Nomad Zen Vs Ipod: Which One To Get? Which One Less Problematic And Xp Compatibl

LOL. You are not gonna get an unbiased opinion here man. This is the *IPOD* lounge. I know right off the bat I'd recommend an iPod over anything and I haven't even tried the other Jukeboxes. Go off and read some reviews online. That's the only semi objective route to go IMHO.

On to the "problems" you see on this site. I'd say read them carefully. A lot of problems are user created. Not having a good firewire card, not understanding how to use encoders and syncing software etc. There are no serious issues with winipods other than MMJB sucking very much. If you get a good firewire card, grab ephpod right away and encode with lame it will be smooth sailing. Later on if you want more advanced features you can try MC9 but it's $40. Just my 2 cents.

Hmm...Check out notmad--lots of problems with the Zen over there. I actually think the ipod is significantly less buggy than the Zen, and there's plenty of support here and at Apple if you have problems--more so than with the Zen. The Zen is a good MP3 player, but the ipod kills it in size, user interface, and software utilities..

Using my iPod with EphPod on XP has been a breeze. I connect using the firewire port in my laptop. I had problems using MMJB, but I've been very happy using EphPod... and it's free!

By all means, do your research before you buy. But I think that if you choose the iPod, you'll be very happy with your decision.

Eventhough it is a little pricey the Adaptec 4300 card is the way to go. That or a card with a VIA chipset usually works. If you don't mind spending 50 bucks that is how much it is on CompUSA's website. Good luck!

If you've got an old soundcard / onboard sound and wanted to upgrade it, you could get a Audigy 2 which comes with a firewire port. You can get one for ?60 in the UK which isn't much more than a straight firewire card.

Originally posted by seanhiggins
If you've got an old soundcard / onboard sound and wanted to upgrade it, you could get a Audigy 2 which comes with a firewire port. You can get one for ?60 in the UK which isn't much more than a straight firewire card.

Sorry, Audigy=Evil, do not get that card. It and the iPod do not get along most of the time. Yes, there are folks that have gotten lucky, but check out Creative's own site. They don't follow the IEEE1394 Standard, (which the iPod does very closely), they created their own (SB1394).

Adaptec is a good way to to.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly, knowing their lack of familiarity w/PCs) I would also not recommend the card from Apple. I've helped a lot of folks out with those cards and they just had problems. Go w/the Adaptec 4300, an Orangelink Card from OrangeMicro, or any cheap VIA chipset based card and you should be fine.

Adam

Well, I've got both -- a 3G 15 gig iPod and a newer USB 2.0 20 gig Zen.

I've had the iPod for about a month, the Zen for about three months. Bottom-line: it's a tie. They're both fine units. Neither is "buggier" than the other. The Zen is able to charge via USB 2.0 (whereas the iPod can only charge over firewire), but the Zen lacks firewire and has *only* USB 2.0.

Zen has a much longer battery life than the 3G iPod. I'm guessing around 10-12 hours for a fully charged Zen -- whereas I get around 6-7 hours with my iPod.

Obviously, the Zen is *much* bigger than the 3G iPod. I didn't think this would make much of a difference, but it does. The iPod is easier to tote around.

But the thing I like about the Zen is that there are more "on-unit" options for deleting tunes, rearraging playlists, renaming playlists. In other words, I can delete tunes on the Zen using the Zen itself -- whereas the iPod requires me to be by a computer. The Zen also allows me to create any number of "on-the-go" lists while I'm actually using the Zen (as opposed to the iPods single on-the-go list which is lost at every synch.) The Zen also allows me to label the playlist while I'm using the Zen (tedious -- but it works.) The Zen's scroll wheel is quite nice. It gives you *lots* of options for scrolling, rearranging, and renaming.

One thing I haven't thought to check is whether the Zen's gap between tracks is as long (and as annoying) as the iPod's. For most folks, the gap doesn't matter. But if you're listening to classical music -- especially opera -- the gap is one *big* pain in the neck.

