Customer Reviews

Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 30 GB MP3 Player

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(65)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(42)

 

 

When I first started looking for a portable jukebox, I--like everybody else--was drooling for an iPod. Then I did my research, and here's why I decided on the Zen Jukebox Xtra: (1) the iPod battery is not user-replaceable, you have to pay $60 for a two-year Apple plan in order to get it replaced, and you have to send the unit back to them to get it replaced (evidently it starts losing its charge about six months into ownership); (2) huge storage space--I have my entire CD collection on it plus a whole bunch of downloaded tracks at high quality and I've still only used half the space; (3) sound quality is fabulous, especially if you spring for a decent pair of headphones. As far as durability goes, granted I haven't passed the dreaded 90-day-warranty mark, but it goes with me trail-running daily (because of other reviews I've read, I hold it in my hand over rough spots so it doesn't get jostled too much) and in the car on long drives a few times a week. I've also dropped it from a pretty good height with no damage. My one complaint? No support for MP4. BUT...you can upgrade the firmware to be Real Player compatible (their downloads are only 49 cents) and I've found the process easily done. Good tech support as well. I just don't think there's a better value for the money.

It's passed the 6 month test, no problems w/ it, no shutdown of hard drive. Fingers crossed it can pass the 8 month test...I'm sorry about the horror stories, maybe I just got lucky w/ a functioning Jukebox. I'm pretty active w/ it, jogging, weightlifting, painting w/ it on, even dropped it once or twice, but still works. Course, I don't throw it around or treat it like a stupid little walkman, it *is* a computer and should be treated as such.

I have never tried the Ipod, so I can't compare the sound, interface, ect. All I can say, is that this product is a Godsend at 220 bucks. If you are a finnicky listener like me, and you can't stomach listening to the radio because you have to change the station every other song, if not turn off the radio completely, because you are so freaking sick of stupid music passed off as, well, music, then a product like this is mandatory in your life. You need to have the ability to only listen to what you want to listen to. I have a playlist of over 400+ indie-esque rock songs, another of 50+ that lists my current fave songs, and another of 40+ classical and celtic music pieces. It is what it is, a personal jukebox, a personal radio station. No more interchanging CDs while driving (btw, I just used an old car tape-deck adapter from my CD player to adapt the jukebox to the car stereo, no need to buy the accessory car adapter kit), no more tedious and infuriatingly redundant pop-"alternative" rock music while waiting to hear one good song out of thirty, no more 8 minute commercial breaks...just pop in the jukebox and hit shuffle. The interface can be a little messy, but it's still worth it. 80 bucks less than an Ipod and 20+ GB more...yeah, it's definitely worth it (if it works for you).

I waited a full year before writing a review of my Creative Labs Zen Nomad 30GB Xtra, because some products work well for the first 6 months and then break down once its too late to return. Well, after 12 months, I can say this has been a great purchase, with no regrets. I listen to it everyday going to/from work on the train, with no major performance issues. With 30GBs of storage space, I have 4000 songs loaded and use the extra space to store files I need at work. Another plus is that it plays both WMA and MP3 file formats, so I can play all the songs from my CD library, as well as downloaded songs, without having to convert them. The unit itself is not as graceful/compact as an Ipod, but when you consider a 20GB Ipod costs around $300, whereas a 30GB Nomad costs around $225, I think you get more for you money. Plus, you're not forced to download tunes from Ipod's Itunes store at 99 cents/song.

Regarding usage, I use the included Nomad MediaSource Organizer on my PC. It scans your computer for song files, and then organizes them. You can then plug in your Nomad using the included USB 2.0 cable (which works with a USB 1.1 interface, albeit slower). The computer recognizes the Nomad after a few seconds, after which you can transfer all the songs on your computer (the first time), and then new songs afterward on an individual basis. One major drawback is that if you change a song title, genre, artist name, then the software will not recognize the song as being the same. As a result, you may have multiple versions of the song on your player. Perhaps a new updated version of the software will be `smarter'. Another problem is that you cannot delete or make changes to songs on the Nomad directly - instead you have to sync it with your computer to make those changes.

