choose your orders wisely--missing from the Nomad functionality is a random/shuffle function.

Now we are finally listening to the music and the sound quality is truly remarkable. In fact, some of these MP3s have never sounded better. It helps that Creative bundles the Nomad Jukebox with a decent pair of behind-the-head backphones instead of measly earbuds.

But another key factor in sound quality is the implementation of Creative's EAX technology. This is a mix of features that do some really... well, "creative" things to the sound of your music. These extras range from useful (sensitive bass, treble and midrange EQ) to interesting (incredibly accurate time-scaling which will speed up or slow down your audio file without affecting the pitch, so you can hear a speed up lecture or song without it sounding like a chipmunk) to somewhat odd (environmental settings that simulate arenas, forests and cities, among others). This stuff is cool, but it seems extravagant considering the player doesn't feature basic seek-within-song functionality.

The unit itself is lightweight at 14 ounces (without batteries) and can be held comfortably inside one hand. The large 132x64 pixel screen fits seven lines of text, and will remain backlit for the duration you specify (default is 10 seconds).

In design, it resembles a portable CD player. But the Nomad Jukebox has two distinct advantages over MP3-CD players like the Genica and Philips eXpanium. First, you don't need to fumble with actual CDs--fumbling meaning everything from buying and installing a CD burner and successfully burning CDs to actually lugging them out on the road with you. The second: no more skips.

The promise of skip-free performance is backed solidly by an 8MB DRAM buffer, which provides five minutes of shock protection. Once the hard drive is up and running, you can literally toss the unit in the air, shake it or drop it on the ground without a skip.

This rugged performer begs to be taken in the car, so we brought our unit out for a test drive. Sure enough, drinks will spill and tires will pop before the Nomad Jukebox skips a beat. Another plus: Its rubber feet make the unit resistant to sliding around in the car.

Jogging is possible, but not practical considering the unit's weight and bulk (jocks, don't throw away your 64MB player yet!). A lock switch prevents buttons from being accidentally pushed.

You can expect batteries to last about four hours. The Nomad Jukebox requires 4 AAs and comes packaged with two sets of NiMH rechargeables. The batteries will recharge inside the unit when it is plugged into an outlet.

The spare set of batteries is a nice touch. Running a 6GB hard drive is understandably demanding on a power source, but the four hours' life span sure seems to fly by. High-bitrate MP3s and excessive button operation will burn through battery power even more rapidly.

You may find your Nomad Jukebox most at home plugged into your stereo, where you can serve up a virtually limitless amount of music, using the included AC adapter. There are SurroundSound outputs right out the back, and an infrared sensor for as-yet-unavaliable remote controls.

Another useful feature worth noting is line-in recording. The Nomad can record speeches, lectures, concerts or other live events and will store it as a WAV file in your library under "Recordings" in the Genre menu.

The Nomad Jukebox comes pre-stocked with 20 hours of audio book and music content. Avid digital-audio bookworms might be disappointed to find no bookmarking feature. The package includes a detailed manual, a quick-start guide and a carrying case, in addition to the sturdy USB cable, CD installation disc, AC power cord, eight batteries, the headphones (with extra-long cable) and the unit itself.

While the Nomad Jukebox is not the first massive storage hard-drive based portable, it is the first done right. Comparisons to the brick-shaped HanGo PJB-100 and its copycats are simple: Nomad has them beat in design, functionality, price and availability.

The Nomad Jukebox's staunch SDMI compliance means that MP3s loaded onto the player cannot be uploaded back to your (or a friend's) computer, but WAV files can. We liked that the unit has reprogrammable firmware for any future manufacturer updates, including things like support of other audio formats and enhancements like searching within tracks.

When you consider that the price of most MP3 portables is based on memory, and that some 64MB players run between $200 and $300, the cost efficiency of the Nomad Jukebox becomes more evident. Where $200 once got you an hour, does $500 get you two hours? Nope, try 100 hours--basically $5 for an hour of memory.

