Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I basically bought this because it was the smallest MP3 player available with the most memory and SmartMedia expandability. I was also looking at the Sensory Science Rave, but that one was not available anywhere, .... The Nomad MG was *very* similar in price and functionality.

I required SmartMedia expandability because that's what I use with my Olympus digital camera. Smartmedia works well (including 128MB SmartMedia) for both functions, and I can have both music and photographs on the card at the same time -- using the card interchangably between the two devices.

I love the small size -- it's about the size of a deck of cards -- and the fact that it comes with 64MB. With the 128MB smartmedia, I can get a total of 192MB on this device. The sound quality is great, it can record from FM radio (another nice feature) and it can record voice and play it back at different speeds (great for lectures!). Also, it came with high capacity NiMH batteries, which is a plus. Upgradable firmware is also a plus.

It has locked up on me a few times for no apparent reason. Once I had to take the batteries out and put them back in to get it to reset. However, this doesn't happen often enough to be too much of a bother.

The on-screen user interface needs some work -- for example, once a song finishes scrolling by, you can't go back and see the title of it without stopping the song and restarting it. This is frustrating when you have it in your pocket while listening, then want to see the song/artist that's currently playing.

The hardare interface leaves much to be desired, and is the reason for my 3-star rating. With a better hardware interface, this unit would easily receive 5 stars. The buttons are on the side, and it's difficult to remember which ones do what -- especially if you're just reaching into your backpack to change a song. Many buttons are multi-funciton, and to access some functions, you need to press a button for at least a second or two. You may find yourself running for the manual to figure out how to use some of the more obscure features.

Also, because there are buttons on both sides, if you hold the player in your hand both your thumb and some fingers will be resting on buttons -- press a button with your thumb and you might also press one on the other side as well. Also the "delete" button is placed right next to the "Next" button, although there is an "are you sure?" prompt. (There's also a "lock" switch that guards against accedental button-pushing.) Finally, the round stylish screen (though unique and actually higher resolution than normal) is very small -- I'd prefer a larger square screen, even if the resolution were lower.

If you want an very small SmartMedia-expandable player with excellent features and excellent sound, and can tolerate a poorly designed hardware interface (as I can) then this is the player for you. Buy it for its functionality, not its interface.

I hope this helps you with your decision!!

p.s. The "leather" case is a joke. I don't think it's actually leather, but even if it were you might try it once but it'll quickly get tossed away -- see, I almost even forgot to mention it! No belt clip, poor accessibility, etc, it's rather useless, which is a shame, because the face and corners of this player will wear with use.

When I bought this mp3 player, I thought it was going to be small. When I recieved it I found out how small they really meant. This player really deserves the title MG. Transferring songs between the computer and the player was really easy. I convert all my files to .wma so I can fit more songs on the player, around 30-35 with the standard 64 megs internal memory. Each song takes only about 10 seconds or less to transfer. Some great features are the docking station for transferring songs and the fact that you can recharge the batteries saving a few dollars here and there. Overall, the performance was great and the FM radio helped a bit when I got tired of listening to my .wma files. Keep in mind that I use my behind the head headphones because the folding headphones really destroy the sound of the player. With regular headphones, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference from your CD player except if the file your playing isnt spectacular.

I gave this mp3 player 4 stars because it lacks the wired remote that a lot of people have been talking about. By four stars I really mean like 4.9 but the wired remote I think is really almost a neccesity that it lacks. The special jack is there but I cannot find anywhere to purchase it. It would be great to be able to lock the player in your pocket (lock as in the buttons are disabled)and control everything through the remote.

I love this MP3 player. File transfer is a snap with the bundled program and USB cradle. Capacity good - it has 64MB on-board flash memory, and can take in a smart media card of up to 64MB - about 2 hours of MP3. The sound is surprisingly good...sometimes too good. If the quality of the file is not good, you will definitely hear it.

The player also has a FM receiver with 32 memory settings, which is a great bonus. It can also record voice recordings, but I believe that the capacity is less - the recorder does not compress the recordings in real time, so that it will take up more space than a MP3 file.

