Creative Zen NX Nomad Jukebox

~~~The company~~~

Creative are a well established company who are known for their audio and digital entertainment products. They have been established for around 30 years now and are one of the leading manufacturers in their field. Creative are not one of the brands which people automatically think of when pushed to name one that makes MP3 players; most people might think of Apple, Sony, Samsung or Archos. Creative's new Zen is number 7 in the top 50 most popular MP3 players which was surprising to me. What is more surprising is that the new Zen has 4mb of memory space whereas my Zen has a whopping 30!

~~~The MP3 player~~~

My Nomad Zen is silver in colour both front and back with white trim running around the outside of the unit. It is approximately 1 inch deep and is about 6 inches high and 4 inches wide which makes it a fairly bulky player compared to the more modern ones. The front panel has the word Creative written in capitals along the bottom in a raised text. Towards the top is the name of the MP3 player. There is a massive 30mb of memory in this player which can hold around 20000 songs depending on size. The sound quality is excellent through both earphones and when connected to a speaker
Just beneath is the display which when you turn the unit on displays the power level and menu list. To access the menu you use the select wheel situated on the side to the right. The menu gives you access to a range of features including track selection where you can select from song title or artist; you can even make up individual people's track lists. (A great feature when you don't want to listen to your other half's rock) Next to this wheel is the play/pause button and the fast forward and rewind track buttons. The wheel takes a little getting used to as you need to scroll and select using one finger. On the other side of the unit (to the left of the display) is the power button and a handy back button which automatically takes you back to the menu when playing a song. There is also the volume +/- buttons on this side. All these buttons are large enough to access without looking and easy to depress. The bottom of the unit has a slide to open switch where you can access the battery pack. We have never changed the battery and it charges itself when connected to the mains. The battery life is pretty good and gives around 7 hours. The top and final section of the player houses the mains connector, the earphones connector and the USb connector. We transfer music from our PC to this player very easily using the connector.

~~~My opinion~~~

We bought this MP3 player around 8 years ago. Really can't remember how much we paid but you can currently still buy them on Ebay for around £30. It gets used all the time and has been abroad with us several times. Although bulky (not one you would want to clip to your arm and run with!) it does a good job of playing all your tracks well and easily. The sound quality is very good and the menu is easy to navigate. The best thing about this MP3 player is the storage capacity, we currently have all our music on it and we haven't even filled up 25% of the available space yet. Overall it is a good sound MP3 player and although bulky it is still a favourite in our house.