The obvious plus for the Jukebox is its storage capacity. With almost 1200 songs, there's still around a gig left. And although it's not recommended, you can replace the hard drive (it's just a notebook HD) by following any of the guides published on the web. If you have any intention of storing more than an hour of music on a well built, well thought out portable unit, there is no other option.

While I wouldn't recommend it for use while exercising (it weighs a good pound or so), the number of ports it has makes it rather versatile. There are stereo mini jacks for headphone-out, line-out (2 of them), and line-in (for digital recording). There's a power port (12V DC), the aforementioned USB port, and a curiously unused IR port in the front of the unit. If you need a port, it's there. This makes it easy to send audio to a receiver, or plug it into a car stereo.

The first thing that I immediately noticed while driving was the contour of the Jukebox. Whether intentional or not, the bottom is curved just enough such that it can sit sideways on my leg without shifting or sliding. This means it doesn't have to sit on the seat beside me, or in and of the dashboard or front panel trays (although that's where it eventually ended it). After a while, the controls become fairly intuitive - even in the dark I was able to perform all of the functions of the Jukebox without taking my eyes of the road... much.

As for the sound quality... well, the "EAX-enabled" headphones are awful. But aside from the glaring faults that are inherent in Frauenhofer's mp3 codec, the sound is great. I would recommend encoding classical music at 256 kbps, though, and I still have issues with anything that's been encoded by the included software...

The only issue I have with the Jukebox is with the software that comes with it. It encodes and rips poorly and slowly, and the import function is horrible. Importing is done with either a standard file open dialog or by autoscanning. The PlayCenter does not support drag-and-drop importing, and does not have the handy 'Recurse Subdirectories' feature that WinAmp has. While this isn't a problem if all of your mp3s are in one directory, if you've got your music collection on a number of partitions of a 60 GB drive, it can take up to 1/2 hour just to scan them all, and the software does nothing to inform you of what's going on.

Other than that, though, the software is decent. USB uploading is pretty fast - around 500 Kbps. (Still, uploadng 5.5 GB takes about 4 hours). PlayCenter handles a lot of internal jukebox functions, like deleting files, creating playlists, etc., and for those functions it works very well.

Minor faults aside, this is an outstanding product. I'd probably give it 4.5 stars, if possible.

For those debating whether to buy this product, I'm writingthis review to *possibly* help you out.

I've had this product forabout a month now, and overall I'm happy with it.

Here are thegreat/good aspects of the product:

- It works as advertised. I'veripped over 100 jazz CDS, and still have room for more.

- The soundquality is fine. I've read complaints from others about soundquality, volume not being high enough, etc. I realize everyone hasdifferent standards, but I myself find the quality about the same asmy CD player and certainly better than standard MP3 players. And Iconsider myself relatively picky about sound quality.

As forvolume, if I go beyond level 16 (and the highest volume control islevel 20) it hurts my ears, so the volume strength is certainly finefor me.

(Note: get a good pair of headphones or use your favoritepair...as is usually the case, the headphones that come with the Nomadare pretty much garbage.

Here are the 'drawbacks' or 'weak points'that Creative should address in the next version of the product

- Mybiggest issue (and I think everyone is in agreement) is battery life.At BEST they last about 3.5 hours for me, though individual mileagewill vary. Yes, Creative does provide a 2nd set of batteries, but tome that's a sign that Creative knew this would be an issue and tookthe path of least resistance.

- The software is 'OK'. It works,and can get you where you need to go, but Creative really didn't dotheir homework as far as learning what 'power users' would want out ofsoftware. For a beginner, it's fine. Beyond that, it's kludgy.

Iuse another ripper that supports Variable Bit Recording (VBR), so Irip with my other software and just use the Creative software totransfer files from my computer to the Nomad Jukebox.

- The userinterface for the Nomad itself is 'OK', but again kludgy and a tadslow. It's almost funny to tap the volume control and have to wait asecond or two before the Nomad responds. (It's amazing how you takethat kind of thing for granted on a normal walkman.)

- The manual.I read it. I laughed. I tossed it aside. Enough said.

- Thedesign of the AC adapter is strange. Again, a tad bigger and morekludgy than needs to be. I hope Creative addresses this in thefuture.

