Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox (Blue)

First, an "in a nutshell" review: If you have a lot of music, this is the player for you. Easy to use, and great sound quality. I'm satisfied! Now, the "long version": I had been researching MP3 players for a few weeks, trying to decide which would suit me best. I have a large CD collection, and I download a lot of hard-to-find music from Napster, so I have a lot of music files, so I wanted a player with high capacity. I finally settled on the Nomad Jukebox because of its 6 gigabyte storage capacity. The ripping software (Playcenter 2) is adequate, and you can rip CD's to the player as well as to your hard drive. I found the software quite easy to use. I've read complaints about the sound quality of the headphones that came with the Jukebox, but I found them quite adequate. The Jukebox does not come with a car kit (DC adaptor and cassette player insert), but worked fine with the car kit I had from a Discman and sounds great. Problems: Not many that I have noticed, though I have noticed that the more files stored, the slower the boot-up time. Other than that, no problems! I am completely satisfied with my Nomad Jukebox, and if you're looking for a high-capacity MP3 player, look no further.

I bought this play with high hopes and most of them are met. The unit plays well. The battery life is a little weak, but Creative Labs is very thoughtful and includes a second set of batteries. It recharges fast enough and I usually listen when it's plugged in anyhow. Be carefull of using regular batteries, they will be drained within 2 hours! On the good side, this does as expected, plays many hours of music, sounds great and is easy to navigate. The down side is: I would like to see bettter support through the webstie from Creative Labs. This is a costly item, it would be great to have Web chat or something to get simple answers The software is not the best. When I try to rip Mp3's from a CD the first track is always messed up. I have to rip the first track from the CD to the hard drive and then trasfer to the CD. This is annoying because I am trying to save space on my hard drive. .wma files are supposed to offer better sound quality at lower kb rates, so therefore smaller files so more can be stored on the Jukebox. But, I can't seem to get the same quality when ripping from CD to .wma with the Play Center software included. I get better .wma sound using Windows Media Player, but again that goes to the hard drive then to the Jukebox. i also can't figure out how to trasnfer from the Jukebox to a PC. The Jukebox comes with a couple audio books that I would like to put onto PC and make room on the Nomad for more music. Overall the next version of the Jukebox should be great. It needs a bigger drive, maybe 20 gig. It also could use a tuner for FM signals to make it more of a complete product. I would also love to see a digital out to plug into a good quality stereo. I would say people should hold off buying until the next gen of players are on the market. But, if you want something that holds 150 CD's now (600 if I could figure out how to get the higher quality .wma files on it), it's as good as it gets.

The reason people get this over (or alongside) other MP3 players is that they need the storage space. I am still in awe of how much music you can fit in this thing! Here's a breakdown of what I think: Sound: Very good. Sure, the EAX is a little gimmicky, but at least you have a good equalizer. I don't know why people complain about the lack of volume, this thing is as loud as my discman. The headphones are better than average. Battery Life: Decent. People complain that AA alkalines don't work with it; of course they don't, the instructions tell you as much! You get two sets of good rechargeable NiMH batteries. Interface: Very good. Easy, intuitive and packed with features to organize your music. Manual: Very good. Those who think this is a bad manual should look at the Rio 500's (an otherwise fine machine), which gives new meaning to aweful. Software: Very Good. Easy and fast.With the new firmware update, even faster! Overall, I am very happy with this product and recommend it highly!

My previous review of this product stated that this player was a fairly good buy. Not so anymore. It's simply too heavy, large and bulky. The main advantage this player has is it's rather large 6 GB capacity, which I never was able to fill. However, it's negatives outweigh the positives. After using it for a couple of months, the batteries stopped holding a charge, and would only give me a half hour or so of play time. The issues mentioned in my old review such as the inability to fast forward/rewind and inability to upload songs from the player have been resolved with recent firmware and software updates. The headphones are great, and they served me for a long, long time, even after I stopped using the Jukebox itself. In my opinion, it is a far better idea to purchase a portable CD player that is able to play MP3 CDs, such as a Sony MP3 CD discman. It's far cheaper, lighter and easier to use. However, you obviously need a burner to burn the MP3 CDs... or, go buy a newer generation of this product! OLD REVIEW -- I just got the Creative Nomad Jukebox today (in blue!) and so far I absolutely love it. I even rollerbladed with it. True, it is a bit bulky, but thats only because it has a laptop hard drive inside it. And hey, it may drain the batteries (or so people say), but when I used it for my 30-45 minute roller blade trip, it served me well. The batteries didn't die on me, and it was almost fresh out of the box. The batteries hadn't even had much charging yet. I don't have any idea why the people are complaining about the headphones and the volume settings. The headphones are comparable to the Sony Backphones, which are probably the greatest lightweight headphones ever made. The headphones are a bit tight out of the box, but I'm sure they will loosen with time. As for the volume issue, you've got to be either deaf, or standing in the middle of a busy airport runway if it's not loud enough for you. The annoying things about it are: 1. The lack of fast forward/rewind functions 2. The large size (about the size of a Sony Discman player) 3. The delicate state of the player (Although I haven't done this, I don't think a Hard Drive would survive a fall) 4. The player's software doesn't allow you to download songs from the player into the computer The positive features are: 1. SUPERIOR sound quality 2. Tons of EAX settings, and other sound settings. 3. EXTREME capacity. I dont think I will ever be able to fully use up the 6 gigabyte capacity of this great MP3 player. 4. Comes with an AC adapter. 5. Comes with a leather carry case. 6. The super-fast file transfer time. You can load a whole album on this baby in under 3 minutes. My old Parallel Port MP3 player took 15 minutes for about 3-4 songs. 7. The player comes preloaded with hours of music of different genres, including Pop, Classical, Rock and Electronica. All and all, the positives outweigh the negatives. Of course, you could wait for a better player, but why? [Thats my way of thinking ;-) ]

