CREATIVE LABS Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 40GB Digital Audio Player

After a little over a year my Zen Xtra has stopped playing sound. Everything else works it just appears to be a faulty headphone jack which is a common problem on Creative's players. On a dinky $30 portable I wouldn't expect much but on a $300 device this is just unacceptable. Their warranty period and customer service is a joke. Go have a look at their forums. Stay away from Creative products. There are other alternatives out there.

Ok, so an iPod is completely out of my budget, so I shopped around for alternatives and came upon the Nomad Zen Extra. I bought it because it seemed to be the best deal around, and I really wanted the 40 gig drive for all my music, without forking over my net worth. I've had it for about a month, and I'm extremely satisfied. My only two complaints are: [1] it was a little larger than I expected (though it certainly isn't the size of cassette players as another reviewer said). Just don't expect it to be iPod sized, and you'll be fine- I mean, you're paying $250-ish for something that can probably hold EVERY SINGLE CD you've ever owned, and your friends' too. The bulk/weight (and the difference isn't even that much) isn't gonna be worth the extra $100-200-ish you might pay for a smaller unit of the same disk space, in my opinion. [2] the scroll wheely thing is annoying. when i first got it i kept accidentally erasing the whole playlist-in-the-making by not getting the right balance with the little wheel. However, it's not hard to learn - once you get used to it, you'll hardly notice it. (basically, you tap it up/down to scroll through stuff, and straight in to select whatever you've landed on - it's the pressing straight in that's hard). No complaints about battery life. I don't think it's as good as advertized, but still good. Transfering files is fine - the software is great. One thing i've noticed is that, when i transfer files i ripped with iTunes, it doesn't read the artist/album of that file, making it really hard to find in the Nomad. maybe this is just me being inept. *shrug*? it was easily fixed in the software. Sound quality: amazing. It doesn't have the little thing on the headphone wire (like iPods and iRivers) that lets you play/stop/skip tracks easily, so if you want to skip/repeat something, you have to dig it back out.. that's another drawback. Anyway, this is solid for its price, and I'm in love :) I got everything I was looking for, so.... woot. I hope it works out as smoothly for you!

Didn't even work.

I got my zen xtra a little bit more then a week ago. It was not my first choice. I have done a lot of research before I decided to buy the Nomad zen xtra. One good thing, it is 40 Gb of disk space (well, it is 38 gb in reality). For the price and features it is really good. One thing, before buying this player I have called the Creative tech. support and asked them if I can navigate by folders beside artist/album and answer was Yes. Sure enough there is no such ability. Not sure, if customer rep. did not know the product exactly, it is still new or they just give an anser which users would like to hear. In any case, navigation by artist/album is ok however I miss an ability to navigate by folders. You even can not navigate by genre/artist/album since under genre you get just all tracks in that genre, no other division. Creative is talking about updating it via firmware, however after following some while the descussion groups for Nomad players, looks like Creative represents mostly bug fixes in their firmware updates, not too much of new features. The software, which comes with player is not good at all. I did not managed to make Creative nomad explorer to work. After installing it and trying to make it working for 30 minutes I went and bought Notmad. Notmad worked right away after install and it is what I would like to see from the product. Transfer files is easy using Notmad, however again, would be great if Nomad supported folders like Iriver, RCA Lyra and some other. Often I fill I need to have better organization for the library and there is not enought of variables. Artist, album and Genre are only mp3 tags which are supported buy this player, and if you have 100 artists would be good to have another subcategory. After all those players have 40-60 GB of hard drive, so better organization is required. The bottom line, I'll still watch the progress of Iriver hdd players and if they produce 40 GB player I'll will sell my nomad and buy Iriver.

I've had the Jukebox for a few days now and I'm really pleased with its versatility and ease of use. The battery life seems rather good and the playback is great. I've even been able to hook it up to my surround sound through a headphone jack adapter. It's a touch larger than the new Zen, but at twice the capacity it's hard to pass up. I have enough room to store all of my music (6000 tracks) and my entire "my documents" folder on the data part of the hard drive and still have 20gb free. I wish you could play tracks off of it on to your computer without transferring them to your computer hard drive; maybe you can, I just can't figure it out. I've made the mistake of unhooking it from the computer while it was transferring ... the first time I let the battery die and the second time my computer turned off. Doing this is a hassle because you have to reinstall the firmware and rebuild the library. It's a simple process, it just takes a couple of minutes to let the machine fix itself. However, at $150 less than an ipod I think it works just fine. The software supplied is easy to use, it also will work with Windows Media Player. The headphones aren't great but the free case is a nice touch, you don't want to bang up these hard-drive based players. All in all, great player at a great price.