Rating: 
Summary: Good but poor batteries and a little slow when turn on
Review: I thing the Nomad Jukebox is a no a very good stuff. Easy to organize your files but you can use the batteries just for one hour. The Creative Play Center is not a good stuff too.
Rating: 
Summary: Worked correctly only once
Review: Looks nice, a bit heavy and I wish it had a carrying case. But I could have overlooked these things if the product actually worked. Transferring the MP3s was easy enough although something a bit more intuitive would be nice, but manuvering through the songs was a bit cumbersome on the unit. All livable until I actually tried to use the thing. I no matter how long I charged the unit, the batteries would be down to half power within an hour or two regardless if it was being used or not. The second time I used it, it couldn't find the hard-drive and shut off. Started it again, and it found the HD this time, but as soon as I hit "play", the song started and the unit shut off. This happened about three more times. I give up, going to buy an Archos.
Rating: 
Summary: 40GB Nomad Jukebox with over 5,400 Top 40 Songs
Review: I have had this product for over 4 months. I can safely say that when I received it, it was brand new. I then plugged it in and began enjoying the massive variety of musical genres. I would estimate that it would take several hundred hours to encode all those songs as MP3 files. I found the preload for $200.00 more to be well worth it.
Rating:
Summary: The best of its kind but in no way perfect
Review: There are around 5 to 10 MP3 Jukeboxes based on hard drives.
This is the best one of them, but in no way it is perfect.
I'm giving it 5-stars because its the best out there, but take note of the flaws before proceeding to buy it.I'll start out with the bad stuff... 1. The unit is heavy (14oz not including 4 AA's).
This means that its portable but you can surely not jog with it, even walking with it may be problematic (its a little too big). 2. Its a computer. The unit is actually a computer hidden inside a portable player's case. It has the advantages of a computer: sophistication and upgradability, but on the other hand it has all the flaws. It can lock up, it can be slow at times, it has sophisticated menues that may be hard to control and it has some sudden unexpected delays, and more. If you want a simple unit this is not the one. But if you're good with computers and you see the sophistication as an advantage its okay then. 3. Battery life is bad. Only 4 hours with 4 special rechargable NiHM batteries. 8 of these batteries are supplied, so you get 8 hours of play if you switch the sets. However, if you use special DSPs, more backlight on, or transfer files - the battery life is shortened. Charging the 4 batteries is around 3 hours (the unit charges them). You can always use the AC power adaptor - if you're indoors. 4. Hard drive inside. Since there is a hard drive inside it makes the machine more sensitive to shocks, etc. The HD also tends to heat up and the unit becomes warm/hot. I don't know of any damage that does but its still not that great.
The hard drive also wakes up and sleeps frequently (to reduce battery power) so you can occasionally hear it and feel it - not if you're listening to music though. All of these problems are common to all MP3 HD-based jukeboxes. But take that in mind. THE GOOD THINGS (there are many): 1. Superb sound quality. Using SB Audigy 96KHz/24-bit D/A converters you get the best sound quality possible on any portable unit I've ever used. The internal headphone amplifier is not that good, but still the quality is top notch.
The line out connection allows you bypassing the headphone amp. 2. A lot of memory. Whether its 6GB or more (10,20) its a lot of memory. Its not a lie - its there. 3. Searching and sorting capabilities. The unit has several methods for finding your songs (counting to thousands even).
You can create playlists, search via genre, artist or album.
Its not that fast, but its the best method there is on such players. 4. EAX. The unit houses Creative's EAX DSP chip. It allows you to run several DSPs in realtime. Those include spatialization DSPs, an equalizer, playback speed changer, etc. Also, the unit has a line output for 2 real speakers (in addition to front ones). It can stimulate a surround effect for the rear speakers.
All in all this feature is harmless and may prove useful quite a bit. 5. Creative. They have good support and come up with firmware upgrades occasionally. You can trust those guys. They also know how to build stuff and got a lot of experience.
Firmware upgrades appear regularily and add lots of useful features and correct bugs. 6. Analog recording ability. A line in connection allows to record to wave files at up to 48KHz. Recording quality is okay.
Later you can upload it to your PC and edit it. 7. Other stuff: the display is backlit and nice looking. There is an IR sensor which may be used for future uses. The software is convinient. You can download and upload files and songs to and from the unit. It supports WAV, WMA and MP3 format at all bitrates. Lots more. ALL IN ALL - its the best out there, but take in mind the problems and check if you think you can cope with it.
If not, wait a while and better units will eventually come out.
Rating:
Summary: If this Nomad was a woman i'd marry it!
Review: If you are in the market for an MP3 player this has to be the best sounding, the easiest to use and the most RELIABLE unit around. I had a Riovolt first but it was hopeless at playing CD-RW discs (yes it said CD-RW compatitable on the box), then I had an Archos 6000 that melted (literally) when it was charging. So purchasing the Nomad and its a dream come true. I can store 2500 96bit/sec high quality WMA files (WMA is better than MP3), arrange the songs into albums, genres, artists and playlists, which is a godsend when looking up a specific song or to play songs in a specific order. One feature which is so handy that it brought tears to my eyes, is the ability to add songs to the active playlist as you go, without interupting the current song playing. The included software is easy to use and enables CD ripping, organizing and titleing of your favourite songs. It only takes a few moments to transfer a lot of files through the included USB lead. The unit itself is a very sleek silver-blue affair that has high-quality fixtures, positive-acting buttons and a very clear backlit LCD that has a very easy-to-understand menu system, backed up by 3 navigation buttons that aid you through the menus. The drive unit itself is very quiet and smooth and is responsive when navigating songs. The unit has oodles of sound-tweaking modes such as a graphic equaliser, environment settings and stereo wide modes, but even in normal mode, the unit sounds so damn good you'll hardly use the sound modes. Hook it up to your stereo via its Line out and the sound quality is amazing, it rivals a CD player. Some customers complain that the unit 'skips' but I don't have a habit of bashing my Nomad on the floor and when its safely tucked away in my pocket, it never ever skips when im walking or running. Also the battery life is very acceptable (I can squeeze 6 hours out of mine) if you follow the charging procedures, and in fairness to Creative Labs, you do get 2 packs of NimH batteries. What more do you want?! Overall this player is so damn good if it was a woman i'd marry it and I hope to keep this player for many years to come, (its THAT good) :-)
Rating: 
Summary: awesome player, but transfer too slow
Review: i cannot say how much i love this player from creative. it has tons of features (some you'll probably never use, like the eax processing) and 6gb of storage, it also has an easy to navigate menu with two settings, one for novices and one for advanced users. in terms of sound quality the freq. response is fairly nice for this type of player and the signal to noise ratio is above most of the mp3's i have (S.N.R > 90db). the unit is also only the size of a normal cd player, which is nice compared to some of the huge bulky models like archos models. the only reason that i gave the nomad 4 stars is because of the usb port (too slow) and the limited battery life. it's nice that creative is at least addressing one of these issues in a new nomad player coming out with a fire wire port and an usb port.
Rating:
Summary: Longer term perspective.
Review: I have been very interested in reading through the reviews, especially not being a potential buyer, but now a long time user. Firstly remember nothing is perfect and not all people are going to be pleased! It doesn't get a five rating because as mentioned by other reviewers the battery life does not really equate to the required portability of some users. However I do get a lot of use from it, in the car it plugs into the line in, it gets used on the plane when travelling and when visiting London it is connected with the line out to the system there, giving me access to most of my music collection. Its use is simple and the structure of the access to the files is great giving multiple methods of accessing the type of music you want and the tracks easily moved to the playlist. As for the problems experienced in ripping and loading from the PC. Personally I use MusicMatch Juke box to rip, organize and play music on my PC so the files are already ripped and categorized etc by the CDDB system. This makes it very easy to transfer music to the Jukebox as the Playcenter software which comes with it enables you to locate the folders/files on your PC and just load them across to your Jukebox, this I have found to be very quick, and on the occassion that I did find one corrupt file is was to do with the original ripping and not the transfer. It is a great means to move and listen to a lot of music, its not a put in your pocket whist you jog player. The only thing that it was missing in my opion was its inability to act as a stand alone player, which has now been addressed by the Cambridge Labs Playdock, which I have just ordered! The Nomad Jukebox is a very good product, just not perfect.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but I want need a longer playing time
Review: A super player with great sound, a lot of storage capability.It's perfect if you are a purist about sound:I compress MP3 at 224 KBPS to ensure the best quality at a reasonable file sizes.But not everything's perfect:You now have a super player with lots of CD's that you have easily transferred to it but the batteries that you've charged for 12 hours won't last more than 3 or 4 hours.So, if you're looking for a portable player, mmm!:it weights a lot and it eates batteries quickly.It's better to use it "plugged".I'm thinking of buying a smaller player for daily use and keeping this one at home with the best of my CD's into it.Resuming:Short batteries life, high-weighted but excellent sound reproduction and extras like reverb, parametric EQ and good headphones.And, what a price!
Rating:
Summary: Best of the MP3 Players
Review: I've actually owned several MP3 players include models from Rio, Sony, and a few generic. The Creative Nomad's are by far superior. First and fore most, the capacity puts it into a class of it's own. I have a 120GB music server at my house, buying a 64mb MP3 player was out of the question, who has the time or wants to deal with the hassle of transferring files you would like to listen to all the time. But I also like the organization and play list accessibility/features of the device. I should mention if your interested, you will want to buy the new model which has a 20GB drive.
Rating: 
Summary: meretricious trash
Review: I would smash this piece of junk into a wall if it wasn't a gift. Without wasting my time and listing all of my annoyance as other users have listed, but talk about frustration with charging the 3hour-long-usage battery!!! without exaggeration, 80% of the time when i have left the batteries in charge over night, only to discover the next day at the gym or in the cab that the machine is LOW ON BATTERY AND SHUTTING DOWN! My other set of batteries won't even charge at all! I've written complaints to Nomad and called, but what can you expect from an idiotic online tech support when the parent company has created such a NON user-friendly meretricious trash. Keep in the mind, when they say "music for hours", its only for 3! (unless you want to keep it at stationary for your car or home)
And if you are an outdoor runner, look else where, this machine is a free weight in itself.
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