Both units suffer from *HORRIBLE* software. Absolutely horrible. The Zen almost requires you to use 'Notmad Explorer' from Redchair software. The iPod almost requires any number of 3rd party solutions (some free, others not).

Frankly, I prefer the Notmad Explorer Windows integration. It's great -- and it's only a right click 'Send to...' to transfer tunes (full folder or individual tunes) to the Zen. Ephod (I only have used Ephod -- I don't know about the other solutions) requires you to launch Ephod. Notmad gives you other options, too: data folder, ability to edit playlists, etc. Maybe iTunes gives you this ability on the Mac. I don't know. I haven't used a Mac for years and don't know anything about iTunes.

Transfer rates are pretty close on both the iPod and Zen. I think the Zen is a bit faster, but frankly, who cares? As long as you're using firewire or USB 2.0 on the iPod or USB 2.0 on the Zen, the transfer is fast enough. If you're stuck with USB 1.x, well, you're gonna suffer regardless of which unit you're using.

The Zen feels good in the hand. It's boxey and heavy, but it feels good. Obviously, the iPod is smaller and thinner -- and of course it feels good, too. The display on the iPod is bigger and easier to read without the light. The Zen's display is small and pretty much requires the backlight. But because the Zen gets insanely good battery times, the backlight on the Zen is no big deal. I'm not sure how the backlight effects battery life on the iPod, but I try to avoid the backlight as much as possible with the iPod. With the Zen, I don't really worry about it.

The iPod's interface -- the actual GUI -- feels much slicker than the Zen. I like the iPod's scrolling menus (the entire screen scrolls quickly when you move from menu to menu). The Zen's feels much more ... well, "geekier" I guess is the best word. It's functional, it works fine, but it's not as slick as the iPod.

But here's where both units suck: classical music. If you have long album titles, yes, both units suck -- but the tiny 3G iPod sucks more. It's infuriating, actually. The Zen gives you option to see 'Track Details' -- and once you're in this menu you can see the whole title (and manually scroll where necessary). This is good. In fact, if you're a classical listener and often refer back to the track to determine the movement currently playing or the performer or whatever -- this 'Track Details' option is a necessity.

The iPod, however, simply won't scroll long album titles. I have no idea why it'll scroll the track but not the album. Frankly, this is just stupid. I'm sure there's some software/hardware limitation that prevents this, but if you're into classical music -- long album titles, long track titles, and like to cram lots of info (Title/Opus/Composer/Performer/Soloist, etc.) into your tags -- I'd urge you to look toward the Zen instead of the iPod. The Zen requires more button clicks to get at the details -- but you can see the details. But with the iPod, the long album titles remain forever hidden.

This, I think, is the biggest and most egregious goof on the iPod. It's such a well-developed little piece of hardware that I find it incomprehensible that Steve Jobs didn't stop and say, well, we gotta fix this for folks who are gonna use this for classical music. The annoying split-second track gaps are forgivable, but the fact that you can't see entire tags is *not*. It's a horrible goof, and Jobs and Apple oughta be ashamed.

That said, however, I'll say this: I prefer my iPod over my Zen -- if only because the iPod is smaller, lighter, and just looks cooler. It's a beautiful piece of minimalism.

The Zen is nice, does exactly what it claims it'll do (and does it very well) but it doesn't do it with the iPod's style and attitude. (But, as I say, the Zen handles classical music much better than the iPod.)

Both units come with weird looking cases -- the Zen's is big and clunky and makes the unit even clunkier. The iPod's is as minimal as the pod itself -- and doesn't really do much more than (a) prevent random presses and (b) clip to your belt. But maybe that's all folks need. It, too, is minimal -- and maybe that's the point. If so, that's fine with me. Minimal is good these days.