On the downside, the bundled headphones are really uncomfortable for extended listening sessions. Further, the sleek design of the player dictated that buttons be placed on the sides, not in the front of the unit. Therefore, pressing buttons can be a bit of hassle (you have to turn the unit to see the buttons), and one can accidentally press buttons on the opposide end of the player - it sounds confusing, but if you see a picture of the player you will understand. Finally, the headphones don't have a remote unit to control playback. That means that if you plan on using the player on the go (like carrying it in the included pouch or in some other carrier), you have to take out the player in order to change playback modes, to skip a song, etc. Finally, the included "leather" case is useless because there are no openings on the side - you have to remove the player from the tight case in order to operate it; the case also lacks a belt loop or clip to make carrying it easier.

Nevertheless, this is a fantastic little device, with excellent sound and tiny footprint.

I purchased this after reading nearly all of the reviews here, as well as reviews of the Nomad IIc, the Rio 800 64MB, and the Nomad II. Some of the reviews here, notably the comments about the battery contacts breaking, scared me, but I noticed that only about 5 of 47 reviewers mentioned it, which made me think that not everyone's encountering those problems - probably just those that swapped batteries a bit. I knew I would be recharging almost daily and would rarely need to swap. When you buy it, you do have to put the rechargable batteries in, and it seems a little stiff, but I got them in OK and I am going to leave them there unless I end up on a long trip without a recharger. Anyway, I've had it a week now, and here's my attempt at a comprehensive review to save others the trouble of reading ALL the ones I did.
For starters, sound quality is excellent. I've never even used the headphones supplied, which I think is what most people are reacting to -- with a pair of fairly good third-party headphones it sounds as good as I would want. I do wish it had an equalizer built into the hardware - sometimes I want to bump the bass up or down. The memory is adequate for a good amoutn of music, and it's very cool that you can expand it to 192 MB with extra memory cards. I plan to buy another 64 and be very happy at 128 MB. Also, it's so small, I couldn't believe it. I'm sure they'll get even smaller, but this is a little smaller than a deck of cards - that's pretty cool.
The FM tuner is a great feature, and reception is just fine for me - I've experienced none of the problems getting a stereo signal others mentioned, and you don't need to use the headphones shipped with the MG to use the radio (one reviewer said the antenna was built into the headphones, which isn't true). The interface for programming a new station sucks if you want to add a new one after doing the Autoscan, but you only have to do it once. The interface throughout is not intuitive in any way, so this was one of the few electronic products I've ever bought where I had to refer to the manual to figure out how to do almost everything. But I only had to look at the manual once and then I got it. If you hate programming your VCR clock, though, you'll really hate using the MG.
I see what some people are saying about the buttons on the side, but just be sure to use the "lock" feature whenever you're stuffing it in your pocket. One real dawback there is that it's hard to unlock it when holding it in one hand, you'll tend to press buttons as you do it. Annoying. but... the flipside is it looks very nice with no buttons on the front, and slips even more easily into pockets and the like as a result.
The display screen is excellent - tiny but just big enough, and very sharp. Yeah, the MP3 song info just scrolls once like other reviewers mentioned, but then it defaults to the name of the song, which is usually what you want to see anywway . I mean, c'mon - you put the song there - you should know who did it and what it's called. The whole point of these things is listening to your favorite music, making your own playlists.
The product works very well with iTunes for the Mac, though I wish you could reorder your playlists in the iTunes interface. If you can, I haven't figured out how. It seems to kind of work by "slots" - if you delete song 3 and put a new song on the player, it'll go into slot 3 and reallocate any remaining memory. I've already taken to making a whole 64MB whole playlist in iTunes, getting it just perfect, and then throwing the whole thing over to the MG en masse (which only takes about a minute - faster than other players).
Finally, voice recording works well and is very cool, although even a tiny external speaker would be cool for that feature - you have to listen to yourself over the headphones.
One last thing: some reviewer bemoaned the choice of NiMH batteries for this, saying that they "build memory" and it made him not want to recharge him. don't listen to that guy. It's NiCAD batteries that have the memory problem - not NiMH.you can recharge these to your heart's content. don't believe me, just do a google search on NiMH and charge memory. Don't worry.
I hope this is helpful. I'd never bought an MP3 player before, but have played with every model of the Rio (still likng the 500 the best) that friends have owned as well as the HipZip. Quibbles notwithstanding, i like the MG much more than those others mentioned. I'd give it another half star if I could, reserving 5 stars for that perfect MP3 player with a nice design and intuitive interface that still hasn't come, but that I also don't feel the need to wait for.

