The Nomad Jukebox Zen is Creative-s go at aping the Apple iPod (November 2002, page 40), an MP3 player built around a notebook hard drive, and has done a remarkable job of it. Style-wise, it-s totally different to the iPod-s front-mounted control design, with all the control buttons arrayed along the left and right hand sides. These include volume, track and power buttons, plus a jog dial that-s used to navigate menus, tracks and options on the LCD.
The Zen has USB and FireWire connectivity for transferring music, plus a 10GB drive to fit everything on. It comes with Creative PlayCenter software, an application for ripping CDs, cataloguing your music and transferring the files, but it seems to have problems with mixes of tagged and un-tagged MP3s.
On the player you can sort music by albums, artists or tracks, and even create your own playlists. The Zen also features EAX advanced audio, which works well coupled with the bundled headphones.