Customer Reviews
bought it liked it, but trashed it 
2007-01-24
i bought this along time ago and had it a good while, but one day it fell in the toilet yes i know, it was in my pocket and fell out and boom short circut but it was awsome lol.
Newest Firmware Upgrade Destroys Player 2006-12-28
It's that simple. The newest firmware upgrade for this player halts mid-install, not completely installing. The player will not start, Windows will recognize the player, but because there is not a complete set of firmware on the player, Creative's own software will not recognize it (thus not allowing me to run another firmware upgrade on the player). Do not buy this product.
By the way, I'm not alone with my complaint. The creative forums are plagued with complaints of this.
"doesn't care less" after sales service + faulty equipment = disaster 2006-12-21
I'm just trying to be concise and objective, because I can't believe i got screwed twice with Creative.
Bottomline is:
- their product are priced lower than competition (price/ Mb is attractive), they seem decent with no shiny options, like the kind of equipment you want for your buck.
- their product are fragile and faulty. And it's not this particular one (with movable hard disk parts), I own another Creative Muvo c100, and they are reboot with no reason, or freeze.
- their software is so painful to master, with little tricks to make it work if you spend litterally hours on it...
- and the worse is... their after sales service. People, trust me on this, your Creative piece of equipment will break, other 3 guys (out of 3)in the Office had issues with their Creative: battery, software incompatibility with other softs, movable pieces, cheap buttons, plastic box, screen... Their equipment looks cheap because it is cheap. No other reason.
They could compensate this drawback with a good customer service, but I guess they don't have the bucks to serve the US market correctly. The Reps I talked to are decent guys, but they have no policy, no means to do anything. It looks like you talk to a Postal service chief in the 1950's eastearn Europe.
in my case, after giving 15bucks for premier postal service, $25 bucks for Creative to look at my Jukebox, they requested 118-143 bucks (depending on the rep i talk to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to repair their faulty stuff. In order to get that information, it took 20 days, around 30 emails, 3 phone calls over one hour. This is pathetic.
Think twice before you want to spare some 50 bucks over an Iriver or other decent mp3 players.
Fragile software & physically. Customer service is a plague. 2006-12-09
Bought it for the raved-over sound ("better than iPod"), but came to regret it...
Owned a 20 Gb Zen. Customer service will not even accept your call without a credit card number up front, after 90 days. Their website suggests firmware updates for any/all funky behavior. But this locks up the unit permanently. Can play it; just never again can add songs to it, or alter existing playlists. Creative knows this problem and will not fix it.
Foolishly, I then bought their 60 Gb (same model as the 40 Gb here; just more memory). Worked a couple months, then froze up unrecoverably. Several weeks of wading through an amazingly unavailable, incompetent and utterly unconcerned "customer service", I got the same player back, utterly untouched; totally dead. Several more weeks slogging through the same hours on automated call centers, waiting to talk to a human who doesn't even listen to you describe your need, and is aggresively incompetent, then weeks waiting for them to repair and resend a refurb, ... and it is a totally nonworking and dented refurb. More weeks and the same exacted dented refurb is sent to me again, utterly unworking. MANY more weeks and I finally receive a refurb that works. Total time wrestling with this utter incompetence: 7 months ! ! !
Though this all started within the initial paltry 90-day warrantee, this quickly dragged on beyond it, and I had to buy the rather expensive 1-year extended warrantee early in that fiasco just to be able to get them to accept my phone calls at all.
Now I have a player that gives that great Zen sound (true enough), but can't take even the slightest justling. They aren't kidding when they say "don't wear it even walking." It resets nearly every step. That is utterly no exaggeration. I found wearing it in a just the right "fanny pack" allows me to wear it lifting weights, provided I make no sudden moves. But clip in to my short's waist band, and it reset every 10-30 seconds. Not fun.
Many reviewer gush over the "awesome" software. It's o-kay. But it lacks some obvious capabilities. Like their own file manager cannot move files between folders without Zen losing track of them: they still show in your library, but clicking on them finds nothing and so Zen goes at random to another song. You have to re-"import" every song moved this way. A major pain in the but, if you move a large library to an external hard drive.
Also, you can't sort your on-screen display in a playlist by any of the columns (like song title, album, artist, year, style, rating. etc.). Makes for a lot of manual searching. Slow and boring.
Also, there is no way at all to keep track of which playlists you have added a song to, except to manually scroll through every playlist and manually look for each track among all the tracks in that list. Would it be so hard to have a feature that shows what playlists any given track has been added to?
What I am holding out for, is a flash memory player with at least 16 Gb. Sony recently came out with an 8 Gb. These are extremely robust versus jostling. But I need at least 16 Gb, if not 30-60, for my library. And I didn't buy a high end MP3 player to compress all that CD quality sound down to some crappy little file size. When one of the big boys finally make a real player, I will pay whatever they want for it.
