Customer Reviews

Creative Labs NOMAD II MG 64 MB MP3 Player Blue with Docking Station

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Hi All,
I purchased my Blue 2 from Amazon and I must say there are loads of things that one must know before even thinking of buying this toy.
First: Reasons to buy.
1) Superior sound quality. I mean really really amazing. I plugged mine into a reciever and OH man....totally worth it
2) looks impressive
3) Really Light
4) Display is appropriate too
5) Good battery time
6) Charges really really quick
7) Transfer speed too good to be true
8) Good Software (Me a windows user)

Now some things to consider before you buy
1) 2nd day out of the box and the contact was loose on one of the batteries. Tried to fix it and broke the contact while changing batteries(I dont expect something that expensive to have a defect like that)
2) Four days out of the box (battery contact already gone). The display became totally un-readable. This prompted me to contact Support
3)Huge company like Creative doesn't have a 1 800 number ..I mean PLEASEEEEEEE. Anyway after waiting for about 1 hour (thank God I have a speaker phone) Finally sent it over.

4) New one which was re-furbished by the way arrived in around 3 weeks time.
5)After two days found out that the head phone jack of the player caused the right speaker (or headphone speaker) to mute while the left kept playing (Totally Totally made me angry like crazy)
6) Sent it back again but this time Creative paid for the shipping and as per today waiting for another re-furbished one.

That was the whole story. If I was to be given an option of getting my money back I would do that and I'll tell you what always buy Sony products when it comes to portable sound. CREATIVE people..u still need another 10 years to capture the Portable sound market.

I recieved my Nomad II MG as a Christmas present from my husband. Within a week, one of the battery contact fingers literally fell out of the player, leading to 3 months of hassle with Creative Labs before they finally soldered it back in and returned my unit to me instead of the new unit promised. Now, 6/8/01, the docking station will no longer charge the batteries. CL wants the docking station, player, etc. to troubleshoot.

CL made lots of promises to me about when I would get my player back, and broke every one of them. If it's going to take 3 months, tell me. Don't string me along week by week with lies. I anticipate the same type of customer service experience from CL this time, especially since I see from the other reviews here that my bad experience is not unique.

I have had numerous Sony walkmen, cd players, etc., and never had any problems with them. I have a TWELVE year old Sony CD player on my desk right now that still works perfectly! I will not buy another Creative Labs product. This is especially disappointing given the cost of this product. For $250, I expect something better than this.

I bought my Nomad II mg from Best Buy as an open item. They sold it to me for $100 without the docking station, software, headphones, or accessories. I had to contact Creative labs to get the docking station. I have my own headphones and downloaded the software online. Originally, they wouldn't/couldn't sell me the docking station. They usually will replace docking stations but not sell them if it is not a replacement. How dumb is that? You need the docking station to download music until the traveler's usb cord becomes available.

My impressions: I love it. 77g w/o batteries and 100g with batteries. It is light and easy to carry. I would like a belt clip but I bought a tune belt for mp3 players so that will work fine. I am using earbud type headphones so there is plenty of volume. I bought a Sandisk 64mb smartmedia card and it works fine. Note: you should go to the website (nomadworld.com) and update your firmware on your player. It gets better reception and supports resume playback. The FM reception is relatively good. I find that it is just as good as a boombox.

I had to reinstall the playcenter software once before the program would recognize my nomad. After that, it downloads songs lightning fast. I would guess about 10seconds for a 5meg song. You can also rip songs directly from a cd to the player.

Overall: 4 to 4.5 stars out of 5. Since this is my first mp3 player, I can't compare to others. BTW, works great for running with the tune belt.

We bought a Nomad II MG as a Christmas gift.

Unfortunately, we received a defective unit.

Creative Labs had us send in the docking station only, and then when that came back unrepaired...they had us send in the entire unit.

But at least Creative said they would expedite the second repair and send us better headphones or memory to make up for the two repair attempts and shipping costs.

That second repair was at the end of Febuary.

Today, April 24, 2001 we were finally told that the unit will ship back to us. 4 months and $36.00 in shipping later, we hopefully will get a working MP3 player.

Creative Customer however reneged on their promises to send better headphones or memory.

I am disappointed with this level of warranty and customer service...and will not make my Creative Labs product my first choice in the future.

Once upon a time, a boy bought a Nomad II MG player and he was rightly happy. He had just obtained a piece of technology that would hopefully give him countless hours of crystal clear music and many excellent features.

Then one day things started to go wrong...

After purchasing the docking station to accompany this cool MP3 player (which took several weeks to order in as the boy lived in the Middle East where it wasn't in stock) he quickly took it home to try it out. It didn't work. So he took it back to the shop where, thus was the staff's confidence in the product, they proceeded to plug it into every power outlet available (into which their own devices were plugged and working perfectly) to ensure that it wasn't the fault of the socket - alas to no avail.

Finally they conceded there was a problem so the docking station COMPLETE WITH THE PLAYER had to be sent to Singapore for a 3 month warranty draining vacation during which the boy had no use of the player.
It came back apparently working fine.
A while later the unfortunate boy noticed some annoying background noise during operation and so the player had to be handed in for repair again. This time they managed to fix it without sending it to Singapore and for that the boy was grateful.

HOWEVER

Not long after THAT the docking station again stopped functioning correctly and the boy was informed that it would again have to be sent to Singapore this time at his own expense!