Regarding durability, the player has not had any major problems, except it froze once, but I pressed the reset button with a toothpick and that fixed it. I haven't dropped it (yet), but I do notice the faceplate of the player is not too secure and has come loose a couple times. If you use the leather case (included), that won't be a problem, but the player will be much bulkier as a result. I use the player without the leather case so I can put it in my pocket, which works fine. I wish there was a separate control unit on the headset cord, because Japanese trains can get so crowded that even my pocket is inaccessible. Speaking of headsets, the included pair are not the greatest, but they work.

The battery is supposed to last 12 hours, but I find that it last closer to 5-6 hours on a single charge. This is not an issue, because I only listen 1-2 hours per day and charge it up at night. One minor complaint - the power indicator has only 4 bars, so once you are down to a single bar, you're never really sure how much listening time you have left (which is why I charge it to full every night). I hope Creative Labs can improve that function on future models.

In conclusion, if you are not concerned about having the coolest, most ergonomic player around, but you want to have access to every song you every owned, wherever you go, the Nomad Zen 30GB Xtra is well worth it.

In getting ready to go to college, I decided I didn't want a big stereo and CD cases taking up space in my room. So, I bought this MP3 player at Bestbuy and two small but powerful Bose speakers that I can connect to it or to my laptop. With my first semester coming to an end, I couldn't be happier. I've yet to have a technical problem with it. The amount of songs it holds it great and it's easy to use. The software it comes with is great too, because you can put songs from CDs to your MP3 player without having to put them on your computer first. So no hard drive space is used up. You can't say that about ipods. My sister got the dell MP3 player and has had problems with it too. I listen to mine for hours everyday...basically when I'm in my room, I have music on, and I love it!

I have not had any of the problems with this that other people have had, and I've been using it almost 8 months.

Pros
* Features comparable to the ipod, but it costs much less.
* Car adapter kit - this was the main reason I bought this over something more compact. Specifically, I wanted something that could be plugged into the cigarette lighter when the battery goes.
* With 30 Gb, I can store thousands of songs. I can store my entire CD library on this thing, so I don't have to carry a bunch of CDs with me in the car.
* Software seems to do a good job ripping CDs.
* When ripping CDs, the software allows you to download CD details from a website so you don't have to enter them manually.
* Sound is good. You can select 'virtual environments' to make a song sound like it's being played in a concert hall, stadium, garage, etc. There's also a smart volume setting, which controls the dynamic range of volume. Handy if one song is a lot louder than another.
* Lots of options to play groups of songs (by playlist, genre, album, artist, etc.)
* The USB cable for this player also fits my Sony TRV-33 video camera - fewer cords to manage.

Cons
* scroller button sticks a little when you push it in
* It's a little bulky
* No way delete multiple songs from player - have to do it one by one, or I have to plug it into the computer and either delete using the software or Windows Explorer
* Random play always plays the songs in the same order. That is, it does shuffle the songs, but it shuffles the same way each time I listen to the playlist.
* Easy to duplicate files if any of the track details are different (even if mp3 file is the same) it will load it as a new file
* Would like more abilities to organize files from player (e.g. add a song to another playlist)
* I had a very difficult time converting non-standard mp3's (11.025Hz, 32Kbps) into a format that would play properly. I ended up first converting them to wav, and then I used the Nomad software to convert to mp3.
* durability - although I haven't had any problems with it yet.

I have owned this thing for over 3 months now and I have had no problems. I've heard a lot of bad things about this player and how it crashes/skipps/breaks after 90 days to 3 months. See theres a catch to it though. Some people are stupid and will write a review on how it broke but they never tell you how BADLY they treated it cause they think they treat it fair while others think they treat it like crap. You have to watch out for that in reviews. I learned it the hard way.

