Product Reviews

You may not be surprised to learn that the MuVo NX is yet another thumbdrive MP3 player. But a new version of the MuVo is a good move on Creative's part, given that the original felt like a standard thumbdrive with an MP3 player slapped in as an afterthought.

This model is a huge improvement, adding a clear and relatively high-resolution blue-backlit LCD, plus a jog dial as featured on the more expensive Creative players. The menu includes a five-band graphic equaliser and there's a folder-skip facility for skipping albums as well as tracks. There's also a small microphone you can dictate into. The 128MB capacity will accommodate around eight hours of highly compressed voice or two average albums at 128Kb/sec.

The NX is a two-piece unit: the player itself slides out of the battery housing to reveal the USB connector.

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A belt-clip adaptor with an armband attachment is supplied, and there's a spangly red extra battery housing too.

As is so often the case, the supplied in-ear headphones are pretty poor and offer little in the way of low-mid-range or bass response. But plug in a decent set and the sound quality is the best we've heard in a thumbdrive player. In comparison with both the MSI Mega Stick (see below) and the Xiro MP-307 (see issue 109, p301), the bass is punchier and the noise floor lower; in fact, background hiss is nearly inaudible. You'll hear the odd bit of digital burbling if you're listening hard, but that's an inevitable result of audio compression rather than any failing on Creative's part.

There's no dedicated Hold switch on the NX - you need to trawl through the menu instead, which is annoying. And the USB interface is only 1.1 compliant, making transfers tedious if you're copying whole albums across. It stopped responding once or twice when powering up too, but that was nothing that pulling the unit out of the battery housing and slapping it back in again couldn't cure.

With 1GB-plus Microdrive-based players on the way, the storage on offer from the MuVo NX is looking a tad miserly, but it's fine for the commute into the office or an hour's workout. As long as you dump the headphones for better ones, it's a vast improvement on the old model and a good player in its own right.