---

I have written to Creative America, Asia and Europe and the management here in Dubai. NOTHING positive or helpful has been done. During the player's globetrotting I had no use of it and whilst it was working I NEVER used it in any strenuous situation. It was never mistreated and yet it still broke. How can this be called, "Music on the Go"? I propose a change to the more honest, "Fuzzy noise on the Go" as anything else is basically false advertising.

Yes the warranty has expired but only because it spent three months of its warranty period in Singapore. I have not been shown any kind of empathy and I recommend that people rethink before purchasing. Companies like IRiver offer SUPERB MP3 players (Several of my friends have purchased them).
I do not expect to pay the kind of money I paid and be told that I'll have to dish out more money in order to get it fixed. If Creative had their way, my MP3 player would soon rack up more air miles than I have.
On principle I'd rather throw it away and buy a new device from another company even if it cost more than the proposed repairs.

Though this is only one person's tale of woe, my point is this:

With a big company like Creative, some products will inevitably have problems. Some customers such as myself may even be unfortunate enough to experience several problems. I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the complete lack of customer care and the non-existent technical support I have been offered. Creative America and Europe wrote back immediately saying I was not under their jurisdiction. Creative Asia have not written back 3 weeks down the line.

They like to waste your time at Creative.

HIT THE BACK BUTTON AND BUY SOMETHING ELSE!

The best part about this device is the addition of the FM radio, which a lot of other tuners lack. A couple of quirks that prevent me from giving it 5 stars include the lack of "random" play of the MP3s (sure, loading 64MB of songs is great, but having to listen to them in the same order every time isn't), and the lack of a belt clip. The headphones are pretty weak, and for the money that people are paying, creative should have went with an acceptable $ pair of Sony's....

After an exhausting search of the MP3 market I decided to go for the Nomad IIMG and I'm glad I did. The user interface is excellent and the sound quality is superb. If you look at the other packages on the market you'll be hard pressed to find a better deal for the money. The cradle has a dual function, recharging the player and connecting your pc via USB port for file transfer. With the flash memory on the unit upgrades to futures are a snap.

About a year ago, I shopped around for many MP3 players. I have even bought many. All of the Rio's were fine, but didn't have many features and had less then perfect sound quality. The previous Creative Labs MP3 players were fine, but didn't have the overall quality needed in an MP3 player. The Nomad II MG is in my mind the best MP3 player ever created. It has enough memory for three CD's worth of music (with smartmedia card), voice recording, FM tuner, an easy interface, and never freezes like other MP3 players might. Also it supports upcomming formats. If you worry about the sound quality, it's the same as a CD player, plus you don't have to buy the songs. My only gripe is the crappy headphones. The sound quality is there, but not the solid materials you would expect. Buy this product or the Nomad Jukebox. It will be worth it!

Almost everything about this product is great WHEN it is working. After a couple of weeks of use, my Nomad crashed. Installing the latest Firmware upgrade did not bring the Nomad back to life. I was told by a technician that is was a defective unit and that I would have to return it for replacement or repair. Weeks later, I received the "repaired" Nomad. It still wasn't working properly. Another call to technical support resulted in being told to install the latest Firmware, which I did. The Nomad worked well for another couple of weeks and crashed again. Re-installing the Firmware did not work. Another call to technical support resulted in being told to lock the controls and leave the Nomad in the docking station for 24 hours. I wanted to do an exchange and have a new unit sent to me, and then I would return the old one. I was told this couldn't be done because they were out of stock. The technician told me leaving the unit in the docking station for 24 hours would restore it. After doing this, it still wasn't working so I tried re-installing the Firmware again. This did the trick. The Nomad is now back in business. But for how long?Obviously, this is a wonderful product that hasn't exactly been perfected. The next time it crashes I am going to insist upon getting a new unit.

GOOD FEATURES:

Great software: Transfer, archive, rip, download. All wonderful.

Lots of memory: 64 MB with room for 128 MB more. I got a viking 64 MB card--I can just fit Banco de Gaia's Igizeh on to the card with a few MB to spare. That leaves another 64 MB free in the body of the player for whichever other trance tunes I happen to have lying around!

Plenty of FM presets: 32! Wow! Maybe in San Francisco I'd be able to use half of them, but not in the vast cultural wasteland of greater-metro LA.

Batteries: Comes with rechargeable AAA, but can use regular cells if no time to charge.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:

Headphones are painful. snag my beard going on. hurt ear canals after a while. Plan to buy your own.

Useless case. You cannot access controls when it's in case. Case has no belt loop. Phones must be removed to open or close case. What a waste! They should have either excluded the case or included a useful one.

Installation. The software that shipped wouldn't install under Windows ME. The autorun program just hung. I had to install components manually, using the RUN feature of the start menu. The Digital Audio Center software never did run right, but a 15 MB download from Creative replaced that software with some that did OK.

Audio Recording. Consider this a machine for making notes to yourself, not recording a lecture. Weak pickup, no provisions for external mic. No options to vary record quality, rate, or stereo/mono. Then you u/l the recordin as a NVF file. Still looking for a way to pull one of those into Sonic Foundry for editing.

Docking Cradle. The mating connector is flimsy and slightly loose. I can imagine breaking it off if not careful. Concerned.

OVERALL:

I bought this as a dance machine. Works well. Small. Unobtrusive. I can pop in a memory card with a set of tracks & then let the rhythms carry me away w/o disturbing anybody else with loud music. No moving parts. No skipping. I do need to get a better carrier.

Five star concept, four star execution. Eagerly awaiting the Nomad III.

(If you'd like to correspond about this review, click the "about me" link above to get my email address. Thanks!)