Lets start out by listing the features on this thing. It starts out with the best feature of all, REPLACEABLE LI-Ion Battery! Thats right. You can buy one in your local electronics store for around $35-$50. (Prices range from what store/deal you get) The reason not to get an iPod is this. When the iPods battery dies, (which is in about 18 months they say) they make you send it in, pay $100 and wait for the replacement. I personally think thats horrible. With the Zen, you can just pop off the faceplate and replace the battery yourself. Easy as that.
Another great feature on the software part of this player, is the EAX sound enhancemnts which allow you to make it sound different, speed up the song without wrecking the song or slow it down, and you have all your presets such as Rock, Pop, Jazz, Vocal and such.
The menus on this are very easy. I got used to it very fast. I would say the learning curve is about 15 minutes for a average electronics person. On the side of the player there is a scroll wheel which moves up and down for picking and you can press it in for selection. Theres a play/pause/ |>> <<| and volume up and down buttons. There is also a Menu and Back button which I'll get into in a second. BUT...there is no pause button as people say on here. Luckily for all of you I have read a persons review telling you how to stop it and it really does act as a stop button sequence. Pause the song and then hit |>> or forward track. It stops! Hooray!
The menu button is for going all the way back to the menus if you dont want to press the back button 50 times cause you've gone through too many menus.
Lastly, there is a power button. You should know what that does. Hold it in to turn it on or off. Press it to button lock the buttons.

Ive been to a few review sites (here and Epinions.com) and I've noticed that people were having trouble with the headphone jacks. They would fail or fall loose after a few days. I was never going to get this mp3 player if that was the case. WELL LISTEN UP BECAUSE IM GOING TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY THAT DOESNT HAPPEN ANYMORE.

Creative re-released this version of the jukebox in a heatsealed package. When you open it up and it has a SEE THROUGH WINDOW in the case, (which the old models didn't which meant they had the old headphone jacks/faulty HDD's) then you have the new jukebox that has ALL the problems fixed: Hard Drive, Headphone Jack, and faulty hard drives. Trust me. I did so much research before i got one of these. I am a die hard music fan and i am a HUGE audiophile. Just make sure its a heatsealed package and a window in the case. Read around and you'll find the information I got from other reviews on other sites too.

The sound on this thing sounds beautiful compared to the iPod. I'd say this one has the best sound out of the Iriver and ipod because it IS Creative Labs and they are all about sound cards, speakers, so you know they have the best sound around. (plus on the package it says up to 98DnB!!! Thats good!!!)

The bass is not overpowered but everything blends together to make it sound great. There is bass yes....but not A LOT like some overpowered CD Players.

The headphones included are actually pretty good but they are too big for my ears. They have a gold plated plug which enhances the sound greatly. Plus the cords are white ;)

The USB 2.0 works great! It transfers very fast on my computer (a song every .60 seconds) I recommend purchasing Red Chairs Software: Notmad Explorer because the bundled software with the Zen is pretty bad. Its faulty, crashes (on my top of the line computer) and sometimes doesnt even transfer songs i told it to transfer. Red Chair software claims their Usb transfer rate is a good deal higher than creatives. Right now I just use Nomad Explorer that came with the Zen. Its the easiest, fastest, flawless software they give you. Use other programs to manage your music. I heard of my friend losing his whole collection on his computer because of Creative Media Source. (Hes sorta a computer noob though)

The carrying case included is terrible and bulky but sturdy so i dont use it. Plus, the clear stuff over the screen is GLASS so it doesnt scratch barely at all. The Aluminum casing in the front and back feels solid and well built.

All in all, you should by this mp3 player because of the replaceable battery and its 14 hours instead of 12 of playback. I only gave it a 4 out of 5 because it is a BIT bulky and a little heavier than the ipod but its 100 dollars less for 10 MORE, YES MORE GIGS OF STORAGE MORE BATTERY LIFE AND A REPLACEABLE BATTERY!! Good job Creative.

