Product Reviews

Creative's original MuVo was a great idea that failed to deliver. The concept was simple - an MP3 player that doubled as a handy little Flash memory storage drive. Two products for the price of one. Trouble was, it was pricey for a Flash drive, and as an MP3 player it was plagued by poor sound quality and limited controls, and lacked any way of managing play lists.

Its successor, the MuVo NX, takes the same petite form as its predecessor, but adds a backlit LCD display and a choice of clip-on battery compartments in silver or red. The display doesn't just make the MuVo NX easier to use, it allows for

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lots of other useful improvements. MP3s are still uploaded at a lethargic 0.6MB/s using Windows Explorer, but you can copy albums to the player in folders to keep them together, and you can jump between albums. Tracks in folders are played alphabetically though, so your MP3 file names will have to start with album track numbers. Most MP3 creation software, including the Creative MediaSource package supplied, can do this automatically.

Voice recording is now possible using the MuVo's built-in microphone, but the most useful new feature is a graphic equaliser. Sound quality isn't a vast improvement on that of the original MuVo, but we found that judicious use of the Custom EQ yielded pretty good results, making up for the lack of bass in the supplied headphones. Better headphones improved quality further, and the violent clunk that emanated from the original MuVo when you switched it off has also been remedied.

The MuVo NX is a great improvement on its predecessor, and comes with some decent software for making MP3s that gives it an edge over a few of its competitors. In truth, though, this only really brings it up to the standard of other MP3 players for around the same price.