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Review: Creative MuVo NX 128MB

by Tarinder Sandhu on 3 November 2003, 00:00

Tags: Creative

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External thoughts and features

Packaging is pretty important these days. One can often discern a company's attention to detail by having a good look at how the product is packaged and the extras that it arrives with.

The packaging is first class. The Muvo NX is available in both 128MB and 256MB configurations. Our sample, as you can see, contains 128MB of flash memory, which has more uses than originally meets the eye. The see-through box provides more than adequate protection against transit knocks and scrapes.

Once you manage to invade the box, which is no mean task in itself, the following hardware / software items are found. Notice how small the actual MuVo unit is. The package comprises of the 128MB MuVo NX unit, 2 battery compartments that are presented in either silver or red (it's nice to have a choice, don't you think?), a generous earphone cable that attaches to two decent, well-constructed earphones, a handy protective cover that doubles up as a means of attaching the MuVo to the armband that's also provided. A multi-language fold-out instruction manual, a single AAA alkaline battery, the software CD and another warning manual complete an all-around package.

We'll focus on the MuVo NX first and then we'll discuss how the supplied software interacts with it.

The two battery compartments are identical, save for the differences in colour. Both are able to hold a single AAA battery, and both provide a small loop to attach the MuVo to a necklace and slim keyring. The 2p piece should give you some kind of idea of the MuVo NX's size. All told, with the battery compartment in place and an AAA battery in situ, the MuVo NX measures 74mm x 36mm x 14xmm, and weighs in at around 43g, including battery. That's just a little heavier than the original MuVo and a number of Sony Network players, but the NX now sports one of the chief features missing on the original; it now has a small LCD screen incorporated into the sleek unit. The presence of an information screen has caused Creative to relocate a number of buttons that were present on the original. Rather than transplant them all across and make the NX look a little too congested, Creative has decided to incorporate a jog dial to provide some of the more advanced features. That clears the way for just two buttons that act as volume controls.

You'll perhaps notice that the MuVo NX features a standard USB-style connection. As long as you're using a O.S newer than Windows Millennium, the NX simply plugs into any available USB port and is immediately recognised as a removable storage device. It just happens to be an MP3 / WMA player too. It's a shame that Creative didn't bundle in an USB extension lead. Leaning over the back of the PC isn't all that much fun. I guess it's time that a USB hub was purchased.

The NX, once incorporated back into a battery compartment, switches on via a 3-second depression of the power button that you can see at the bottom of the upper right-hand picture. It's held in for a few seconds until power is activated. It's then that the scrolling wheel comes into its own.

  

The NX automatically defaults to music mode, and if there's either MP3s or WMA files on the flash memory, it'll begin playing immediately. A handy feature is that if you decide to switch off, it'll remember the exact location that you were last at and resume playing from there once re-activated. The scrolling wheel cycles through the tracks and also works as a fast forwarding tool by holding on to the scrolling, either towards the left or right, for a short while. The in-built volume control offers options from 0-40, with 40 being just a little louder than comfortable on the supplied earphones. MP3 playback, recorded at 96kb/s, was crisp clear and punchy - surprisingly good for such a minute unit. Creative reckons that the MuVo NX produces a signal-to-noise ratio of >90dB. The earphones managed to convey a good deal of music emotion for such basic-looking 'phones. We would have liked to have seen some form of remote controlling on the earphones. Even though the MuVo NX is compact enough to be slipped out of a pocket without bother, a remote control  would have been ideal.

Once a song is selected, the elapsed time is shown on the upper portion of the 96x32 LCD and the song's name is seen scrolling along the bottom (assuming ID3 tags are present). The screen is a little small, and may cause problems with those whose eyesight is less than perfect. There's a decent blue backlight that can be preset for various lengths - great for night-time listening. The small battery bar, on the top-right of the music display, highlights the approximate power level, with each bar counting for roughly 33%. We found that the supplied Alkaline battery lasted for around 8 hours before giving up the ghost.

Pushing the scrolling wheel down into the MuVo highlights a number of options available, some of which are shown on the right-hand picture. With a bit of dabbling, the MuVo NX 128MB offers all the options associated with a full-size player, including song repeat, folder repeat, shuffle, and shuffle repeat. There's also  4 presets that offer pseudo rock, classical, pop and jazz modes. To be fair, each preset does sound different from the rest. One can manually define a preset by toggling a custom 5-band graphic equalizer. Nice touch, eh ?.

The settings section includes contrast options for the LCD screen and a clever setting that allows you to 'flip' the display so that the controls seem natural to a left-handed person - that's creative (sorry, bad pun) thinking on Creative's part. One can also delete unwanted files and undertake rudimentary editing from a separate section - important if you're doing it on the move and have no access to a computer. The LCD screen is a major advancement for the MuVo line, we feel. Creative also decided to bundle in a voice recorder that's accessed from another sub-screen in the settings section. It records in 8Khz, 4-bit WMA format, and you can fit almost 9 hours of recording on to the 128MB model. Playing back a 2-minute recording showed it to be quite capable. Voices were generally clear and distinguishable from one another. Another little feature that's sure to impress.