Customer Reviews

Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

Well, after reading about 150 other customer reviews, I decided to take a chance on the Zen XTra 60GB. For those of you who are hesitating, don't. Here are my observations.
Creative's software- it is ridiculously easy to use. Less than 10 minutes after installing the software (on my Win XP system, with absolutely no problems. However, READ THE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTION BOOKLET BEFORE YOU START) I downloaded 3 cds to my Zen.I did not have to read the online manual (there are no printed instructions, but relax, you won't need any.) The process is very intuitive, and all you do is click your mouse 4 times (3 if you don't need to download song information) and away you go.So far, it hasn't locked up or frozen or done any other mean, nasty things.I have read other reviews that complain that the software is difficult; all I can say is that they must have an earlier version (I got mine in March). I bought a Rio MP3 player for my son in Jan. and the software for it is a nightmare. I don't know anything personally about the iPod, so I can't comment on their product. I will say that you should take anything an Apple user (any Apple product user) says with a grain of salt. They all hate any computer-related product that isn't made by Apple- my brother is an Apple disciple so I CAN comment on this. I have heard his Apple propaganda for years.
The scroll wheel- yes, if you hold it down, it can zoom past the entry you're looking for. It took 5 seconds to figure out- don't hold it down for long periods. I haven't had any problem getting it to select when you press it in- I'm not sure why other people say they have.
The case- the metal cover is thin, but mine has not popped off at all. Several of the complainers stated that the cover pops off when or after they've dropped it. One guy even complained that it pops off when he goes snowboarding with it. Well, DUH!
The headphone jack- I haven't had mine long enough to comment on this, but common sense says if you drop it, it can break.
The leather case- it protects the player very well, and despite what one reviewer said, it took about 8 seconds to put on. However, it does cover the screen and the DC-IN jack when it is on. Get out your X-Acto knife, and in 5 minutes the problem is solved. I have read that the iPod has a similar problem, but I don't know this myself.
No stop button- no, it doesn't. Neither does the iPod, evidently. Just press pause/play (it pauses),then the "Skip" button (they're next to each other), and presto, it stops and returns to the main menu.
The player is very easy to use, the screen is easy to read, and it is loaded with cool features you may or may not use. No, it doesn't have video games. That's what your cellphone is for. This is for listening to music, and the sound is fantastic. The included earbuds aren't painful, as some have said, but they seemed too big for my ears. However, they sound great, and there is plenty of volume, unless you're a brain-dead teen trying to rupture your eardrums. They may want to strap a 300-watt amp to their backs and pump up the volume. For the rest of us, there's more than enough volume.
To wrap up, I highly recommend this product. I would have given it 5 stars, but that would imply that it is perfect, and it is too soon to make that judgement. Granted, I haven't had it long, so if my opinion changes in the future, I will write a new review. But if you want a player with HUGE storage, easy-to-use software, fantastic sound, loads of features, AND a price you won't be ashamed of, you should buy the ZEN XTRA. Just remember that it is basically a small hard drive, and treat it as such. If you want something to play video games on while you're snowboarding down Mt. Everest, I suggest a flash-memory type player, although I understand the iPod has been tested by dropping it from a plane at 50,000 feet - at least, that's what my brother tells me.

HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

PROS:

60GB storage. I have almost 900 CDs. No other product currently available will hold this capacity without seriously compromising sound quality.

Size/weight. This unit is only very slightly larger and heavier than the iPod, and you get 50% more storage capacity (for $100 less!) When I look at my huge shelf of CDs, which is about 7 feet high and 3 feet wide, I literally can't believe all this music fits on this little unit, about the size of a deck of cards! But it does! (With plenty of room to spare for future additions to my CD collection.)

Great sound quality. I am saving my tracks in WMA format, as side-by-side comparison between MP3 and WMA at various bitrates consistently rendered better results (although slightly larger file sizes) with WMA format. Even with the cheap little earbuds Creative includes with this player, all genres of music sound crisp and rich.

Bright LCD, menu easy to navigate. Everything is right where you'd put it if you were designing this product yourself.

Easy to also plug this into my home stereo system or car stereo, so I can have my entire CD collection literally anywhere I go.

Price. I got this direct from Creative Labs for $399. (And Amazon currently has it for $350!) A 40GB iPod costs $499. By extrapolation, if they ever come out with a 60GB iPod, it will cost $650-750. What a deal from Creative!

