Customer Reviews

Creative Labs Silver Nomad Jukebox "C" (MP3/WMA)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

If you like to take a lot of your music with you or if you would like to to play on your home stereo all those MP3's sitting on your computer, then the Nomad Jukebox is the product for you. With the recent reduction in price, there's no reason to wait anymore. Portable CD players that play discs encoded with MP3's are great, but why limit yourself to one disc when you can put hundreds on the Jukebox. I've had mine for about 3 weeks and it's great. Here are a few observations: (1) The only difference between the Nomad Jukebox and Nomad Jukebox C is that the "C" model does not include headphones, an extra set of rechargeable batteries or a carrying pouch. You've probably got headphones already from another portable, but if you need these things they are all available in an accessory pack that includes a car adapter; (2) at the risk of stating the obvious, the Jukebox is not a portable CD player, but is actually a sealed hard drive, just like the one in your computer (and you do need a computer to use this thing), which is why battery life is not particulary long (they are rechargeables); (3) the Jukebox will hold a tremendous amount of music -- hundreds and hundreds of songs -- which means you can plug it in, put it on shuffle and you won't hear the same song for a while; (4) loading music from your computer is quick and easy, or you can record through the line-in input; (5) playlist management is easy; just pick out the songs from your library you want in your queue and save it, then when you're ready for those songs, just load the playlist. Or just load everything from a particular artist or genre; and (6) sound quality is very good, depending in large part, of course, on the bitrate at which the MP3s were encoded (and it will play formats other than MP3). This is a great device for a music lover.

As widely reported, this is a cool product when it works right. One problem that I haven't seen reported widely is the boot time. The more files I put on mine, the longer it takes to boot; with the hard disk nearly full, it takes nearly two minutes from when I power on to when it will play music. This is a drag when I want to listen to music right away.

I've also toasted two sets of batteries. It seems that if you don't run them all the way down before you recharge them, they lose their capacity. When the batteries were working well, I was getting 3-4 hours of play time, but once you mess them up, they are good for less than an hour.

I recommend this product for use on AC power, and hopefully you are patient enough while it boots up.

I have been relatively pleased with the Nomad Jukebox. It has a high capacity storage, and its battery life is acceptable (If you aren't planning on a big trip) Its limitation to only the batteries that creative makes is not so good, because I am afraid of what will happen if I dont do what they say. Its firmware could be batter, but it can be upgraded. I give this product 4 stars, because it is very useful and helpful, but not all as "portable" as creative insists on titling it.

This is a great product..I have had mine for over a month, and it works perfectly fine..
Although, it drains batteries pretty quickly, Just buy 2 4 packs of rechargeables, and bring them with you everywhere then you should be ok since they each last about 4 hours.
Overall, it's a great product, I would recommend to everyone!

I bought this thing for (Amount) from Amazon. Since then I have had nothing but problems with it. When it plays a song it's great but 1) The thing eats up batteries in less than 4 hours and gets progressively worse the more you use the batteries 2) It shuts off or gets jammed at the drop of a hat 3) The software provided with it is useless 4) Don't even try getting through to customer support -- there is no phone support and you'll have to wait at least 2 days for any email support 5) If after the 90 day warranty you need any kind of repairs, forget it 6) Right now, mine won't even turn on.

If you buy this unit, make sure to retain the original receipt. I tossed mine after a couple of weeks because it was working OK. Just after that it started having problems and stopped working altogether. Creative has extremely poor tech support and will NOT lookup customer information to allow you to return a defective item if you no longer have the receipt. They have an uncaring attitude.

While it was working it would often crash and require me to restart it. Also, the battery life is very short. Getting playcenter to recognize the device to transfer files to/from the computer is also a challenge and requires a strange combination of plugging in/unplugging, turning off/on, etc.

The only good thing about the unit is the large storage capacity, but that is useless if the unit does not work.

For such a high-priced item I am extremely dissapointed in Creative and this experience has taught me to never buy anything from them again.

I purchased my first Nomad for my wife 12/2000. We had problems with the battery charger, but because of some personal issues, didn't return within 90 days. When I contacted technical support, they said they had worked out the problems with the batteries, but that because I was out of warrenty, I would be better off buying a new one as they would charge me ... to repair, even if it was something simple.

Because I liked the concept of the Nomad I purchased another. The batteries did work a little better this time, for a while, but now (again past the 90 days) I am getting very little battery life again. I assume I am stuck with a unit that only plays plugged in.

I bought it for my wife to walk with........Oh, well.

Imagine my dismay when I install the rechargable batteries that come with this unit, only to discover that they will not charge. The Nomad *should* charge the batteries when it is plugged in to its AC adapter, but alas, that is not what happens. You must first charge the batteries in a charger unit (not included) before the Nomad will detect them. Imagine my further dismay when I install the freshly-charged batteries (charged for 12 continuous hours, per the instructions) and watch the battery meter fall from 95% to 67% in a little less than 10 minutes. And that's with the backlight off. Oh, and by the way, if the charge drops below 65%, you won't have enough power to save playlists or other system settings.

Battery issues aside, the performance of the Nomad Jukebox is decent. Sound quality is good, and the filing system is a passable method for finding the song you want. If you are looking for a stationary MP3 library, then this product is aptly named; a big jukebox that must be plugged in wherever you want to use it. If you want portability, look elsewhere. There are much better MP3 players out there, such as Apple's iPod, which should come down in price within the year.

When I first got this MP3 player, I was amazed by how many songs it could hold! I recently downloaded Windows Media Player 7.1, and with that program was a great little feature. In WMP, the encoding delivers the best CD-quality audio in half the file size of MP3, doubling your music storage and reducing download time for CD-quality digital music. So that's about 12gigs of space!!!

I love my Nomad. Use headphones, connect to your Mac or PC or speaker system. Easy interface and so much space. I have 375 mp3 tracks on mine and still room for more! Even complete audio books. Very cool.