As many people know Creative dropped the ball with this device in 2003. There was a major problem with the headphone jack that caused it to break loose.

Creative fixed this problem and released the Zen Xtra again in 2004. The result is an amazingly good and inexpensive option for people in the market for an iPod or jukebox MP3 player in general.

The Zen is bigger than the iPod, but the aluminum case looks nice and doesn't get scratched up as easily as the iPod. I've owned two iPods and they scratch so easily that you have to put them in a case almost immediately to keep them from getting ruined. Navigating songs is easier on the iPod, but the Zen navigation is pretty good and has a pretty quick learning curve. It is also missing some of the useless features of the iPod like games and contacts. However, you are buying this for music not to keep your appointments.

The Zen Xtra excels in several areas. First is storage size with an amazing 30 GB for about $100 less than a 20 GB ipod. Next is sound quality. The Zen has easily better sound quality than the iPod and also has an EAX EQ that works very well and has many cool options. The EQ on the iPod has never worked in four generations of devices. The ability to make multiple and varied playlists on the go is unmatched on any device I have used. You can also delete tracks without needed to hook up to the PC, something else the iPod lacks.

Instead of being stuck with just one PC jukebox option like the iPod you have multiple options. The Zen will sync with the included software, the incredible Notmad Explorer, Real Player, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and many others. This player also is fully compatible with Audible.com and I highly recommend that service to anyone getting a Zen Xtra.

For the price this is really the best MP3 Jukebox you can buy. The Rio Karma is close, but the frequent harddrive failures have never been addressed by Rio so I would skip that one as well. I've owned iPods, Rios and Sony Minidisc players and this player from Creative is better than them all. It may not be as pretty as an iPod but it is better at what is important playing music. Oh yeah, did I mention the battery is user replaceable. Nice if you go on a long trip because you can bring an extra and switch it out.

I also want to note that the Zen now comes with a one year warranty instead of a 90 day one. Nice for some piece of mind as a Zen owner.

I have owned mine for almost a year now. All's well, except for pesky firmware freezes which happens a fairly regular clip--almost once a month. But I use mine almost every day. I haven't been able to pin it down to an exact sequence of button pushes, but it always recovers from it by a simple RESET with a paper clip. About half a dozen times during the syncing process with the PC I have seen it freeze with a seemingly virulent "Library Corrupted" message, but nothing a paper-clip cant fix ;)

I have even gotten used to the UI which is a bit clumsy compared to iPod, but then heck, I knew that before I bought it. I didn't care to pay an extra $200 for the sesky UI on iPod. The tiny jog-dial on the side is not as crisp as it ought to. Once every 5-10 attempts pressing the jog-dial produces undesired results, like going forward a step or going back instead of the "select" function. So its a bit of an annoyance.

What I *LOVE* about this, and something that I haven't yet seen on any other HD-based MP3 player, is one of the EAX functions which allows playback at 0.5x, 0.75x (slow speed) or 1.25x, 1.50x (fast speed) without altering the pitch! That's simply awesome if you have a keen ear for classical music.

The PC application used to organize the songs is awesome. I would have liked a better (more intelligent) auto sync capability.

The MP3 encoder that comes with it is very good.

Overall, a solid A-!!

I love my Creative Lab Nomad Zen Xtra 30GB player. I've read some reviews complaining about the pre-packaged software; however, I've actually found the software (after some playing around with it) very intuitive and effective in managing my MP3 files. Works great! In fact, I find it better in managing your music files than the iTunes software.

