Product Reviews

Last month, we saw Rio's Nitrus redefine what makes a good MP3 player. Built around a hard disk that measured a mere inch across, the Nitrus can't quite match the huge capacities of larger hard disk players or the petite designs of solid-state players. Crucially, though, it's small enough for any pocket and has enough capacity to give you plenty of listening choice.

Rio isn't the only company to have hit upon this idea, though. Similar designs are on their way from Apple and Philips, and Creative's MuVo2 is here right now. The MuVo2 is available with a 1.5GB capacity for £141 (£165) - matching the Nitrus's statistics exactly - but it also comes in a 4GB version reviewed here. This is enough space for around 65 albums encoded at 128Kbit/s, perhaps not enough for your entire CD collection, but probably all the ones you listen to.

Physically, the MuVo2 is about the same size as the Nitrus, measuring 66x66x20xmm and weighing 91g. Transferring

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files to it using USB2 is much faster than with the Rio, at around 6MB/s rather than 1.5MB/s. This is most probably down to the fact that the 4GB version of the MuVo2 uses a Hitachi hard disk. The 1.5GB version of the MuVo2 uses the same Cornice disk found in the Rio - so we'd expect this version to manage only 1.5MB/s too. One major advantage of the MuVo2 is that it appears to Windows as a removable disk, meaning it will double as a handy storage device. It won't work as a bus-powered hard disk, though, when the battery is drained, which is annoying.

Battery life is excellent at more than 10 hours, but the controls are a lot less impressive. The five-way navigation pad feels really spongy and imprecise, and the screen accommodates far less information than the Rio's. The player's sound quality is decent, although the bass begins to distort at high volume. Creative's headphones, which suffer from a distinct lack of clarity in high frequencies, are put to shame by the set provided with the Rio.

Our most serious concern comes from the fact that the player we reviewed conked out after a couple of weeks. Mechanical clicks suggested possible problems with the disk, but we hadn't subjected the player to any rough treatment. This could be an isolated incident, but it's unsettling nonetheless.

The MuVo2 could have been a fantastic player, but poor controls, middling sound quality and concerns over reliability mean that, in this case, a great concept doesn't make a great player - especially at this high price.

Ben Pitt