itineraryDUCK

First, a disclaimer. I do not work for Creative or any retail electronics store. My intention with this post is to share my experience with the community. Although I agree with every forum rule or at least understand the need for certain rules, it's still enough to scare a poor newbie. I'm sure as I get situated and more comfortable at TFP the nervousness will pass, but right now I'm at the mercy of all you veterans. Be gentle!

So, with that out of the way...

Creative MuVo TX FM 256MB mp3 player/flash drive/voice recorder/FM radio

My Christmas gift this year was this diminutive flash mp3 player, and I must say I am very impressed. This little gadget roughly the size of a Zippo has a long list of functions. Although it would be impressive enough as a simple audio player, they just had to give it FM radio, voice recording, and flash drive capability. I wouldn't be suprised if it made you breakfast in bed and mowed the lawn as well.

The player consists of a ~1.5" long section that resembles a compact USB drive, complete with male USB jack. This little box holds all of the electronics and if you only want the flash drive capability, this is all you need. The white plastic shell it plugs into provides power to the unit via one AAA battery. I have been playing with the MuVo constantly since Christmas morning and it hasn't died yet, and I don't expect it to any time soon. The plastic body of the player doesn't give much confidence, however, and I don't think it would survive a fall from 6 feet onto concrete. The good news is the battery clip covers three corners of the unit, and Creative sells replacements in a wide variety of colors. So theoretically if you dropped it you have a 75% chance of damage to a noncritical component. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya... punk?!?

The player has a tiny backlit LCD display that's actually very easy to read and well laid-out. Most of the control is mapped to a jog dial-esque thingy on the side of the unit. It's like the thumb joystick on some "sport" Sony CD Walkmans. Tilt it forward to advance the track, tilt it back to go back. Press the wheel in to bring up a menu with all the options and controls not mapped to a button. Speaking of buttons, there are only three not counting the jog stick. +volume, -volume, and play/pause/power. Simple and logical layout. My unit's play button seems a little loose, and I can hear it rattling if I shake the player. I don't think this will be a problem, but I'm keeping my warranty card just in case.

256MB will hold roughly four albums of average length, or about 50 tracks at 128 kbps. This is perfect for me, as I keep my collection of mp3s on my PC. Being able to listen to music on the go is nice, but I don't think the convenience of 40GB outweighs the huge price tag (coughcoughIPOD). Although I will definitely use the MuVo for music and radio, it's the flash drive/voice recorder bit that really attracts me. The MuVo will automatically be recognized as a USB mass-storage device in WinXP, which means no drivers or frivolous software (coughcoughIRIVER). Speaking of software, I threw out the included CD without even trying it out. I'm perfectly happy with my current mp3 encoding software. As far as the voice recording goes, it does suprisingly well given it's not a dedicated recorder. My father bought himself an Olympus digital voice recorder, so I am going to follow up this review with a comparison of the two (sooner or later).

How does it sound, you ask? Wonderful. I tried the player with six different pairs of headphones, from a ratty old walkman-style Sony to a studio grade Sennheiser. Although the output obviously wasn't enough for the high-impedance Sennheiser, the MuVo sounded amazing no matter what headgear I used. Even the included Creative earbuds don't sound half bad, although I can never EVER get earbuds to stay in my ears. The player comes with a couple EQ presets: rock, jazz, pop, etc. "Rock" sounded the best for most of my music, with its accented upper-midrange and bass. If you don't like the presets, you can dial in your own with a 5-band custom EQ. This player has more than enough headroom to be audible in the noisiest environments, although I have yet to test that. Cranking the volume to maximum does become quite uncomfortable, if you're into that.

The FM radio works just as expected. 32 presets, autoscan cabability, FM radio. Whoopee. It won't pick up as clearly as your car, but it will work in a pinch. It seems to use the headphone cable as an antenna, which is odd. Or is it? I don't really know; I'm not on the cutting edge of portable radios.

Did I mention the LCD screen? Apparently earlier MuVos didn't have one, which I honestly can't imagine. You need the LCD screen to do anything short of navigate your music. You get one line of ID3 tag text (don't know if ID3v2 is supported, will test later) and one line that displays track time. All the necessary icons are present, including battery and play mode. Even though the screen is the size of a fortune cookie paper shrunk to >50%, you don't even notice. Its soft blue backlight makes it readable in virtually any light. Another cool thing is the text can be flipped to accomodate left-handers! Very considerate, Creative!

The shining star on the MuVo (at least for me) is its flash drive functionality. Pull the black half of the player from the white battery clip and plug it into an USB 1.1/2.0 port and go. WinXP users need not worry about software or drivers. With the latest firmware upgrade you have the choice of formatting into FAT or FAT32 (as opposed to FAT16). Why would you need a flash drive, you ask, especially with the onset of Gmail and other high-capacity webmail? Well, it's just convenient. If I write a paper at my apartment I can either email it to myself and print it at a campus computer lab, or I can throw it into my MuVo and get the same result. The MuVo wins when toting big files around, since its USB 2.0 capability easily beats my internet connection for transfer speed (Damn you Rafe! Quit hogging our bandwidth with BitTorrent!). YMMV.

Well, I've been just blabbing on about the player stream-of-consciousness style, sorry if I'm not easy to follow. If you want specs, go read one of the many professional reviews out there. Bottom line: the MuVo TX FM is one very capable mp3 player with a lot of tricks up its sleeve. Although I have several reservations concerning Creative's line of sound cards, I can wholeheartedly recommend the MuVo TX FM. I think it goes for about $100 or more for the 256MB version.

Good:
- tiny, handy, good control layout
- innovative jog dial-stick-thingy
- excellent volume & audio quality
- capable as voice recorder, stay tuned for tests...
- doubles as voice recorder, FM radio, flash drive
- WinXP ready--no install needed
- runs on one AAA battery (included)
- replacement battery clips available (in colors!!)
- pretty decent included earbuds
- 128 to 1GB (?) capacities

Bad:
- loose play button on my unit
- plastic shell doesn't feel very sturdy
- might get run through the washing machine accidentally

If you have any questions, please do ask.

grendel

Sounds pretty nifty, and I've wondered about that player, but I still think I'm willing to sacrifice on the convenient size for more storage space when I finally get in on the MP3 player thing... I'm tempted to try out the Creative 20GB, 30GB or 40GB player... I want to be able to load the thing up with a good portion of my CD collection and not have to mess with transferring files much after that - just new files as I get new CDs, etc...

Thanks for the review!

tman17m

thats cool...ive had a creative muvo 2 mp3 player for about a year now...i love it!
its a 4gb player, and its nice and small....i dont have any complaints about it at all. there were bigger (capacity) mp3 players out when i bought my muvo, but i run and work out a lot so the small size really appealed to me. the only thing i wish it had was an fm radio. it does have the capability, but you have to get some extra cable or something, and i would buy the cable, but i cant find it online anywere ...this mp3 player is also the only source of music in my car, so a radio would be nice