I spent some time doing some research before I decided on buying this product. For the money, features and quality from the reviews that I read, this was it! I'm with USAF in Saudi serving my country, I keep myself occupied by skating and bike riding and always do it with music. Carrying a CD player or tape player is always too bulky. I had to have my wife order the MP3 from England, have Amazon ship it to New York so her sister could send it to her and in turn she would mail it to me here in Saudi....it finally got here (2-1/2 wks)and so far so good. I was very, very impressed with the size, loading the software was a breeze and getting the files to download to the player was even easier, great sound, enough base for me and plenty of feature. We get three stations here and no problems at all, crisp clear. I would recommend this to any one interested in getting a good value for money MP3...two things, the headphones are very nice, but the sound they offer are worst then a $5.00 headphones, the carrying case is a joke and definetly needs a belt clip, either on the case or the player itself, I put it in some glue from the inside got on the buttons, so they were sticky for awhile. Big plus....docking station with baterry charger, be careful not to force it when putting the player into the charger. It uses Flash Memory, not Smart Media like it's advertised...

This is my first MP3 player. I went with one that received good reviews. I'm glad I did. Within 2 hours after taking delivery, I had the software loaded, had the docking station hooked up, and was ripping the heck out of the favorite tunes from my old CD's. It was all very easy, and I didn't even read most of the instructions (until later to make sure I was doing everything correctly. The point is, I didn't have to...very smooth set-up!) The communication between the computer and the Nomad is just effortless.

I can't believe the size...literally, as big as a deck of cards. Some reviewers complained about the lack of a belt clip. That would be nice, but it's so small, and with the key lock I can just stick it in my pocket and not worry about changing any stations (FM) or changing tunes, etc.

I would recommend this unit highly. I was thinking about the regular Nomad II, but with the docking station (the ONLY way to go), the price of the MG is almost identical.

Sign me.....absolutely blown away.

My Nomad 2 MG arrived today. I've been using it all afternoon, and can report: I ordered the limited edition version of this product- the only difference is it has 256MB of internal memory (4.5 hours of mp3s) instead of 64MB. With the standard SmartMedia slot, that's expandable to 384MB, which is good. I'll list the great stuff and the bad stuff... The bad:

1. The instruction manual is limited: there're no installation instructions. I'm not a newcomer to installing hardware on my PC but it was tricky. The software installed easily. 2. the pouch is tacky and there're no holes for buttons, no clip, and the hole for the screen exposes it to damage. The wired remote solves the button problems, however... 3. ...but a 'mode' button is absent from the remote, meaning you have to work out the combination of buttons to change the mode, or take the player out of the pouch to change from, say, mp3s to FM radio. 4. Supplied headphones are crap: plasticy, low sound quality, huge

The good:

1. With good headphones (I have a mid-range Sony pair), the volume is so good you can deafen yourself with it. (That means it's loud, and many players suffer from being too quiet.) 2. My SE model stores just over 4 hours of music, and the batteries last for about 4 hours too. How nice. 3. The docking station, once installed, recharges the batteries automatically, and you can play music while it's charging. It's also small and light, and coming on holiday with me this summer. 4. recordable FM radio! 5. 4 hours of (fairly good) voice recording! 6. Unlike the Creative Jukebox, it's not the size of a brick and you can run with it without skipping. No pun. 7. It looks better than any other mp3 player, and it's literally the size of a deck of cards.

It does support WMA but in my opinion, WMA isn't what it's hyped up to be: there's a small difference in quality. I recommend mp3s. WMA format doubles the storage capacity, though. Choose. Hope that helps!