Summary: I have literally been waiting for years for a product like this, and now I am SO glad I waited instead of settling for a lesser 20- or 40-GB product. If you have a ridiculously huge CD collection like I do, I cannot recommend this product highly enough. This is the best electronics purchase I have made since I got a Sony CyberShot digital camera.

CONS:

The earbuds don't fit well in my ears. Either the buds are too big, or my ear holes are too small.

The carrying case should have a clear plastic window so you can see the LCD even when the unit is in the case. Instead, it has a solid black flap that covers the LCD, so if you actually want to look at the screen you have to un-snap the case. Stupid design.

Software takes a little while to learn, but once you figure out all the options & preferences it is pretty solid. No resets or crashes yet!

Summary: a couple of nitpicky problems, but overall this unit far surpasses anything else in this product category.

First of all, I want to address all of the complaints about the software. Yes, the media source software is not that great, however if you look a little more closely in your "My Computer" window, you will notice a new Icon called "Nomad Explorer."

Nomad Explorer is the drag-and-drop feature that everyone seems to be looking for. This is fully integrated with Windows Explorer, and it is already included! This is the only way that I have been transferring music. It is very easy to transfer files, and also makes it easy to fine tune your ID3 tags by right clicking on whole groups of files to easily adjust genre, artist name, or album name.

For the price and the storage capacity, the Zen Xtra is an amazing product. I have a large collection of live shows that I wanted to be able to keep at a high quality bit rate and take where ever I go. 60 GB lets me do that.

The only complaints that I have so far are that you need the disc to install the device on another computer. I'd like to be able to plug it in to any computer and have it ready to transfer files, especially as a data storage drive. I also replaced the earphones. I would like it to support lossless files such as flac and shn. I am hoping this can be added with a firmware upgrade in the future (you can easily upgrade via their website).

I would absolutely recommend the Zen Xtra to anyone interested in a great jukebox with a huge hard drive, great sound, and low price.

I spent about 8 or so hours online researching all the mp3 players available. I was looking for a 20 or 40 GB player, but ended up getting the 60GB because it was only about $30 more than the 40GB.

Every mp3 player has its pros and cons, I can live with the 'cons' of this player, no problem. I chose the Zen Xtra because:
1-It has the most bang for its buck..

2-It comes with a battery that you can replace, Ipod doesn't and neither do some of the others.

3-It comes with volume normalization, others don't. I have obtained mp3's from all over the place, and some are way louder than the others, this will set them all at the same volume.

4-You can buy a car DC adapter, some others don't.

5-The sound is very crisp...I did buy some $30 headphones, and the sound is fantastic. But even with the earbuds that come with it, the sound is still very good and crisp.

I don't know why people complain about the software, I'm no computer person and I figured it out in no time. It's a bit bigger than the Ipod (and they say you can't run with it), but it's not crazy big at all and I don't run with music anyway. My carrying case (included) has a window for the screen and I've had absolutely no problems with the player. The battery life is about 8-10 hours, depends on how much fiddling you do with it.

Other than that, all I can say is that I'm very happy with this product, no question. I picked it up for $279 at buy.com I think. I would highly recommend this to anyone.

A big fan of the Nomad Jukebox 3 (I have 3 x 40GB models to support my music habit...), I put off buying the Zen because it didn't support FireWire. But I just bought one, fired it up, and I think it's fantastic. Ordered a second one the next day.
It was recognized immediately by my Windows 2000 box, the installation was painless, the software options (that I didn't want) were non-invasive, and it set up just as easily and quickly on my PC at work. Simply outstanding.
I read at least one review claiming that the Zen would not allow organizing your music by artist AND album - not true! Works just like the Nomad Jukebox 3, another great product from Creative. Maybe this is new in the latest version, but it's there.
Also, the leather case now has a nice cutout window, so you can see the LCD display at all times. Yes, the closed case covers the A/C plug, but as another reviewer said, a few seconds with an exacto blade and all is well.
The tip - Red Chair Software, at http://www.redchairsoftware.com, sells (and supports) the Notmad Explorer for $25. It's the best, and simply shames similar file management software from Creative. Plus, it makes it easy to organize Nomad/Zen files by artist, album, genre, and track.
The single thing that threw me was in trying to upgrade the firmware (the Nomad Jukebox 3 was equally testy). Took me forever until I figured out how to get into "rescue" mode.
Here's the solution:
* Grab and straighten out a paper clip
* Disconnect the Zen
* Hold down the Play button
* While holding it down, insert the paper clip in the Reset hole
* Release both when Rescue mode shows up
That's the ticket, but the manual doesn't quite describe it that way, and it drove me nuts for way too long until I trial-and-errored my way in.
All in all, this is a KILLER.

