Customer Reviews

Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen NX 20 GB Digital Audio Player

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

My 2 cents..

If you want a stylish player, get the iPod.

If you want a player that provides twice the hard drive capacity for half the price, get the Nomad Zen Nx.

If you want a white (blah) player that will show every sign of dirt and dust, get an iPod.

If you want a silver player that looks utilitarian, and like it can take a beating, get the Zen Nx.

I really do not mind the Mediasource software, except that I prefer not to use its CD ripping function, because it doesn't allow you to include the Track # in the filename. There's plenty of freeware CD to MP3 rippers out there that don't hog resources like Mediasource does.

Other than that, the software functions just fine although a little slow for a P3 700Mhz PC.. If you look around the Internet, you can find a piece of software called Nomad Explorer, an official release written by Creative Labs, that will integrate with Windows Explorer and allows you to drag and drop your MP3s right from within Windows Explorer! Niiice.

The thing I love about this player the best, and what matters most to most people, is that it sounds absolutely GREAT. I encode most of my MP3/WMA's at 128-160kbps and both bitrates sound great.. My 192kbps sound even better, but 160kbps is pretty much all I need with this player.

EAX allows you to set preset EQ settings like Rock, Pop, Jazz, etc, or environmental settings like Auditorium, Concert Hall, Garage (most environmental settings make it sound like you're in a big restroom, in my opinion).. I use the custom 4 band equalizer, and it works great.. Beware though, with EAX enabled, your battery life will be cut in half! Luckily the battery charges in just two hours.

If you want a good pair of earclip headphones to go with this, pick up some Koss KSC-50 headphones.. They are full open air size headphones that clip to your ears, and they're a LOT better than the ones that come with the Zen Nx.

One minor complaint about the Zen Nx, and that is, Creative seems to be pushing their Zen Xtra, even though they just released the Zen Nx in August! As great of a player as this model is, I hope they aren't pushing it under the rug, in favor of a newer model with a bigger screen.

Another minor beef I have is the lack of FM tuner. True, I can buy a decent portable FM radio for under $20, but it surely would have been easy for Creative to have on built in, wouldn't it have?

The scroll wheel takes some getting used to. I can't say I like it for menu scrolling, but it does come in handy when scrolling thru 100+ artist/album names. It just does not feel precise, that's all.

If you want a great HD based player at a great price and don't mind slightly clunky included software, get this- it's a steal.

I've never written a review and I've bought from Amazon for years. I am so happy over my ZEN NX that I have to let everyone know. I've downloaded close to 300 CDs and still have over 4 gig left! The sound is amazing. The interface could not be easier. Files are listed by ARTIST, ALBUM, GENRE, PLAYLISTS and TRACKS. If I want to hear R.E.M. I can listen to "Out of Time" or one song or all 5 albums in order or in a shuffled order. If I'm exercising I can click on Techno and listen to every techno song in the jukebox. It's true the headphones aren't that great. The battery life isn't 14 hours. Did anyone mention the LEATHER carrying case? It's great but should have an opening so you could see the window. The aluminum face plate is ultra cool as is the green light. The scroll wheel is easy to figure out. The media source software is more than adequate. It downloads the track listings and then you copy the CDs. Who needs to pay $200 more for an iPOD?

This is an excellent MP3 player. The sound quality as well as the features are way above average. I dont understand how 'software engineers' could not get the software working. Does not speak well of their engineering skills. Trust me, if you have an iota of computer savvy, you will find this extremely easy to use. And oh yeah, its half the price of the IPOD- just a bit bulkier. Its time that these apple fanatics start to appreciate a good product instead of harping on the IPOD. The sound quality and the battery life (replaceable too and 14 hours on a single charge) way outweigh the IPOD. Dont take my word for it- go to a bestbuy and check it out...

i have had this since september, and since it came out in Augest it was very new when i bought it. this was an upgrade from the Nomad II that was extremely buggy. I LOVE THIS PLAYER. You will for sure hear many mixed reviews about his player, which all have, but really this is well worth the money. I am very hard to please but with this device there is very few flaws. 1) not nearly as small or sleek as iPod, but its not as big as people make it out to be. 2) Headphones are crap, veryminor problem, but hey theres very few. 3) extreme lack of acessories, only thing you can buy for this is a new battery 4)the case it comes with isnt great 5) no firewire support.
Pros
you can make a playlist from the player

its from a premier soundcard company so ofcourse the quality is outstanding

easy to use

14 hour battery life, and battery is user replaceable

aluminum case not easy to break

EAX feature is sweet

i have about 1000 songs and player acts like there are none loaded

if you want a rocksolid player that will last as long as you do, buy the zen, if you want a sleek design buy an iPod

also creative support speaks english

After quite a bit of research, and reviewing some of my friends' HD players (Archos, iPod, iRiver), I decided to purchase the Nomad Zen NX. In some ways, this was a matter of deduction, for it was only the Nomad Zen NX that met my all, and I do mean ALL, of my wants in an HD player. These wants of mine were a player that:

