Detailed Creative Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Player Description & Review

Creative: Zen Xtra 60 GB £349.99inc. VAT  &  Delivery

This player has been superceded by players such as the Creative Zen Micro Photo 8gb and the Creative Zen Vision M and is no longer available.

The Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra. So good we spelt it wrong. The Zen Xtra 60, or Zen Extra as it is frequently called, is a development that is very note worthy.

The Zen styling has been moderately improved, we think, and, ahem 60GB of storage. 60 GB. Time for some crazy maths. Well actually the maths are sane, the results may make you a little giddy though. The Zen Xtra's 60GB of space translates as approximately 60,000 minutes of tunes. If you listened to your Xtra for 12 hours a day every day (recharging overnight) and always selected a song that you had not yet listened to, how long would it be before you ran out of songs that you hadn't yet heard?

Almost 12 WEEKS. That's 3 months. "To everything turn turn, There is a season turn turn turn," and the Xtra has its own season. A whole season of the year with the never-repeating soundtrack - every 3-4 minutes of every day a different and new song - supplied by your Zen Xtra - for a season. That is staggering.

Back in the real world 60GB is a lot more space than most people will ever want to fill with music. It's more space than the average UK home computer has for a start and the average music lover does not have 16,000 tracks to put on it - so is it just for show? No. Unlike some earlier models Creative have for a long time allowed data files to be stored on and transferred to and from their Zen jukeboxes and with Gigga Bytes of storage space to spare this jukebox really does give itself a lot of extra-storage jobs.

Creative Zen Xtra 60 GB Info

60GB - obscene amount of music storage WMA and MP3 playback Still small and light and fairly slim Nice touches (alarm; create playlist directly; transfer directly, etc.)

It's completely portable, of course, so it can act as a back-up (full or partial) for your work PC or your home PC or both, depending on how big they are. Or, you can transport large volumes of files from place to place. Uncompressed digital images, for example, are notorious for being overly large and cumbersome to handle. Not a problem on a portable hard disk, but most portable hard disks don't carry all your favourite music and keep you entertained en route.

The Zen Xtra 60GB and the Zen Xtra 30GB are exactly the same except for the size of the Hard Disk. The features that both players have are described and reviewed on our Creative Zen Xtra page.

Red Chair Software: Notmad Explorer

Most people who use Creative's PlayCenter will have come across its limitations. It's not a terrible piece of software, but then again it is ...

We heartily recommend that anyone with a Creative Jukebox buys themselves this piece of software to use instead. Notmad from Red Chair Software has just about every feature you can think of to give you full control over your Jukebox and its contents.

Manage all your music on your PC and on your Jukebox with this one all-embracing program.

Navigate through your Jukebox using the 'Notmad Explorer'. It has the look and feel of Windows Explorer, so it's instantly recognisable. It has very similar features too:

Drag-and-drop or copy/ paste Playlists, files or folders. Where did you put that song? Is it on your Jukebox at all? Is it on your Jukebox 4 times under different Playlists? Find out quickly with a search that uses a built-in, powerful SQL engine. Synchronise the contents of your PC and your Jukebox with one click. Notmad will automatically build any necessary new Playlists and directories when you transfer the MP3s (or WMAs) from your PC.

This software has advanced features as well. You can set your Jukebox up so that you can control it over a Network, for example, meaning you could access your Jukebox from the other side of the world!

Boasted features include:

• Clean, intuitive integration with Windows Explorer.
• Transfer files, folders, and Playlists by drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, and SendTo.
• Automatic playlist and directory generation following transfers.
• Drag-and-drop playlist and ID3v2 and WMA tag editing.
• One-Touch PC-to-Jukebox synchronisation.
• Search and HTML/XML reporting provided by embedded Notmad SQL Engine.
• Internal Memory, SmartMedia Card, and FM Tuner support for Nomad II series.
• Tunes2Go: Automatically fill your Nomad II with songs on your way out the door.

Unlike some software manufacturers (e.g. Realnetworks) Red Chair have not taken the "Cash Cow" attitude that customers should buy their goods and then buy an update every six months for life, because with one purchase you can get lifetime updates, if you so choose.

All-in-all a great piece of software that does exactly what software should do: make your life easier.