I researched this device carefully, reading all reviews, and finally purchased it because I absolutely require 60 GB storage. My mammoth CD collection, when I converted it to MP3 files, was over 40 GB--and I have about 10 GB of data files I'd like to back up from my computer.

The little Creative hard drive device is neat, works well, plays music beautifully. The backlight is quite good. The combination Jog Dial/Press Selector functions fine. I have not yet had the headphone jack fail, but I am aware that this problem may crop up. Battery life is not great, but that's not an issue. Data file storage is wonderful! No, this is not a "drive" visible to Windows for use; you can't write a document with your word processor, and specify the "Save As" file location to be your Zen Xtra. It doesn't work like that. One must use the software, included, and transfer files to the device. It works very well, once a person understands this.

The software you use to manage the device, on your personal computer, is another story. In short, there are two applications. First, there is the Nomad Explorer. It's okay. I used this, when I needed to delete all of the files on my Zen Xtra. Any user of Windows can handle this application, intuitively. The second computer program included, Creative MediaSource Organizer, is poor. It does not work as described--perfunctorily--by the Getting Started manual. The user is instructed to select buttons which at times are not present on the screen, and at others are present BUT NOT LABELED! My job, incidentally, is to work with software products, and I feel I can "get the hang of" just about any computer program written. Not so, with the Creative MediaSource Organizer. It's so terrible, so poorly laid out, so incomprehensible, I had to use another program to transfer my MP3 files, from my computer, to the Zen Xtra. Happily, MusicMatch software recognizes the Zen Xtra player, and its portable device manager feature was able to send the files to the waiting player. The software also gets poor marks for inability to perform custom operations. An example: With over 40 GB of music files, my computer's hard drive (the C: drive) is too small to house it all. So my MP3 files are on network-attached storage, another machine altogether. Well, the Creative MediaSource software assumes that your music -must- be on your C: drive, and it won't accept another lettered drive as the source of your music. Shabbily written, this may get better over iterations.

Unforgiveable, absolutely dreadful, is the documentation for both the Zen Xtra device, and the two above-mentioned software products. As the MediaSource Organizer is almost unusable without instructions, one turns expectantly to the documentation provided. What's provided is a Getting Started booklet, and the very same text in electronic form (a PDF file). It is insufficient to describe exactly what keys must be pressed, exactly which screens must be selected, to accomplish the various tasks even a casual user of the product will require. Since the documentation is so terribly incomplete, one turns to the last-available bit of information: The Help feature within the computer programs themselves. This, however, is awful; it appears to be a mere afterthought to the programs. Surprisingly, online help is even shorter and less descriptive than the Getting Started manual!

With all of this in mind: I am glad I bought this product. At its price point, The device is well worth the money. Problems with the software can be surmounted by using other music management programs. Would I recommend it to a person who is not completely familiar, totally at ease with computers? No way.

As any Hard Drive based system this one:

1. Is somewhat heavy
2. If you drop it it might get damaged.
3. Is not as small as the Flash players.
4. Requires software to transfer songs and files.

The Mediasource software is problematic for some people, because won't let you create folders to storage your MP3 Tracks. Well, the concept of this sofware is more like database oriented where you have only 1 huge database file and then you can create playlists with the tracks you choose.

To create playlists and understand how your player organize its music doesn't take long if you are a regular computer user. For the rest of the people there are other type of products to choose from. Zen Xtra is not a good option for them.

The leather case is great, The quality is OK and protects the player really good.

My only complain goes to the battery compartment. Sometimes, if I press hard my player (Jogging) the battery moves inside and then the player stops, restarts and rebuilds the database. Mine has 18 Gb of music only and takes about 2 minutes to rebuild. Not too bad. I put some tape on the battery and that solved the problem because is not loose anymore.

And believe me... The battery life is one of the best features of this gadget. I haven't run out of power yet!

The sound is superb, with all those preset settings that you can choose from, like: Smart volume, Time-scale, Custom, etc.

The find music feature works good when you have thousands of songs in your player. Once you find the song you want to hear you only have to wait about 2 seconds... That's fast enough for me if in my database I have around 4200 songs!

You can play your music by genre, artist, playlist, by album.

