Reg Review I've wondered, in the past, how small solid state digital music players could get, but I'm starting to have to ask the same question of hard drive-based machines. Apple's iPod Mini is sleek enough, but Creative's rival product, the MuVo² comes very close.

Both pack a 4GB Hitachi hard drive, making for ultra compact sizes: the Muvo is 6.7×6.7×2cm, the iPod Mini is 9×5×1.3cm. The iPod Mini has almost half the volume of the MuVo, but the Creative player wins on weight: 90.7g to 102.1g.

Of course, there is one big difference between the MuVo and the iPod Mini: in the UK, at least, you can buy a Muvo. Consumers won't see the Apple product until July. And it hardly been easy to lay your hands on in the US, it seems.

While Creative's Jukebox line of hard drive players remain rather clunky and aesthetically unappealing (see El Reg's review of the Jukebox Zen Xtra), the company's solid-state units are rather more attractive. I like the look the the MuVo line and it's good to see that looks are also one of the MuVo² traits.

The player is small, square and fits neatly in your hand, a little like a large pager. It feels solid but not heavy. The front is shiny black, the rest Creative's usual matt silver finish. On the front is the backlit LCD, a slim two-line job of the kind Creative already uses in the MuVo NX. Below it, to the right are the player's sole controls: a five-way navigation wheel - at last, no jog dial! - and the Play/Pause button that doubles up as the on/off switch.

The 1cm wheel combines the player's volume and Fast Forward/Rewind/Track Skip controls. Push it and you call up the player's menu. Unlike the tiny joystick found on Rio's players, it's easy to push the wrong part of the wheel, particularly if you use your thumb, which the control's position encourages, whether you're left- or right-handed. But it's not difficult to get the hang of and, for me, a big improvement on the jog dial.

On the top of the player, you'll find the headphone socket, USB 2.0 port and the power connector. The latter feeds the MuVo's rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery. Like the Jukebox Zen Xtra, the MuVo's battery is removable, allowing you to slot in a spare when you're out and about, and the main cell drains. Unlike the Xtra, the MuVo's battery fits snugly under a hatch on the back the of player that likewise latches solidly onto the body of the device. In fact, the MuVo shows how Creative should have implemented this feature on the more expensive machine.

The USB 2.0 connector makes for rapid file transfers, either by drag and drop, or using Creative's own music manager application. The MuVo mounts as a USB Mass Storage device, so you can copy any kind of file over, using any OS that supports that medium. I used Creative's own hard-to-find (you can get it here (http://homepage.mac.com/creativemail/.cv/creativemail/Public/NOMADInstaller1.0.1.dmg-link.dmg)) Mac OS X-based Nomad plug-in for iTunes, to copy over the test tracks. Even on my year-old USB 1.1 12in PowerBook G4, the songs went over remarkably quickly, testament perhaps to the performance of Hitachi's 4GB hard drive.

Un-mounting the MuVo forces it to restart and to run its integrated disk scan software. It can't repair the drive if it tracks an error - it warns you to connect the player to a Windows PC and run ScanDisk if it finds something amiss.

The MuVo loads a song into RAM when it's selected. The Hitachi drive is remarkably quiet, but by putting the unit up against your ear you can hear the drive spin up, seek and send the requested data, then power down and park the heads. Unlike the iPod Mini's 32MB anti-skip buffer which is enough for a good chunk of an album, the MuVo fires up the hard drive at the start of every song, suggesting it has a much smaller buffer size. Skip forward through the song, and you'll hear the same thing. Ditto skipping to the next song, and back again.

That said, the anti-skip mechanism certainly does the job, and despite some pretty frenzied shaking I wasn't able to interrupt the playback. You might think that constantly firing up the hard drive would hit the battery life, but Creative has managed to tune its power management system very nicely. Our tests, based on the constant playback of 100-odd MP3s (a mix of 160Kbps and 128Kbps tracks) yielded a very impressive battery life of well over 15 hours.