I would give it 10 stars if given the option 
2006-11-18
Creative products is by all means the best i've ever experienced. I could be a spokesman for them if given the chance, lol. The Nomad is very easy to navigate at your thuumbs disgresion. I love the fact that it's compatable with all media programs. WMP, MusicMatch. But the best to organize and sinc music is real player. If you don't want to spend a lot of money and want quality over looks then this is the product for you. the only bad thing about this wonderful gadget is the charger port. I couln't stress this enough; you have to be very careful in handeling the charger. because of the type of por it is after prolonged use of continued charging the port will come loose. It doesn't have a docking station which would help eliminate charging it through the little port. If you are going to invest in this product I would try getting an extended warrantee with it. Other than this, everything about it is awsome especially the ease of creating a playlist. I no longer have it because again the port broke off after a while. I bought a crative vision m for my wife. I only have 3 words for it. Ipod killa, ok that's 2 words but i made my point, lol.
BUYER BEWARE 2007-12-16
I am very very disappointed with this mp3 player my husband paid over $200 for it 3 years ago and twice it has just stopped working. The 1st time we had to update the firmware which would not have been such an issue if almost 4,000 songs were not deleted in the process. I reloaded them once it was fixed and a year later it just stops syncing in the middle of a transfer. Then my computer that had the right software loaded on it will not recognize it. I have put the software on the other 3 computers in the house and none will pick it up. CREATIVE LABS WEBSITE NO LONGER HAS ANY SOFTWARE OR UPDATE MATERIAL ON THE WEBSITE. THEY SPECIFY IT IN DIFFERENT WORDING BUT THE SAME MEANING AS TOO OLD. I DONT KNOW ABOUT ANYONE ELSE BUT $200+ IS A LOT OF MONEY FOR THIS TYPE OF ITEM AND I EXPECT THAT IT SHOULD LAST LONGER. It will play but won't sync and every time I start it it has to spend 10+ minutes rebuilding the library. this year we bought from another company, paid less and the mp3 player also will play video. LOOK AROUND YOU CAN GET MUCH MORE FOR LESS MONEY FROM A LOT OF OTHER COMPANIES.
The Worst Technical Support Ever 2007-11-10
I purchased the Zen Touch 40 GB MP3 player a year and a half ago. When it was working, it was relatively easy to use although the touch pad took some getting used to. The problem started when I decided to upgrade the firmware from their website a few weeks ago. As soon as the firmware upgrade was completed, my player died and I have been unable to revive it. When I e-mailed technical support I was told that since it was out of warranty, they could not help me either on the phone or even by e-mail unless I paid $19.00 an hour. When I explained that the problem did not start until I loaded THEIR FIRMWARE FROM THEIR WEBSITE, and that they should bear some responsibility and help me, they continued to insist that since the player was out of warranty, they could not provide technical support unless I pay.
My advice is if you buy Creative's products, sign up for a warranty, or never ever ever upgrade the firmware. Personally, I will never ever ever buy any Creative product again.
Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware 2007-06-01
Please Don't buy this product unless you plan on working pro bono as a tech for yourself on behalf of creative. The Player will eventually freeze up and attempts to fix officially using creative updated "play for sure" firmware software will "destroy your player for sure". Simple. I just wish i had read a little about this before attempting to upgrade the software and i might have salvaged what little was left of the player. The good reviews are simply from people who just haven't heard trouble with their products, It's not a question of if but when. You've been warned.
Dead after 1 year 5 months 
2007-05-29
My wife & I bought two of these for Christmas in 2005 and loved them (our first MP3 players). Mine died 5-28-07 (5 mos out of warranty) and Creative's attitude is "so sorry, too bad, pay us for service, including online support or just fix it yourself." Read the postings on the Creative forum before you buy ANY of their products - CAVEAT EMPTOR. They have posted a firmware "upgrade" that frequently destroys the player. Woe be to the owner who hasn't backed up his ripped files. I have, and am shopping for another player, but it won't be made by Creative, I guarantee. We still own 2 Zen MicroPhotos (8 GB) and her Zen Xtra still works, who knows for how long? BTW, Creative's software is junk; you would be much better served to buy Notmad Explorer.
A Reliable Product from a stellar company 2007-02-10
To begin with, I really do not recommend that anyone buy this product now (unless you can get it really cheap) because there have been so many advances since this came out. I have had mine for almost two years with absolutely no problems. I love this player. Around the time I bought it I could get the most memory for it for the lowest price. Yeah it was bigger and not as sleek, but it was definitely the right decision. In general I feel that Creative as a company is superior. All their products are well priced and of high quality. So if you are going to buy an MP3 player go with Creative over Apple. The Zen Vision M is cheaper and better overall. Just go to c/net to look at the reviews. While the 5th gen iPod scored slightly higher (.3 of a point)on the site review, the user satisfactory rating for the Zen Vision M was nearly 2 points higher. Take your advice from the owners. Creative does not disappoint. And while Apple may be the giant, I feel that unless you want to conform to society go ahead, but Creative provides unique and better choices.