The screen is so big. You can see the name of the screen and style (List or Tab), title of the song, album, singer, genre, total time, elapsed time, playmode, equalization mode and battery indicator. The stylish blue backlight let you see the screen at night.

I haven't change or actualize the firmware, no need to yet, because I haven't had any problems requiring me to do so.

I recommend this player to people that are willing to take some out of the box measures (Like fixing the battery problem or the way you store your music on your PC), for people that want things to work exactely the way they want, well this is not the right toy for them.

My score for this gadget is 4 out of 5.

This is simply an amazing little music machine. The first thing that struck me was how good it sounded....easily comparable to CD players when playing WMA 320 or MP3 320 KbPS files. The Creative folks made their reputation on sound playback (their trademark product in the pre-MP3 era was the SoundBlaster sound card), and this is their top of the line player. Capacity per dollar is unequaled, this means you can load it up with MP3 at 192 or 320 KbPs instead of having to settle for 128's. I have over 7200 songs loaded, most at MP3 192 KbPS or WMA 160....and I still have 20 gig's left. IPod does NOT support WMA's which means you have to pay top dollar for downloaded music...and have to settle for inferior sound quality. The whining about the software/firmware that others have expressed is way overdone....I'd say if you already have a huge MP3 library it may be an issue, and then you'd be better off buying the Notmad explorer. If you have a bunch of CD's, and you're gonna be burning 'em mainly to load 'em on your player, then this works fine. The new case (which comes free) is well designed. Obviously the issue of battery life (around 12-14 hours/charge for me) and replaceability (a replacement is around 25 bucks on EBay) make this the clear choice for anyone buying a hard drive jukebox over 30 gigs in size.

Well at first I bought a 128 mb mp3 player and I said I need an upgrade. So I looked and shopped and said I will try this one. Personally I think it is excellent. Now the Headphones sound alright but it didnt sound full enough so I switched to a pair of sony's and got that fullness with the bass in it. I have only about 100 songs but it sounds great. Everybody complains you can't drag n drop the songs, well you can. You can actually drag and drop more than one song at a time. That is what I do. Walking around with it in my hand works better than in the pouch. I wouldn't use the software to rip my cds though. If you are like me and actually want your songs to sound great and dont mind taking time then try another program. Then transfer it too the Creative library. I care about sound quality rather then speed and being plain lazy. I rip the songs from my windows media player to wma format then remaster them in easy cd creator so it wont sound so flat and the sound comes out full when you put it on the Jukebox. So give it a try. If you dont like it remember you can get a refund.

Don't believe the negative reviews. I have the 40GB Ipod of Apple and this Zen Xtra of 60GB. So I will try to set the plusses and minusses together.
It simply is such, that there is not super perfect mp3 player on the market today that combines only the plusses on both models, so if you are still looking for an as good can be one, I recommend both types. Its up to your taste. To me, they both work to my satisfaction. Isnt it incredible, to fit hundreds of cds in them without loosing soundquality?
The ZenXtra is a lot cheaper, but not less versatile. The very big plus is the search option (song, artist, album), with the scrolling wheel on the side. The Ipod 40GB does not have this option, maybe because the clickwheel goes very fast to the song you are looking for. Some like the clickwheel better, but the negative point is, that with a case around it you need the remote control to operate it, because then the clickwheel is covered. Not with the Zen, you can reach the wheel on the side also when the protection case is there.
Fair enough, the Ipod looks a bit more sturdy, and the Zen Xtra case is a bit more fragile plastic. So keep them in a protection case and you don't have to worry about damage anymore.
For both models, you simply have to make sure your music dbase is consistent: not Abba and ABBA and AbBA or so, because then it will place songs under those 'different'artists. There are a lot of tag editors for free on the net anyway, so it pays to do it right from the start.
Ok, the Ipod with 60Gb (which I have not) has colours, not the Zen, but the price is almost double! The screen on the ZenXtra is fine, blue, and clear. Both models (Ipod 40GB and the ZenXtra 60GB) are sort of equal in size and weight.
The ZenXtra has EAX, a system that can control a same volume for the songs selected, very handy!
Both models have good sound quality.
For software, it both worked for me. I have not discovered how to put data on and back on the Ipod, but I managed to put a DVDmovie on my Zen as storage in the datalibrary, and back again on my computer.
If I would have to buy a 60GB model again, I would always go for a ZenXtra. The only reason to go for the 60GB Photo to me is the colourscreen and the model which looks a little bit more flashy. But hey, it also cost money! Apple is not cheap.