Rating: 
Summary: Zen vs Archos vs Net MD vs IPod. Zen Wins!
Review: I have tried out almost every conceivable large capicity MP3 player out. Hands down, for price, value, look, and durability, the Nomad Zen has it.Here's my breakdown. Nomdad Zen Looks nice and from an American company, Creative Labs. Its easy to use interface, great sound, slightly smaller than the archos and a bit bigger than the Ipod. Built in battery but dies after 2 years or so. No problem, according to the Creative Labs website. They'll replace it at no charge when it dies. And yes it has shuffle and such an easy to use playlist, including a LCD screen remote -- how cool! Battery life is pretty good too. I found the Zen to be a superb overall value. ...
Rating: 
Summary: about the battery: buyer beware!
Review: This is a great MP3 player, but as other people have noted here, the Zen's battery is not user-replaceable. Before deciding whether to buy a Zen, I called Creative tech support, who reluctantly admitted that the battery can't be replaced, even by them, so when your battery dies, your player can only run from AC power. So I decided to buy the less sexy Creative Jukebox 3 instead. Since then, a different Creative tech support person told me that, when the Zen's battery dies, you can mail your Zen to Creative and they will replace it for you (for a hefty fee, of course). Maybe the first tech support person was ignorant. Or maybe the second tech support person just "assumed" that the battery could be replaced and told me so in hopes of making a sale. Who knows? The point here is BUYER BEWARE! If you buy a Zen or other player without a user-replaceable battery, you run a huge risk.
Rating:
Summary: Best Mp3/Wma player I've used
Review: Wow! This device is great! I agree with the other review about liking this device over the iPod. I want to address two of the compliants I read before I bought this that almost caused me to pass on buying this device. I'm glad I bought it anyway. Someone wished for a stop button. After using it for more than a hour I didn't miss it. If you want to stop it you can a.) shut it off, or b.) remove the track from the now playing area. I read another complaint about having a problem with the file system used by the Zen since it soley uses the file tags. The only potenial problem I could see would araise if the user didn't monitor the tags of the tracks as they transfer them to the device. I do each album individually and have the Player Center setting such that it shows me the tags before each album transfers. With that I avoid the potential of having to go back and correct track tags on the device. A cool feature I liked since I tend to use this at work a lot is a computer USB port can recharge the battery while the device is off. This way I can avoid having to bring the charger to work. I like is the upgradable firmware for future software enhancement possiblities. The interface is very simple and easy to navigate with one hand. I could go on and on about the good points, but I really only wanted to address the negatives I had read from before. This was a great buy for the amount of storage, and features. It also seems very durable.
Rating: 
Summary: A nice upgrade from older Jukebox models
Review: I've been using one of the original Nomad Jukeboxes, upgraded to 20 gig, and finally saw a device that convinced me to switch...the Zen! Sure the Ipod is cute and neat and all, but there was no way I was paying the price for a 20 gig one. The Zen has enough features at a very attractive price that I did not see any reason to get something that costs more. So far, I have not had reason to regret my choice. Firewire made transfers super-fast although they did lock up on me a number of times so I had to keep restarting. Also, my collection is mainly WMA files and the included software did not correctly handle the ID3 tags. Apparently only deals with MP3 files, even though WMA is supported by the player. So I had to purchase 3rd party software to do the transfer...which is much easier to use in any case (Notmad Explorer). I really like the new menuing. A big, big improvement from the menus on the old Jukebox which were frustrating and hard to use. The scroll button makes it even easier to get around and enter text. I never have a problem changing the play mode now! Sound quality is excellent, and volume level is as well. Other little improvements abound...like now when you hit the back button, it goes to the beginning of the song, rather than to the previous song. Makes it a lot easier to listen to the same song over again. The buttons can be a bit hard to figure out in the dark, and the screen is still pretty small. Battery life seems very good (certainly compared to the original Jukebox, which was terrible!!) The player comes with a nice leather case, which so far has saved it from damage a couple times when I have dropped it on the floor. The headphones are adequate, and fine for me. Finally, one reviewer said you could not stop music...you certainly can, just use the play/pause button. Not sure what he was thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Great MP3 player
Review: I searched for the best MP3 player for the money. I found this device to be what I was looking for. It was a good price, it plays WMA (if you want/need that functionality like I do) and the firewire transfers files extremely fast. It looks great, it is the right size and the sound quality is excellent. If you are looking for a 20 GB player, give this one a look. Personally I give the Zen a lower rating than the iPod, but the Zen has price and a back lit LCD in its favor. OK so what I dislike about this player. First of all the battery lasts maybe 5 hours rather than the advertised 8 and the software is horrible! I had to buy 3rd party software just to keep my sanity. The included headphones are also decent sound but they are way uncomfortable. The buttons aren't very well oriented on the device - it's easy to shut off in your pocket but you cannot change tracks without pulling it out. I am very happy with my purchase, I just think Creative has a few little kinks to work out.