I've downloaded about 800 songs to my player and only used about 4 gigs of space. My out the door price for this puppy after the twenty-doll rebate came out to one-hundred seventy-seven dolls, which is a superior value to any iPod product. So it's a little bigger than the iPods, but look at how much more you get:

· More hard drive space at a lower price
· No hyper-sensitive jog dial. The Nomad's controls are buttons and a scroll-wheel on the sides of the unit that is so much easier to use at least in my humble opinion. I can change the volume while looking through the menu - something you can't do with the iPods.
· A classy free case to protect your player. Expect to pay $20-40 extra for an iPod case.
· Great software that rips CD's to MP3s quickly and helps to organize your MP3's and playlists effectively
· A removeable battery that you can replace on your own. Office Depot sells a replacement battery for thirty-three dolls, while Amazon has one for thirty-eight dolls. You have to pay at least sixty dolls to replace an iPod battery and ship it back to them...what a hassle.
· Fast USB 2.0 transfer (backward compatible with USB 1.0). Okay, iPods have this too.
· If you're an iTunes user....you can still use iTunes. Just burn your iTune format music to a CD and then rip back to a MP3 to download to your Zen Xtra
· EAX sound controls, which allows you to apply special effects to the music such as pretending that you're in an indoor concert. The best EAX control is the one that "normalizes" all of your MP3s' volume so you don't get one song sound real soft and another one that you can barely hear. Using the EAX feature, though, shortens battery life.

The only negatives I think are as follows:

· Headphones aren't the greatest. To fully maximize your listening pleasure, I suggest getting the Sony MDR-E829V Fontopia Ear-Bud Headphones with In-line Volume Control right here at Amazon, which only costs thirteen dolls and has a built-in volume control.
· Battery life doesn't come anywhere near the 14 hours listed. Maybe if you set the contrast to 0%, turn off the backlight, don't use the EAX sound effects, play only 128kbps or lower music, set the volume to 1, then maybe. I've turned off my backlight, changed my contrast from a high of 50% to 20% and generally don't use the EAX sound affects, which has given me 6 to 8 hours of playtime, which is more than plenty. Would be nice if the battery life indicator had more than just 3 bars (actually 4 bars if you count zero bars as a count....even at zero bars, the player can still go for awhile).

Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with my purchase and would recommend this to anyone. iPods are overrated in my opinion. I've owned this thing for about a month now...so obviously, I can rate it yet on longevity.

Yes, this was my first mp3 player.But it might very well be one of the best choices I've ever made.I bought a 30GB Zen Xtra from Best Buy as of January of 2004.I must say, I am extremely impressed.Considering the Xtra supports USB 2.0, the transfers for all of my music and data files were outstanding, transferring at an average of 2.9MB per second.That's fast!! And yes, the player stores data files, so if you want to, you can back up all of your important documents on this (or photos if you have a lot of those).The real joy is the superb sound quality you get with this thing.With the SNR coming in at 98dB, this player produces LOUD sound.Very loud.Do yourself a favor, though: be sure to get rid of the earbuds that come included with the player.They make the player sound decent, but nowhere near as amazing as if you used higher quality headphones.My suggestions for headphones include Dynex behind the neck headphones (for the money-conscious, at only $9.99...yes, it's a Best Buy exclusive), and for earphones, try the Sony H.ear earphones (with different style changes, blue and silver).You can create playlists whenever you want to, something you cannot do using an iPod.With an iPod, you have to connect your player to your PC before you can do such a thing.While I'll admit the player loses the contest in looks to the iPod by far, that doesn't necessarily mean it's ugly.It has a very nice brushed-metal feel to it, and scratches don't show easily on it.The bright blue backlight is a plus, and the player controls are very intuitive, as is the interface.Go ahead and put on high quality music files, too: I have yet to come close to running out of space on my player.I still have over 6.5 GB of free space, with MANY songs and data files on it.The player not only supports the MP3 (MPEG-3) format, but also supports WMA (Windows Media Audio) and WAV formats.It supports bitrates from 32kbps (about AM-Radio quality) to 320kbps (True CD-quality), as well as VBR (Variable Bitrate) and CBR (Constant Bitrate).I highly recommend this player to anyone, whether it be their first mp3 player or not.It's very well worth buying, and at only $200, it's a steal.