Creative MuVo Micro N200

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Good
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Look & Design	Good
Range of Features	Diverse
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Small, Reasonably priced, Can record from multiple sources
Disadvantages:	May need regular Firmware/Driver updates

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I had wanted an MP3 player for some time, having destroyed every portable cd player I have owned, by dropping, bashing on the train etc. So for my birthday this year my dad bought me the Creative Muvo Micro N200 with 512mb of memory.

This is a dinky little player about the size of a matchbox but a little thinner in a classy black colour. It came with a little rubbery case with a clip on the bag to protect it and make it easier to carry around (by attaching to your pocket, waistband, bag etc.).

Other accessories included were user guide,headphones, a USB cable to connect to your pc, a cd-rom to install the relevant software on your pc and a line-in cable to attach the player to an audio source such as a cd player from which you can record cds, radio etc. There is also a little dot on the player labelled 'mic' where you can voice record.

The player takes 1 x AAA battery which has varying playing time depending on the brand of battery you use. A panasonic battery only lasted me about 3 days when used for 2-3 hours per day whereas duracel or tesc own brand lasted about 7-10 days with 2-3 hours use.

As I wasn't very confident about downloading mucis I had specifically asked for a player which could also record from CD, so was very impressed to receive this. the only problem is, the quality of the tracks recorded isn't great. The sound is fairly low and muffled, so you have to turn the volume up quite high when listening.

After listening with growing frustration I decided to take the plunge and try connecting it to the pc. This was fairly easy, involving inserting the cd rom and following the step-by-step registration instructions, after which I was ready to begin downloading music to the player.

To do this you need to connect one end of the USB to the player and one to the port in the back of your pc. You then download music from your chosen source which then adds the track(s) to the player. At first this is only in 'play' mode, so the tracks of choice are played on the pc. To save them to the player so you can listen to them on the move you need to save the tracks into your music library. As this is an MP3/WMA player the tracks must be MP3 or WMA, which isn't a great problem as most downloadable tracks are one of the two.

If you have ever downloaded music you will notice that the tracks can vary in quality, with some being louder than others, or even simply having a different version to the one you are looking for, so playing them on your pc before saving to your player is a very good idea. Also, the Muvo N200 has a facility whereby you can standardise all your songs. So if you have tracks with varying volumes, you can fiddle a little with the settings on the pc and have all the tracks synchronised on the player with the same volume. I discovered this was definitely a good feature as one or two songs were very low and a couple were very high so it saves on you having to fiddle with the volume all the time or risking deafening yourself.

512 mb usually means you can save about 100 songs on your player but I so far have about 120 with no sign of becoming full as yet! This may be because some files are larger than others, with I think WMA taking up more memory than MP3.

As with most cd players today you can also adjust your player's 'sound' meaning you get the choice of jazz, rock etc which basically means that you choose whether to have more bass, more instrumental etc. You can also select whether to randomise the order in which your songs are played.

MY OPINION:

Although the Micro Muvo N200 is very easy to use with a simple to follow user guide, there are a few problems with it.
Firstly, when you press any of the buttons the blue light comes on and you hear a slight buzzing/hissing sound which continues until the light switches off. Not a major problem as far as I am concerned but others may think it interrupts the quality of the track.
One problem which I do have with the player is that after about 6 months of continuous use it appears to be on its last legs! Now when I go to switch the player on it flashes on for a second then switches itself off. It also began to switch itself off randomly while listening to music. At first I simply tried again and it was fine but now it takes about 30 atempts to switch on if at all and I am sorely tempted to get a brick and drop it on it.

At aprox £60 I would definitely have expected better from this, especially as Creative is quite a well respected brand.

Oh one last little niggle, the headphones are plastic covered with the little foam bits, which aren't very secure and will get lost very easily.

THE TECHY BITS:

Dimensions - 3.4 cm width x 1.3cm depth x 6.6 cm height.

Weight 22g

sound Output mode - Stereo

PC Interface Supported - High Speed USB

Flash Memory - 512 mb

Radio - Digital radio FM tuner

I would say this is a fairly good MP3/WMA player but definitely does not have a very long shelf life. I would have just put this down to my heavy - handedness but I have looked at other reviews of the product and quite a few people seem to have had this problem. The fact that I got frustrated the other day and whacked it on the table, breaking the battery cover now means I cannot use the guarantee so I guess I only have myself to blame there.

I am sure that you can probably get a cheaper player with similar features or pay a little more and get a better quality one, which I would advise you to do. I am quite sad to have to say that as the player itself is very good I just can't afford to replace it every 6 months!

UPDATE!!! 6/2/2006

Ok so I posted my Muvo review on another site and guess what!?! Some lovely person kindly informed me that the problems with my player could be easily solved by a simple upgrade. Well the link they provided didnt work so I went to the Creative website and it gave me a step by step instruction o nhow to upgrade my 'firmware' which I believe has something to do with the 'drivers' needed to run the player. I am not techy so I have no idea what it all means but I know you need drivers to run certain components such as printers etc so I guess the MP3 player is just another bit of hardware like a printer, so it makes sense - sort of.

Anyway the outcome was, that I downloaded the update and now the player works fine! Thank you so much to the person with the advice as otherwise I would've given it up as a lost cause and spent money on a new one!

As it is, I now have my lovely Muvo and have to of course revise my previous opinion on its durability and value for money. Both of these now get much higher ratings.