Rating:
Summary: Almost Perfect
Review: The Zen is a great buy, I gave it a 4 out of 5. I would have given it a perfect score if not for two features that I guess were just over looked. The first problem I had was with the headphones. Don't get me wrong this baby came with pretty good sounding headphones but since they weren't adjustable I couldn't use them. I had to dish out an extra 30 bucks for a descent pair. Now the second problem I had with the Zen was the lack of a stop button. This becomes very frustrating after a while, especially when you are listening to a song and a friend walks up to you to say hello. Now you either have to remove the song from the play area to stop it and find it again when you want to listen to it or you have to shut down the player all together. I do love the software provided. It makes it very easy to manage all of your digital music on your PC as well as on your player. I also enjoy the play list on the fly feature that the I-Pod is lacking. It also looks like something a "techie" would love to hold in their hand.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product, a few annoying design issues.
Review: I bought the Zen as a Christmas present for my wife, who lugs dozens of CDs in her car. She has been cool to previous MP3 players because they didn't hold enough music to suit her. The Zen surely solves this problem!! I found that 64kbps WMA audio sounded great, and have ripped about 70 of her 150 CD collection so far, filling up about 3 GB of the 19 GB available. Ripping is slow, but transfering to the Zen via Firewire is a quite fast! Annoyances: The display is hard to read, with tiny text characters. In dim light, the backlight is not strong enough, making it a challenge to use. The buttons are not well marked, and are not easy to discern by feel. The carry case is nice, but it's very hard to use the thing while attached to the belt, and its a pain to attach/detach it.
The Jukebox software is kludgy, and the sync software/ID3 update features ended up creating lots of duplicate files. I trashed it
and started from scratch. Using a cassette adapter in the car works fine. I wish the unit had a builtin FM transmitter, so it could play through the car radio without wires! I've settled on using Windows Media Player 9 to rip CDs and manage the Media Library, and bought Red Chair's notmad software to interface/download to the Zen. So far my wife is still cool on the whole thing, but I think she will come around, once I figure out how to set up and download playlists of her favorite tunes.
Rating:
Summary: Best product I have ever owned
Review: I'm a music lover, and I have a substantial CD collection, but I found that I wasn't listenening to my whole collection, because I would forget that I had certain things. Not only has the Zen allowed me to take my whole collection with me everywhere I go, it has increased the enjoyment I get out of my music by letting me listen to those forgotten albums again. I did a lot of research on these players, and decided to get the Zen (after playing with the iPod) for the following reasons. 1. Drive size. I had to fit over 800 albums on the thing, so I needed a lot of room. The Zen scores by letting you store smaller WMA files, and by being upgradable. You'll void the warranty doing it, but you can easily switch the hard drive for a larger one (I have a 60 GB drive in mine). Since it uses the standard size laptop drive, this is inexpensive and easy to do.
2. Features. Don't get me wrong, the iPod is easy to use, but that also makes it less powerful. Zen allows you to cue up songs, albums, artists, or genres, so you can micromanage and create a mixtape on the fly, or you can drop in a few genres and have your own private radio station that fits your mood that day. If you have a windows computer, and can't use iTunes, the iPod just doesn't compare.
3. Size. It's smaller than the JB3, so it fits in a jacket or pants pocket. While it is larger and heavier than the iPod, it's not much of a tradeoff.
4. Price. It's so much cheaper than the iPod, the choice was easy. Another reviewer complained about albums not being played in the proper order. This is a fault of the playcenter software. It's easy to fix, by just transfering your files the right way. ...One thing to be aware of with the Zen though. Some users have come up against a track limit. No matter how small the files, or how big the drive, it seems you can't have more than about 11,000 songs. Apparently, it is a limitation of the operating system, which may be fixable in the future. Still, that's a lot of music.
Rating:
Summary: great choice for a mp3 player
Review: very happy with my purchase. 20 gig's, sleek, light, comes with all the cables and software necessary and even a case. up and running in less than 4 hours. price is great and unmatched at this point (taking into consideration the capacity and design). ipod may be sleeker and have better functionality but is twice the price - TWICE the price. software works great for organizing and ripping, player functions work great as well.
Rating: 
Summary: good player, bad connector
Review: I am now on my second Zen - ready to return it also. After bringing the first one home, I ripped my entire collection (~10GB) of music onto the player. I then put the carrying case on it, plugged in the headphones and took it with me everywhere I went. In my car, I would use the car adaptor. After 2 days, the headphone connector went bad. Music would play out of one speaker (mono), instead of producing a nice stereo sound. I then realized the carrying case did not fit the player very well and it put a lot of stress on the headphone jack. I exchanged this for a new Zen. I did not use the carrying case with my second Zen. Again, after two days, the headphone connector jack went bad. I am returning this one for an iPod, since Apple uses quality parts. I really do like the ease of use and the "one-hand" design, though. I would just like to use it for what it is intended - listening to music. This really isn't possible when partial sound is produced.
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