Creative Labs Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB Best Buy

Creative Labs Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB God-send - 27 Feb 2007

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Without doubt the best MP3 on the market. i'm only writing this review 'cause i got bored...
I've had this mp3 player now 3 years!!! yeah 3 years, and it still works fine. had one unexplained hic-up, where it it refused to go past the start up screen, so i rang creative and the told me to send them it for repair, i got a brand new player! and this replacement has lasted 3 years!
battery lfe is dwindling now, maybe 4hours if i turn off the back-light. that can be remedied with a PSP power pack, and a new batery from creative, both will preform well, although the PSP ppack is goin to be external.
if you ever need a replacement chaarger, buy PSP, it cheaper and more readily available.

I do a lot of outdoor activity, givng my player ample reason to get cold, it will freeze up if left in a bag out-side. but just take off the cover and warm it with your hands, it will work fine!

on a final note, this player rocks! i've dropped it down a filght of 26 steps and it still works fine. no problems!

Good but could be better - 25 Sep 2005

4 out of 5 found this review helpful.

The Creative Zen Jukebox is an excellent, no so little machine. The player offers superb...there are a number of options available for various sound settings. These range from environment settings to different sound settings set for different genres of music. There are even settings suited for your surrounding environment. For example, if you are listening late at night in a room with other people you can set the sound to reduce major crescendos in your music so that you don't disturb those around you. You can set the sound for travelling on a train, plane or car and you can also volume match for an entire piece.
Now this is all fine and dandy, until you plug the player into your computer. The software is simple and easy enough to use, but only if you follow the instructions or, like me, can spend two hours installing it and figuring it out. However, once the software problems have been overcome, the software is simple, easy and fairly self explanatory to use.
I realise this sounds like I'm praising the machine the whole way through but I'm not. The player has an easy to use and simple display; the settings of it are easy enough to figure out (unless your friends put it in Dutch, like mine did) but continually browsing the system or changing settings, like with most items like this, runs the battery down quite rapidly. And speaking of the battery, its life leaves a lot to be desired. The 14 hour stated battery life is good but only if you leave it running through every song it can inside 14 hours. If you change albums a number of times....browse for individual songs etc. then, again, the battery does drop rapidly.
The final problem with this machine is that it doesn't register as a separate drive on the computer. This sounds like a small fault but I find it extremely annoying. I use media player as a music player instead of the creative software simply because it displays my library straight off instead of having to put it all in myself. Also, I have a notebook laptop which doesn't have a disk drive, meaning I cannot install the software and therefore cannot access the player if I plug it in. An iPod however, does offer the removable drive offer making it easier to access music on computers with iTunes.
The machine is an excellent little player, the sound quality is as dynamic as you wish and it is really simple to use. The headphones supplied aren't anything majorly special. They at least beat the supplied Sony headphones. If you want a decent machine, with lots of music storage (and I mean loads of it), then this is definitely the machine you should get!!

Great product - 17 Sep 2005

3 out of 3 found this review helpful.

I love this MP3 player. Not only do you not look like yet another hipster, but you get more hard-drive space for less money...

I've loaded this with all of my music, nearly 7,000 songs and I have still have plenty of space. It's easy to use, to create a playlist and save and all the buttons are nicely placed on the side.

Overall it's a smashing product, a great MP3 player, but I have given it a four due to it freezing up sometimes over the period I've had it, which is over a year, but with only 2 or 3 freezes.

Endless Trouble - 14 Aug 2005

1 out of 5 found this review helpful.

When i first got this player, i immiditely had to send it back with broken drivers disk. After about 1 month it started to freezewhen i turned it on, and would need resetting. This got more and more frquent and now simply doesnt work. Another friend has similar problems with his. My advice is save up and buy something from another company, it might actually work

RUBBISH. It gets 1 star because I cant give less - 13 Jul 2005

2 out of 9 found this review helpful.

Saw good crits of this machine so bought it. Sound quality is good but software is rubbish. It will not work on my XP desktop or laptop and I have had to resurect an old windows ME desktop just so I can load music. The unit had to be sent back to Creative after only a couple of days - both these days were spent trying to get the thing to work. Further e mails to creative who finally reconed that my problem was USB drivers that were too old (yet it works - all be it slowly in ME). These were updated and still it does not work under XP.

Save your money buy something decent.