This is the best digital music player available and probably will be the best for some time now. There is nothing else that can play MP3 files that holds six gigs of music except for the way overpriced HanGo Personal Jukebox. This not only has six gigs of music storage, there are going to be codec updates in the future so you can play liquid audio, WMA and other file types. Balls-on accurate playback with a 3-band equalizer make the sound easily customizable. The screen even lets you navigate through your files very easily. If you want an MP3 player, you would be a fool to get anything less!

As soon as I found out Creative is releasing Jukebox, I had to buy it. I used to have Creative Nomad II. It was excellent to be honest. It had FM Radio, Voice recorder and MP3. As I used it more often, I was frustrated with the memory size and how much memory cost if you want more. Jukebox. It's no problem. Right now, I have 300 individual MP3 songs in there. It plays great and it sounds even better since this unit includes EAX. Preset EQ such as Stadium sound, Concert hall, and so on. Nomad II didn't have this before, so it made a huge difference in listening quality. I really love this player. I also found some problems with the player. It has a better software that handles MP3 Creative PlayCenter 2. But, its interface is a bit ... not intuitive. There are two screens to juggle. There is also no way to manage new MP3 songs from the old ones already inside your player. What I mean is when you only want to add a new song, you either have to remember the new songs or create a new folder and put all the new songs in there. The other thing is that you can not download songs from the player. I think you can only upload it if I am correct.(I maybe wrong.) Jukebox also uses USB to connect to your computer. It's fast, but occasionally it fails when you try to upload a lot of songs. It's not that big a problem, but the thing is that you don't know where you were dropped, so you have to figure out what songs were trasferred and not transferred. Jukebox, by the way,uses its own OS. When you try to do many things fast, it can crash. There is a reset button. It won't erase anything, but you need a very long needle like pin to reset it, but it wasn't supplied by the Creative, so when your jukebox crashes when you are on the road, you better have something sharp. Otherwise, you won't be able to use it. OS is also a bit ... again, not intuitive. It's a bit harder to navigate through the menu, and if you want to erase a song, there is no erase button like Nomad II, but instead, you will have to go through series of menu, then you will have to go back to the playlist to start playing again. Despite all these things, I still love this machine. To me, memory count a lot more than some system glitches. Only thing I hope is a remote. Possibly wireless remote. Jukebox has a Infrared interface beside the USB. So, there is some possibility that Creative will release it. If you don't carry around the unit often, this will help accessing songs from your couch.

Amazon has a great deal on this player. Almost all other places charge $700 for it. Get it here. As others have said the Jukebox does have its flaws. The instruction manual is horrendous. I've never seen a worse manual and I hope I never see another like it again. Charging the batteries up for the Jukebox is a royal pain since after the batteries are at 100% it will then start draining them for another charge. Speaking about battries be VERY careful when inserting them. The polarites (where the positve and negative go) are very weird so use caution. I also have a great deal of problems putting WAV's onto the player. I have to convert most of them to MP3's first and then play them or else I get goobldy gook. However, the Jukebox is the biggest MP3 player available. Navigation is remarkably easy (turn off Novice mode the second you get it). The USB connection works super fast and an average MP3 will be on the player in less then 4 seconds. The bundled software for PC is excellent and is also very useful just for ripping MP3's.

Cons: - Need to keep it plugged in pretty much all of the time. Rechargable batteries are very weak (you get a hint of this when they supply you with two sets in the box!) - After years of WinAmp, building playlists on the Nomad is a pain. Pros: - Lots of space - Small - Doesn't tie up your PC harddisk when doing other disk-intensive activities