Verdict: The Xtra's biggest selling point is that you can buy it online for under £300
The Zen Xtra is the Nomad Jukebox's eighth reincarnation. It was one of the first hard drive-based MP3 players available, but since the birth of the iPod, Creative has been playing catch-up.
This latest Nomad features a bigger screen, replaceable battery, USB 2 port and a world-eating 60GB drive. Creative has, however, kept the side-mounted controls from the previous Zen. There's no remote, and while the controls are accessible when the Xtra is in its smart carry case, they're very fiddly. The menus feel slow and slightly awkward, so the interface lacks finesse or simplicity. Despite the Xtra's upgrades, to some extent it's still running on old ideas.
With 60GB at your disposal, you can take around 16,000 MP3 or WMAs with you, but the Zen Xtra's navigation menus lack the power for browsing so many songs. It's much better to use the huge amount of space for fewer higher-quality MP3s. However, the Zen Xtra's sound quality was only average. Whereas the excellent iRiver 595T sounded big and dynamic, too often the Zen made music sound a little flat and empty - like mind-emptying meditation - rather than an exciting experience.
We got just over ten hours of continuous playback from the battery, which took three hours to charge. Transferring music over the USB 2 port is extremely quick - it takes about a second to grab a song. Creative bundles two good pieces of software with the Xtra: Nomad Explorer adds the Zen as an extra drive to Windows Explorer, allowing you to drag and drop files, while MediaSource can rip from CDs and sync the Zen with your PC music collection. Thankfully, there are no irritating Digital Rights Management restrictions in Creative's software either.
CONCLUSION
The Xtra's biggest selling point is that you can buy it online for under £300. Considering that amount will buy you a 20GB iPod, the Xtra is attractive despite its average performance.
