perfect! (Creative Muvo² 4 GB)

Member Name: spidercallum

Product:	Creative Muvo² 4 GB
Date:	28/07/08 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: does everything you need a MP3 player to do... play MP3s, extremely cheap nowadays

Disadvantages: doesn't come close to some of the MP3 players now, but it's cheap.

Creative are now one of the leading MP3 Player brands in the world. I've known a lot of people with Creative MP3 players, and all have been very good with no problems whatsoever.

It was probably 3/4 years ago now I wanted one of these for Christmas when I was about 14/15 years old. At the time, 4gb was pretty big for a MP3 player as they were quite new to the market (most other popular MP3 players at the time were 128, 256, 512 and 1024mb). I wanted quite a big one, as I listen to a lot of music, and for the amount of money I was allowed, the Creative Muvo2 4gb just fit into my budget at about £130, which is a hell of a lot of money for a MP3 player of this size (4gb) nowadays as you can get a say, Creative Zen 16gb which also has a colour screen and the capability of video playback for £100...

Even now, I am still extremely happy with my Creative Muvo2, I hardly use it any more, because the only time I can ever really listen to music is when i'm at home, and I have a laptop and a Xbox 360 rigged up to a sound system, so there isn't really any need for any MP3 Player. I've never had any problems with my Muvo2, it has been dropped and got wet several times (it wouldn't turn on when it got soaked in a thunderstorm when it was in my pocket once, but it was fine and never had any problems with it after I set the hair dryer on it for a few minutes).

The player itself is very small, and it was one of the main rivals to Apples very popular iPod Mini, which did do very well for itself, too. It is a square shape, measuring about 6.7 by 6.7cms, and has a depth of about 2cms - it weighs in at 90.7g.

It has a Hitachi Hard drive, which at the time made for its compact sizes - of course compared to some of the products in the market today (with the likes of the iPod shuffle and competing MP3's) this isn't THAT small. The hard drive is fast though, and as well as holding a lot of MP3's, you can also store any other files for easy transportation, although you will have to carry around you lead to transfer the files to other computers, but this did come in handy with some of my coursework as it was expensive to get your hands on a decent size USB pen drive at the time.

The screen is a small, backlit B&W screen, which glows blue when it's on. From left to right, top to bottom, it shows the status of the song (playing, paused or stopped), the timer/duration of the song, the track number out of the total number of tracks, the battery (3 blips, 2 blips, 1 blip and flashing), and finally on the bottom row, the artist, song title and album name (that scrolls if it doesn't all fit on the screen).

The buttons are quite small and fiddly, even for people with small fingers and thumbs, but you soon get use to it. It consists of 6 buttons, 5 of which are on one circle. Left and right being Skip back and forward, up and down being volume up and down, and the centre button being menu. With the menu, you can choose folders to play, create playlists, delete and move songs, and a few other things like voice recording and locking the keys (Please note that you to review the radio and to record voice, you need the additional remote that plugs into the headphone socket, which isn't usually sold with the MP3). The final button is separate, and is the Play/Pause button. This is also doubles up as the Power on/off button when you hold it for a few seconds.

The sound quality is really good, and for those who like to listen to their music loud, this is a good MP3 for that. I can turn it up in the car, and people would moan that they can hear my music over the radio.

Overall, the MP3 looks really nice with it's glossy dark blue and matt silver finish. The only thing that I didn't like was the packaging, as it came in one of those cut open plastic sealed wrapper things... But to be honest you can pick these up so cheap now on eBay that there wouldn't really be any point in selling them. They MP3 comes with some really nice headphones too, but mine broke after a couple of years of using them.

Summary: a strong, reliable MP3 player that's perfect for someone who just want's to listen to music!

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Features:
Sound quality:
Download speed: