Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox

Manufacturer:	Creative Labs
List price:	~~$299.99~~
Our price:	$278.34 that is 7% off!

Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox

Average rating: Stars

Not for Audiophiles

Having gone through MP3 players from three other companies in the past few years, the 60GB Zen seemed poised to hit the ultimate sweet spot--enough memory to hold my entire CD collection, at a low price.

I fear there's a catch, however, and that lies in how the player organizes the music...or rather, doesn't! On my previous players, I could always set up a folder system in which I could physically arrange my tracks as I would like to play them by default, and then be able to drill down however far I needed to, e.g. "Soundtracks" -> "Hong Kong" -> "James Wong" -> "Green Snake". Creative's interface has none of that. ALL TRACKS are dumped into a single directory, and rather than keying to the filenames, the player catalogues everything by ID3 tag.

Which might have still worked in clunky fashion, except there's only one layer of organization to the player's library menu. The upshot is that if I want to locate that same album above, I have to select "Soundtracks" and scroll through ALL soundtrack albums to find the one I want, or select "Artists" and scroll through ALL artists to find that one composer, or select "Albums" and, yes, scroll through ALL albums on the player to locate that single one.

This may not be an issue if you have a modest CD collection. If, however, you're dealing with thousands of albums and hundreds of artists, the Nomad Zen's Music Library interface is the stuff of nightmares.

Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox - Creative Labs

Great Value - User Friendly

I listen to audiobooks while traveling and this is the perfect device for my needs. It holds tons of books and I don't have to cart around tons of cds. The 14 hour battery life is also huge advantage. I carry a car charger but have rarely had to use it.

Creative Labs - Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox

Not user friendly interface

Totally disappointed in the product usability, even simple MP3 players from 3 years ago much better. All operation of this MP3 relies on visual unfriendly menu. The submenu choosing button impossible to convenient control. No lock button, just software lock, software control over speed and pitch. All functioning based on choosing from a menu on the screen. Visually impaired check well in a store before you buy it. The navigation inside menu can't be learned buy hurt , too complicate, the mp3 is not recognized as a hard disk devise in your PC so you need to transfer files using the creative software which is not simple and has a problem to work with "jaws". No speaking menu exists for this devise.

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