I am looking at deals and things like the 4GB creative lab go for as low as $110 new and the 30GB go for as low as $160 new. So I figure I may trade up on my 128MB Iriver and get one. Plus with an FM transmitter for a jukebox MP3 player I won’t have to burn CDs anymore to listen to them in my car.
Does anyone have experience with the creative lab model of hard disk MP3 player? Is the interface convenient? Is it reliable?
I’ve got a 60 GB Creative player, and I’m quite happy with it. I’ve only had it for about a year, so I can’t say that it’s super-reliable, but I haven’t had any problems with it. The interface…well, I think it’s pretty simple, but I’ve spent some time doing UI implementation (and a little bit of design), so maybe my opinion doesn’t count for a whole lot.
I have a 30gb model and I really like it. I find the menus really easy to navigate, and I like the button setup–all the controls are on the sides of the player instead of the middle (which would be inaccessible while it was in its case), so it’s easy to cycle through songs when I’m out walking. The front of it popped off once when I dropped it, but it was easy to snap back on. Dropping an iPod on a hard carpeted surface as hard as I dropped my player probably would have broken it. I also like that the buttons are not as sensitive as the iPod’s buttons. I have the Nomad Zen Xtra–they have some other new ones now, the Zen Touch (which has a touch-sensitive pad for scrolling, I hate those things though) and a Micro model that looks very similar to an iPod mini.
I tried out five different players in a store, and this one was the best. Where can you get it so cheap, though? When I bought mine it was $220, and that’s after a 10% off coupon.