Soundwise? Well, I don't have golden ears, but both units sound about the same to me. They both offer interesting preset "sound fields" (or whatever they're called). I listen to "acoustic" on my iPod, and use "Rock" on my Zen. *shrug*

The iPod comes with nice little ear buds. The Zen comes with headphones that look they were made back in the 1980s and should be attached to an early Sony Walkman. They stink.

If you're looking for a better deal, I suppose the Zen is the winner. But if you're looking for style and attitude (right down to the cool box) the iPod is the winner.

Bottom-line: both are great. If you're a classical music listener, you might want to look more carefully at the Zen. If you're concerned about battery life, there's no question: the Zen is the winner hands down. The 3G iPod's battery is ... well, pathetic might be *too* strong a word, but when you feel like you're only getting 4 or 5 hours, "pathetic" is certainly a word that comes to mind. (I've gotten anywhere from 4 hours on a charge to 7 hours -- so I can't figure out what's going on. I think I might be getting shorter times when I listen to longer, 20+ minute tracks. Perhaps the iPod can't cache as much of the track and so accesses the hard drive more. Don't know. Maybe someone else can explain.) With the Zen, it doesn't seem matter: short tracks, long tracks -- the battery just goes on and on. It's quite nice, actually.

So there. My quick review. Comments?

I don't own a Zen. But I do own njb, njb3 40G and 30G iPod. (njb stands for Nomad Jukebox).

I am not going to comment too much on iPod, because I guess you can find plenty of them in this forum.

For njb3, in addition to what all Zen can provide, it has a good mp3/wav recording capabaility, through either line-in, optical-in, and mic (the wired remote has a builtin mic). njb3 also provides even more power. It can run for over 22 hours with an optional extra battery (It got 2 slots for 2 removable battery). It also has 2 line out, for your surround sound experience.

About the wired-remote, which is the same for both njb3 and Zen, got a blue light LCD which displays current playing song/artist, with builtin mic and FM radio (and of course all the basic buttons for play/stop/pause/skip/volume etc.)

For music quality, both njb3 and iPod are very good. However, njb3 (and Zen) can have custom 4-band equalizer, which iPod lacks. At first, I find the preset equalizer in iPod nearly unusable because they distort most of my mp3. I now fix this problem by using mp3gain to keep all the mp3 at about 89db, and now the iPod equalizer can sound as good as njb3.

To sum up, to buy which one, whether it's Zen or njb3 or iPod, really depends on what you thinks it's most important. For size and beauty, iPod is a sure winner. For functionality, njb3 is on the top list. Zen seems to be at the middle of the two.

Personally, I now keep my njb3 strictly for home use, because it can store more songs(the njb3 can go up to 60G, using a normal notebook HD), and deliver surround sound. I also use it to encode mp3 for those copy-protected CD through its optical in.

When I am not at home, I am always a happy iPod user.

Zen can be better value because you can have much better quality music. 30Gb is not enough to store 256 or 320 quality songs. Support of WMA is also important. I do not know about Zen yet, but I had problems with iPod to show some Asian fonts and store music files named in Asian language. Fortunately, Apple heard me and fixed the font problem in new firmware, however I had to write my own software to upload such songs to iPod. Anyway, I can't replace iPod by Zen now because 60Gb model is out of stock.

And farber55, thank you for the very detailed review, where I finally understod that purchasing iPod was mistake.

I think there is a smal argument for buying iPod. More than 10 titles of software are available for iPod, and only one for Zen.

Originally posted by MOCKBA
I think there is a smal argument for buying iPod. More than 10 titles of software are available for iPod, and only one for Zen.

You are not looking are you?, There are about 10 for the Zen and double that for the ipod, most are pants though.

I've owned both, sound quality if you are an audiophile makes it a one horse race - the Zen wins easily. If however the size is a problem then I'd advise a 2nd gen ipod. They were a lot more reliable and the touch sensitive buttons on the new one are a nightmare. Took mine back.