Creative Zen Xtra 30GB 60GB Information and Full Review.

Zen Xtras - play MP3s, WMAs ...

This range of MP3 players has been superceded by the Zen Sleek and the Zen Micro Photo.

What else is new?

Like the Creative Zen NX, the navigation on the Xtra range has been completely reworked form earlier Zen models. Now browsing through your music is more Icon based as the new screen and GUI (Graphic User Interface) allow graphics alongside text. You can make playlists or edit playlists without having to first go back to your computer and connect your jukebox. And a good feature that is too. Now you can change the order your tracks appear in/ swap tunes in and out of your playlists and stuff, as and when you feel like it. It means you spend more time messing about with the order of your tracks, but you're much happier for it.

In short the Creative xtras are easy to use. The navigation is more intuitive than earlier models; the graphics based system is easier on the eye than earlier text based interfaces and the fact that you can perform a lot of the music management functions away from your PC means that the whole thing fits into your life seamlessly, like most modern jukeboxes.

USB 2.0, another modern standard, means you can transfer to/ from your computer at about 3-4MB per second, which equates to about 1 song per second, which means that adding 6 albums of 10 songs each (60 tracks in total) would take about a minute - pretty fast.

Battery News:

Creative have always been smart about batteries and never actually built them into the Jukebox. This obvious design fault was not realised too quickly by others. Once again Creative have kept a winning part of the overall package as Lithium-ion battery is removable and rechargeable. Allegedly it gives 'up to 14 hours' playback per charge. We would recommend you don't count on it giving more than 12 and a half hours playback for normal use.

The software it comes with is Creative MediaSource. It "makes music creation and management quick and easy" on the PC. Creative's MP3 music creation and management software from previous Zen and DAP Jukeboxes (the notorious 'Playcenter', dubbed 'Placenta' by all and sundry) left a lot to be desired. And that is being kind to Creative. It was like trying to program a fridge using peas - about as successful too. The jury is still out on Creative MediaSource. Its better than placenta, but that's not saying much.

Criticism of the Xtra range

As yet there is no ability to record, no remote control and no FM tuner. That's not the end of our criticism, its the start: If Creative have chosen to give you the choice of whether or not you want to buy any FM tuner/ remote, as has been common practice, this has less to do with consumer choice and more to do with charging for extras. If the Xtra was that Xtra, there wouldn't be any Xtras. Having said that: at the time of writing, these Xtras aren't even available!

The software provided is a big jump up from the original 'playcentre' that Creatives used to use, but its still a bit crap, for want of a better turn of phrase.

Nice touches include:

The Zens come with spanky new headphones. We can't stand pointless repetition in general, but since the headphones on the Zen NX and Zen Extra are essentially the same .... The geeks at dukebox.com are highly excited by the inclusion of Neodymium in the ingredients used to make the headphones. This rare earth metal is also used in the Koss range of head phones that we sell. They claim the excitement is due to the Neodymium being very strongly magnetic, which apparently gives a better sound, as the strength of the magnetic field determines the quality of the sound. We think that it may also be related to the fact that it's a rare earth metal that appears high-up on the periodic table and also as The Matrix has made Neo a bit of a buzz word for them. They can be excitable.

The Jukebox not only has a built-in clock, it also has a 'sleep timer' that you can set to play for (for example) 30 mins so that it doesn't keep playing until it runs out of juice if you like to lull yourself to sleep with tunes. It also has a corresponding 'wake to music' function so that you can set it to wake you up with your favourite music. Now that is a function that all self respecting Jukeboxes should have! You don't have to keep your earphones in over night in order to use this function. Like all the jukeboxes you can connect the Xtra to CTS Speakers via the headphones port.

All in all a good move by Creative and if you want one, select the appropriate model and click 'I want to buy one' on its page.