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Sound as a pound

The MuVo² provides a basic equaliser with four pre-defined settings and a simple customer four-band slider for you to adjust to suit your own taste. I tested the player with the EQ set to Normal - i.e. flat - and the volume set to fractionally over 50 per cent (13 out of 25). With both my reference iPod earphones and Creative's own, the MuVo² produce a clear, vibrant sound. It's slightly quieter than the original iPod, but nudge up the volume a point or two and you wouldn't know the difference.

I should stress that I didn't listen to either device from an audiophile's perspective, more as a consumer of a large quantity of music of a wide variety of styles who likes a good sound but doesn't want to get too anal about it. I find that 128Kbps MP3s are 'good enough for rock'n'roll', as they say. The iPod's AAC format is better, but not alas compatible with the MuVo, so I used the 'standard'.

Playing the same tracks, the MuVo was arguably better than the iPod, primarily because of the sound produced by Creative's much-improved earphones. They yield a more resonant bass and slightly crisper treble than Apple's offering, with the mid-range much the same. There's always a level of subjectivity in sound tests, but I'd say the Creative 'phones gave a livelier sound on both players. Not that the iPod's 'phones are by any means bad, they just offer a little less clarity at the lower frequencies.

The MuVo lacks a record facility, but so what? I've never met anyone who owned a digital music player that could record voice memos who actually used the facility. I'm sure there are some, and there are many other players out there that would meet their needs, but for most buyers I suspect it's really not a deal breaker.

Nor is no support for Creative's EAX audio processing technology, which - let's face it - is fun to play with but of relatively little value to most music buffs.

Extras

If the MuVo has one flaw it's the display, a tiny, two-line affair that provides a track elapsed time, the name of the song at a squint-inducing point size and player status information, such as the EQ pre-set you may have selected and the repeat mode. Here the Creative machine does fall down in comparison with the iPod Mini, whose LCD is barely smaller than the standard iPod's.

The MuVo ships with an appropriately size holster with belt-clip, but once in place, the player's controls and screen are hidden from view, and Creative's bundled earphones do not come with a remote control.

Verdict

It's hard not to like the MuVo². It's compact, light and its 4GB storage capacity will suit most listeners, who, according to researchers, find a 1000-song capacity more than sufficient. It may seem expensive, but its price per byte score is way ahead of cheaper, solid-state players like Creative's own MuVo NX.

Despite the small display, the MuVo² looks good and sounds even better. And it's battery life is simply astounding.

I have to admit that I prefer the look and feel of the iPod Mini. It's sound quality may not quite match the the MuVo²'s - at least on the basis of the original version of the Apple player - but its styling, the ease of use of its controls and that screen are far superior to the Creative machine. Where the iPod loses big time is on battery life - it's half that of its rival's 15 hours - and more playback time.

I'd like to see better cross-platform support coming out of Creative. While the MuVo² will mount as a removable hard drive, it took a long time to do so on my PowerBook G4, and unmounting was a lengthy, uncertain process. I generally have no problem mounting Windows-formatted solid-state drives and players, so I doubt it's that. I haven't tried an iPod with a Windows machine, but I gather it works reasonably well, and I've never had a problem running iTunes on a Windows XP PC.

Windows users should have no trouble with the the MuVo², however. But while Apple is poaching on Creative's territory, it's a shame Creative isn't raiding its rival's homeland.

Nor is is beating it on price. In the US, Apple's $249 iPod Mini is $49 more expensive than the Muvo², but over here both will set you back £199 including VAT. If you want stylish looks and good cross-platform support, you'll have to go for the Apple. But if sound quality and - here's the killer - battery life are more important, the MuVo² can't be beaten. ®

Creative MuVo2
Rating	85%
Pros	— Compact size, solid build quality — Superb sound quality — Excellent battery life
Cons	— Tiny Display — Tricky control mechanism — Weak cross-platform support
Price	UK: £199 including VAT - US: $200
More info	The Creative Nomad web site (http://www.nomadworld.com/)

Related Reviews

Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/25/creative_jukebox_zen_xtra/)
Creative MuVo NX (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/28/creative_muvo_nx_mp3_player/)
Auvi SA-100 64MB (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/05/auvi_sa100_mp3_player/)
Rio Fuse 128MB (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/rio_fuse_128mb_mp3_player/)
Rio Chiba 256MB (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/30/rio_chiba_256mb_mp3_player/)

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