About a year ago I started to look for my first MP3 player. I'm a technical person, and I took my time to look at all the specs of the players. I limited my search to the Rio 800 and Nomad II MG. I wound up buying the Nomad II MG mostly because it was released before the Rio. A month ago I lost my Nomad, and am looking for a new one. I still can't find anything better and I'm going to buy it again! Here are my list of pros and cons.

Pros:
- WMA support! Don't underestimate this format. It is about 1/3 the size of MP3 and sounds just as good. Record at 64k for smallest size, or 96k if you like a little better sound quality. With 196mb of memory I had 100 songs on the Nomad. With an avg 3min per song, that is 300 min, 5hrs of music, or ~10 full CDs. With only the internal memory you can still get about 33 songs or 3 full CDs.
- Compact Flash memory support. I bought a 128mb memory card about 6 months ago. At first, the player wouldn't recognize the card, but I upgraded to the newest flash memory and it worked immediately. It isn't very convenient to manage the songs on the flash ram card separately from the internal memory, but I don't think this is a negative because it is the same on any other player. I don't have anything negative to say about the Rio Backpack method vs. the flashcards, except that since I bought my 128mb card, the prices have dropped about 75%! Rio uses the proprietary modules and won't be able to compete on price with cheap OEM memory that the Nomad can use.
-Wired Remote. As others have noted, nobody at Creative consulted usability experts when designing the Nomad II MG. The button layout is terrible, and the included leather case doesn't expose the buttons so you need to remove it to change songs, turn it on, etc. The wired remote features the same bad button layout, but alleviates the need to take the player out of the case. Some of the "features" of the remote aren't documented very well, but if you play with the buttons you can find access to some more of the functions you get with the regular player. **TIP: To turn on the Nomad MG II from the remote when the player itself is locked, hold down the + (vol. up) while the player boots - this will override the lock. Not sure if it is a bug or feature, but it works! It is hard to find, but buy this from Creative directly at nomadworld.com. This also adds just a little too much cable length overall, but I wrap the extra cable around the player and just stick it in my pocket.
- Time. I fly a lot and never had my player run out of juice, even on cross country flights.

Cons:
- Button locations. Don't need to say any more...
- Headphones. Included headphones are terrible. I bought the Sony NC-20 (noise cancelling) and they are INCREDIBLE! If you use the player in a noisy place (plane, public transportation, etc) then this will increase sound quality by 1000%.
- Playcenter software. It isn't terrible, but not very user friendly. The good thing is you can use Windows Media as the transport and it works great! Also wanted to note, Creative has XP specific drivers on their website (one reviewer said it wouldn't be available for a long time).
- Travel charger. Creative has a travel cable to transfer songs, but with 5+ hours of music I don't need it. I do need to recharge my batteries but I can't do that. My only options are buy AAA batteries (defeats the purpose of having rechargeables) or carry the docking station (which is heavy because of the AC adapter).

The only player I still see as comparable is the Rio 800, but the reviews on that player speak for themself.

My wife bought me this player in October. In January the player failed to turn on. I called customer service and was surprised to find out that something over $400.00 comes with only a 60 day warranty. I sent it in with my $20.00 for repair and was told it could not be repaired. Their explanation of what was wrong was it would not power on (It cost me $20.00 for this technical expertise?). They would not repair or replace this unit. This player sat on my desk for 2 months was never dropped or damaged by me in any way. I will never ever buy a creative product again and caution anyone from wasting their money.

The title sums up the review, not only does this player have the quality of the other nomad products, it is much smaller. It is easily carried in one's pockets (shirt or pants) or even in a back pack. In addition to the size, the player is aesthetically pleasing with it's soft metal colors and the blue back lit screen. This screen is easily readable in bright or dark light, and is adaquetely displays song information. The screen is small, however it is much better at displaying information than I had origionally guessed it to be. Aside from looks, the player is top level in hardware quality as well, the onboard 64 megs of ram allows for the addition of an additional smart media card of any size. Also, I find the packaged docking station to be a big plus over players that require you to stick a flimsy cable into it. A frequently overlooked benefit of this player is it's choice to use removable rechargable batteries. In this case, you not only receive the benefits of the recharger, but on a long trip without the charger, you can simply throw two new AAA batteries in. A great product, like the whole nomad line.