1) Had a large, detailed, high-resolution display
2) WAS ABLE TO SCROLL EASILY!
3) Was able to store many data types
4) Was small and durable
5) I could use to store/back up other files
6) Didn't dent my wallet

I found all of these in the Nomad Zen NX. Although the iPod looks really nice, and has a great display and a cool, innovative scroll wheel, the navigation wheel on the Nomad Zen works perfectly. I didn't want to have a player that used buttons to scroll because I felt that, after scrolling through 1k+ songs over an extended period of time, buttons would break down and malfunction. Also, the iPod does not allow you to store other files (e.g. movies, or picture) OR allow you take songs off of it (you need to download illegal software to do so and it voids the warrenty of the iPod). More to the point, the iPod is steeply priced, 300 dollars for 10 gigs of memory (at least, thats what its price was when I bought my Zen). The iRiver also carries a hefty price, although it does have many things that the Nomad has. I ended up purchasing my Nomad (20 gbs) for 270 (approx.) dollars, and I am totally happy with my purchase. As for the archos HD players, I don't like there display, and the OS that they come with is absolutely terrible.

If 4.5 stars were possible, I would choose that option, for the only drawback it has (and this may very well apply to all HD players) is that when you skip through a lot of songs quickly, the player lags for a second or two. I have found this only slightly annoying, however, and this minor con is vastly outweighed by the pros of this player. Buy with confidence!

Oh, and I've dropped it quite a few times (however, only one of these times was my fault! =]) and the player still works perfectly.

Second update: I finally took the time to change the hard drive, and it works again. When they mean you can't exercise with it, they mean it. I would not even suggest walking with it. It has already been acting up again, and now I just walk around with it on my belt. I had to take the hard drive out in order to be able to reload the firmware this time, the buttons wouldn't work until I performed this operation.

This is an update. This thing lasted 10 months then died. Although it is a great player, was, when it worked, it did not last as long as it should have for the money. If you plan on being active with the thing, don't buy this one.

Just got one for xmas. I use it strictly for audiobooks. Have tried several MP3 players, but there was always a problem because the manufacturers don't have audiobooks in mind when they write the software for these things. This thing has some features I like specifically because I listen to books with it.

The basics... Two major features when listening to books, the way the thing sorts, and a resume feature for long segments. For sorting it allows you to use album or track number. It would be nice if these choices were expanded to file name or the segment title, maybe in a later firmware upgrade.

If a segment is playing and you shut off the unit, it will begin playing where it left off. Nice for those 45 - 60 minute segments. There is also a bookmark feature which you can set for each book, but these disappear if you access the thing to add, delete or change the content. Fast forwarding is very fast, another plus for those 60 minute segments.

One really nice feature for audiobook listeners is the advanced sound catagories it uses. I really like the time scale feature. You can speed up playback without the 'chipmunk' distortion you would expect, basically making the narrator speak faster. Now I can listen as fast as I read!!

Browsing... It allows you to browse by Album, Artist, Genre or use a playlist, that's it. A folder browsing feature would be nice, but not necessary. I couldn't imagine having tons of music on here and dealing with it without folders.

The best thing about it which makes it so much better than the small players is the amount of data it holds. I no longer have to update it every other day when I finish a book. Once I have it loaded, which will take a while with 20GB of space, I don't have to worry about it for a while.

The bundled software is supposed to allow Windows file manager integration, but I couldn't get it to work. Using the Creative Organizer works and is simple enough, so I can't see paying for another program just to have the ease of drag and drop.

