Amazing MP3 player for the price
Written: Jun 18 '05
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Pros: Upgradable to 192mb! Only uses a single AA battery. No clunky control buttons.
Cons: The included software takes some time to learn how to use...but its a blast afterwards.
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend it for the good price and ease of use. Some additional features are that it includes a voice recorder and it is upgradable to 192mb.
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| danoid's Full Review: Creative Technology Nomad IIc (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I recently bought a Nomad IIc from the Creative Labs eBay store for about $30 (it was $34 including shipping charges). For that price this was an amazing buy...go to any computer or electronics store and an MP3 player with similar features costs at least $50! The one feature that I like the most about the Nomad IIc is that it has an LCD screen that displays track titles and the status of various factors such as battery life, how long the current song has been playing for, and its bit rate. You can even control how long the LCD screen lights up for - this is an extremely useful function because you can save battery life depending on long you set the screen to light up for.
The most amazing feature - in my opinion the one that adds some "wow" factor to it - is that you can upgrade the memory from an internal 64mb to 192mb with a 128mb smart media card. Yup...192mb. When considering the price of a 128mb player - which is probably about $100 these days, you can start to understand how this MP3 player is such an amazing deal. For about half the price of a 128mb player, you can have one that has close to 200mb (of course, this is assuming that you can get a good deal on a smart media card). In order to upgrade the memory, you also have to upgrade the firmware (the memory can only be upgraded to 128mb with a 64mb smart media card without the firmware upgrade). This is done by downloading a small program from a Nomad website and then running it with the player connected to the PC - the whole process takes a couple minutes. Another thing that sets this player apart from the others is that it only uses a single AA battery! Some MP3 players run off of batteries that cost close to $50 - and with some players it is nearly impossible to change the battery to begin with! Not with the Nomad IIc. Just slide the battery cover off and pop in a AA and you're good to go.
One thing that I thought was very awkward with this player is that the the slot to upgrade the memory is actually located inside the battery compartment. The slot isn't labeled and it actually took some detective work to find it. I'm not saying that I was expecting to see a "bull's eye" target or a large red arrow pointing to the slot, but there is nothing that even hints at its existence...yet it is there. I still applaud Creative Labs for putting this feature in, it is only the second MP3 player I have ever discovered that has upgradable memory (I believe the other one was an iRiver model).
The MP3 player itself is very intuitive to use. There is no power button - to turn it on you hold the play button for a couple seconds, and to turn it off you hold the stop button for a couple seconds. The controls are actually very similarly styled to an iPod. You control the player through a round dial that has a play/pause button, a stop button, and fast forward and reverse buttons. The Nomad IIc also includes a voice recorder. On the right hand side of the player, there are record, erase, and DSP buttons (to change the style of listening to rock, pop, etc.), in addition to a volume button. On the front of the player there is also a menu button and two repeat buttons (one to repeat the current track, and one to set start and stop points in order to repeat a "user specified" track). The menu interface is very easy to use and to navigate - except that there is no button to move up because instead of pressing "up" you are actually pressing the play button, which selects the option that is highlighted.
Overall, I'm happy with the design of the player and the control setup - there are no clunky wheel or large on/off buttons like there are on some of the more popular MP3 players. The size of the player is just right, not too big and not too small. I think the Creative Labs Zen is a bit large and clunky looking. The iPod shuffle is way too small and looks as if it would be easily lost. The Nomad IIc fits easily in my palm, and it doesn't weight that much either.
Summing things up...there are only two things that I can complain about. The first thing I don't like is that sometimes the player displays some weird characters. I discovered this after upgrading the firmware..but I think I figured it out. Instead of displaying the song title, I was getting these long bars that extended for the whole width of the screen. I started deleting my songs by using the delete button instead of using the included software, and this problem went away (but I had to clear the internal memory and run the firmware program first). The second thing I don't like is that the transferring program is a bit hard to use...but I figured it out after a day or two.
Overall I'm very happy with my purchase and I highly recommend it to everyone.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 30
Recommended for: Beginners - Easy Enough for Tech Newbies
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Epinions.com ID:
danoid
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Member: Dan
Location: New Jersey
Reviews written: 55
Trusted by: 2 members
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