- Along with the battery issue, here's the other one thatactually annoys me: the carrying case is another example where theyreally didn't keep the customer in mind. You can't comfortably fitthe 2nd pair of batteries in, nor can you fit in the AC adapter, etc.For the price tag ..., I really would have expected Creative to throwin a better carrying case. I'd even consider it OK if they'd offer aGOOD carrying case as an add-on accessory (and maybe they do, but I'vesearched their Web Site and can't find one.)

Miscellaneous comments:

- I've played with EAX, and, well, it's not for me. To me, it'smore 'gimmicky' than anythingelse. I truly don't care that I don'tuse it...but I do care that Creative should have paid more attentionto other details.

Now, someone may read this and wonder why I gaveit 4 stars...bottom line, I love the sound quality and I love having atruckload of CDs in one little place. Yes there are weaknesses inthis product, but the core of the product works very very well.

Ihope this helps.

I received the Nomad Jukebox for Christmas (a whole two days ago) and am ready to render my opinion. Stated simply: This thing kicks A$$. Now, I'm not about to give it 5 stars, because as incredibly cool as the thing is there are some problems. However, one thing people seem to miss is that it has the ability to be updated for free, which should really just squash most of those lower ratings. Anyway, let's break this down:

Pros:

1) As you may have heard, it has 6 GIGS! of music. I mean, come on. Oooh, I'm going to buy this 64 Meg Mp3 player that's 3/4 the price of a 6 GIG player. What kinda flipped out logic is that?

2) The transfer speed is pretty fast, though with the amount of information you're moving, it's still going to take some time.

3) It does have a pause button. Hit Stop once for it to pause, twice to stop. It worked this way before the first firmware update.

4) After the update it does have a scan, though it's not wonderful, but it exists.

5) There is a random play for playlists, go to the active queue list and hit details, but there isn't for the every song on the player, though you could create a playlist from everything and randomize that.

6) I've not had any volume problems using a pair of cheap earbuds, but I'm no audiophile.

7) Also, after the update, you can upload non-write protected mp3's from the Jukebox to your computer.

Cons:

1) The playcenter bundeled software isn't very good. It crashes quit a bit on my system. Also, there's no randomize playlist option on the software. It would be really nice to be able to just select a list and randomize it for later listening. It doesn't have a drag and drop option only select and transfer. Would be nice to just choose a directory and everything under it was transferred.

2) Battery life. 4 Hours is pretty not cool. I realize that this is an energy hog, but still....

That's really it for either. In my opinion it's a very high quality device that will be able to stay current for some time to come as Creative updates the firmware. It does, however, have some software problems that should be fixed to make this as perfect as anything can be.

I have over a thousand MP3's, so the Nomad seemed like the logical choice as a portable MP3 player. I was also interested in using it with my home stereo system. It is a well thought out design, and the storage capacity is excellent. I have run into a few snags. During mp3 transfers, the data stream would suddenly end, the player would disappear, and I would get an error message saying the player wasn't attached to the system or was busy. I would have to reboot to get the player to be recognized again. I called tech support and they instructed me to download the new firmware and updated version of the play center. That helped a little bit, but I was still getting the same errors, just not as much. What I discovered was the transfer process works much more smoothly if you don't use a USB hub to plug the nomad into your computer and plug it directly into the one of motherboard USB slots. I have several USB devices running on my computer at this point, so I use a hub to connect them. Intel PC cameras need a dedicated port, and this is what clued me in, but otherwise, I would have never guessed this. I am basically happy with the software and hardware, but it was a serious test to get it to work correctly. Hopefully this review will help others to have less trouble using the product. I do recommend it. It is a wonderful device and has several great features. It is very functional and will provide hours (literally) of music entertainment

In general, it's pretty well done, but it's the first generation of its kind, and there's a number of things that could be better.

Good points: * 6gigs is nice, but easy to fill up. * Size is fine for home or car use * Navigation and use of the unit itself is pretty good. * Looks cool. * Sound quality is pretty good.