Ok I have to start by saying Amazon was the slowest ship time ever.. 9 days to ship although ups shipped it in 2 days.(11 total). That "usually ships in 24 hours" is crap but i didnt deduct points from the product for that because its just magnificent. Im on XP Pro. The Device menu is nice easy to find anything you want.. Although you will need ID3 Tags somewhat filled out but it has mass ID3 change on the app.. took me about 4 hours to setup ID3 tags on about 2900 songs.. as far as pc-zen transfer I dont have usb 2 port so it was goin at usb 1.1 bout 7 seconds a song 7*2900/60/60 about 5.6 hrs but I started it went to bed.. woke up and no problems whatsoever. 290 albums loaded and ready to go.. sounds just as good as a cd player bought a car cassete adapter works good. although hard to change albums and drive so you may need a copilot or a good playlist setup. I paid 224$ for it prolly could have found it for 210$ but oh well. size is nice ipod is about 3/4th the size but oh well it still fits nicely in my poket and is way smaller than an mp3 player. the menu setup is nice mainly based on id3.
-My Music-
+Tracks
-All Tracks
+Artists
-ArtistName
--submenu(open)
<-Lists Albums by artist
+Albums
-All Albums

not exactly but sumthin like that..
theres a few other things like.

Time Display
Surrent Song Display with good info..

Things i wish it had..

menu navigate is fine exept kinda hard to press the scroll navigator to select items

Stop button..not needed but pause/change track will show it as stoped

would have been nice if it had folder layout since thats how my music was sorted but no matter now.

back light button.. back light comes on for a few seconds when the navigate wheel is moved wish there was a diff way to turn it on and posibly keep it on..

but pros outway the cons and i really beleave its a better deal than ipod..

two months ago, a friend of mine bought an iPod and lived to rue that day, as she couldn't get the software to work with her PC. she returned it a couple of weeks after having purchased it, after many hours on the phone with tech support for both her PC and for the iPod. yesterday, i bought myself a creative labs jukebox zen nx for half the price she paid for her iPod. score one for the Jukebox. i took it home, plugged it in, let it charge while i installed the software. this took maybe fifteen minutes. i have no IDEA how two computer professionals couldn't get this software to install.... i'm quite computer savvy, myself, for a 21 year old business student with no formal computer training. i'm no whiz, but the installation was in no way shape or form brain surgery. click next a handful of times, click finish, yay for you, it's installed, just like any other program.
after getting the software installed, teaching myself to use it took a bit of time. the help files aren't exactly expansive, and often seemed to have the answer to a question that wasn't *quite* what i needed to know. but i started this whole project at 8pm, and by 11pm i had all 400+ of my music files on the jukebox, two playlists already created, and was able to get good and drunk with my roommates while bragging about my new toy.
it's the size, roughly, of a palm PDA. in fact, i just slid it into the leather case belonging to my now defunct handspring deluxe with no trouble.
i'm very impressed with this thing... no, it's not the itty bittiest portable music player on the planet, but for the price and for the features, the size, weight and all are just right.
final word: a great player, easy install regardless of *what* a couple of challanged computer nerds think, software could stand to be a little more straightforward, but overall completely worth it.

I bought a refurbished one of these off of eBay directly from Creative Labs. It only had a 30 day warranty, so once it ran out, I took out the 20GB hard drive that came with it and put in a 40GB one. I also got a second LiIon battery for it for under $20 on ebay.

The player does what it's supposed to do -- play back MP3 files in high fidelity sound. The Zen NX has a nice headphone amp and drives studio-style headphones without problem. The EAX DSP settings do a nice job with EQ'ing sound and also normalizing volume when you have it on shuffle. It also has virtually gapless playback -- this is, for me, a must. The included software is actually halfway decent. I use Red Chair Software's Notmad Explorer -- far better.

Complaints: no included car adapter, job dial feels a bit flimsy, no firmware support for Audible files (although you can get around it -- do a search on www.nomadness.net), making playlists without the computer is bothersome. The included earbuds are low-fi, get a set of Koss PortaPros or something similar.

Now, this being said, this player is good enough that the complaints are not enough to drop the rating below 4 stars. YMMV.

OK, I bought this system a couple of months ago and it is great. It makes life so much easier to have all your music at your finger tips. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because it has a tendency to jam up right after I download new music. Yes, a little annoying but easily fixed with the reset button and you're back in business. Plus it is pretty durable too. I've dropped it a few times on hardwood flooring and nothing as aposed to my brother who dropped his iPod on the floor and it wouldn't work for half a week. In addition, you get a lot better value compared to the iPod; more memory for the buck or get less memory and save some money. It is a little bulkier but not to the point where it will actually bother anyone.

I do, however, want to mention one quick thing to any one who might be in my situation. I have a lot of dexterity problems due to a disability and if you have the same type of problem you might want to look closer at the iPod because the touchpad interface is easier to use than the wheel on the jukebox. But if that isn't a problem get this one it's better and cheaper. You can use the money you save to buy more music.