Creative Labs 30GB Nomad Jukebox

Conclusion

With MP3 collections growing at a seemingly exponential rate, we suspect that it is only a matter of time before higher capacity portable MP3 players become not the exception but the rule. The Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox does fill a market space that is constantly growing, and with their massive retail presence Creative is able to crush the majority of the competition.

The success of the Jukebox does not mean that it is without problems. First off, the unit seems to drastically need a processor upgrade. We constantly found ourselves having to wait for the unit, often times pressing a few buttons too many while we waited for the Jukebox to respond. This is especially a problem when playing back music, as even scrolling up and down in a screen can be time consuming and frustrating.

Another area that we think needs improvement in the Jukebox are its searching and queuing functions. When you have a large collection of MP3s on a single device, finding and playing those files can become tedious if the interface is not easy to use. It is challenging to design an easy to use interface on such a small device, but we suspect that it can be done.

As far as the NomadJukebox.NET upgrades go, they seem to make sense for those wanting extreme storage capacity for their Jukebox. Personally, we found the 30GB unit we played with to be an overkill, as our personal MP3 collection would have been just barely over the 6GB limit that the standard Jukebox has. We don't think it would have been a problem to leave off some of the less popular songs from our collection, such as our Corey Heart singles directory, in order to get our collection to fit on the base Jukebox.

We also wonder if 30GB is truly necessary. NomadJukebox.NET does offer a 20GB version as well, but even that seems as if it may be an overkill. Personally, we would be happy with a 8GB or 10GB upgrade that cost only a bit more than the standard Jukebox.

There are some out there that do have 30GB plus MP3 collections and are looking to take their music on the road with them. For these people, the NomadJukebox.NET upgrade makes complete sense: it is the same price as getting the laptop hard drive yourself and offers much greater storage capacity. But with the MP3Pro standard making big news today, it is unlikely that music files are going to get any larger in the future. We suspect that it is only a matter of time before Creative updates the Jukebox's BIOS to support MP3Pro files or a new Jukebox is released that supports this file specification. When this happens, the extremely large 30GB Jukeboxes will seem almost gluttonous.

With all the problems that we experienced with the Nomad Jukebox, the truth is that it is the best large capacity MP3 player on the market. It is only a matter of time before Creative updates the Jukebox or another company can one up the current Jukebox, offering greater speed and an easier interface. Until then the Jukebox is going to have to remain high capacity portable MP3 player of choice, and the NomadJukebox.NET upgraded Jukebox the extremely large capacity portable MP3 player of choice.