Bad points: * Their proprietary software (PlayCenter 2, I think) may be okay in a generation or two. * Display is too small to use safely while you're driving * No cigarette lighter adapter included * Burns batteries quickly

More about the software.

First off, it's a snazy looking app, but the window is not resizable, so you're stuck looking at a fairly small portion of the available tracks.

Second, the windows lack an edit menu -- especially a "select all" option.

Third, copying to the Jukebox can be a huge pain if you get midway through copying a lot of tracks and have to restart. There is no way to automatically skip all tracks already on the player. There is an option to overwrite all, but that takes longer.

Fourth, if you store your music with different subdirectories for each artist, then subdirectories for each album, it will take forever to get them on the Jukebox, as PlayCenter does not have an "all the files below this directory" option.

Lastly, it would be nice to be able to bypass the PlayCenter software altogether and use Windows Explorer. SmartMedia readers for digital cameras show up as an extra hard drive -- this would be a much easier way to work with mp3's!

All in all, the jukebox is very cool, anyway.

Hello. I ordered the Jukebox from the U.S. to Lebanon, it cost me overall 400$, but I think it was worth it. Before buying the Jukebox, I read almost all the reviews on it [...], they were almost 50% unsatisfied and 50% totally satisfied. That made me a bit sceptic about the product, but it turned out to be a great one. The pro's and cons and some answers to some very stupid problems other reviewers complained about.

Pro's: -Amazingly huge amount of memory (5.7GB and not 6GB as Creative claims, but what the heck, 0.3GB!) -Excellent connectivity. The Jukebox can be connected to any stereo or speaker system and it supports Dolby Digital AC-3 and 4point surround. Plus a line in plug so you can record from a mic, from the radio or even from the T.V.!! -Very fast transfer rate (500Kbps!!!!!) via USB port. -The ability to run it direcly from DC unlike the Nomad II MG and many other MP3 players, thus saving battery power and lifespam. -Big display, nice backlight ;)

-The three soft buttons that change function according to the mode you're in, thus having less buttons and more stylish look.(just like the NAV key on most Nokia phones like the 3310) -Great software (PC, haven't tested the Mac) nice design unlike many others said, AMAZINGLY CLEAN RIPPING, very high sound quality,in fact, others complained about the software because they hadn't updated it! updates are always available at [their website]! -Exceptional batteies! More power than any othe battery you could imagine! thrash duracell and energizer, the Creative batteries are a power station! (built for a power hog :P ) -Compatibility with WMA format after the upgrade (see above)

Ok, now the FEW cons (well, man isn't perfect and never will be. so are his creations! right?) -Battery life...hmmm...well it's not bad at all! but it's still a con compared to other MP3 players who last for 10-12hours. the Jukebox lasts around 4hours of PLAYBACK, and since Creative provides you with 8batteries, you can say it lasts 8hours of PLAYBACK, right? well it's a HARD-DISK running on AA batteries! Quite amazing battery life then! -The carrying case!! OOOOH GOD, that's THE CON. No holes for headphone plug, no place to store headphones nor spare batteries, the strap is so short it is meant to carry it like a handbag. But a SOLUTION to this costs only 19.99$. You can buy one of the other GREAT carrying cases Creative offers at [their website]-I'm not gonna talk about the size and weight because for a jukebox they are pretty cool: weight:14oz, dimensions: 5"x5"x1.5"

Well, that's about it. Finally, here is a summary of what you get when you buy the Creative Nomad Jukebox: -The Nomad Jukebox Unit (duh) -Stereo Backphones (which look great but sound a little less great ;) -2 4pack AA NiMH batteries (that makes 8batteries for those who donno math :P) -USB cable, Universal Power Adapter, Installation C.D., installation booklet (quite comprehensive, plus comes in 4 languages) -Carrying Pouch (I wish Creative kept it for them, they would've spared themselves the embarrasment! ) -Preloaded 20 that's TWENTY HOURS of music, including classical, jazz, hip-hop, dance, pop, rock, and two audiobooks(frankenstein and robinson crusoe)

Well, I hope this review was of use for you people. Thanx for reading.