Detailed Creative MuVo NX MP3 Player Description & Review

Creative: MuVo NX £119.99inc. VAT  &  Delivery

"Fun and entertainment for people on the move." What about sedentary youth?

This player has been superceded by the Creative Zen Nano Plus 1GB Black and is no longer available.

Creative have once again chosen to ignore the reality of how songs encoded at 64kpbs actually sound in their marketing bumpf to claim that the you can hold 60 songs in WMA. For shame. WMA capability means that you can fit more songs on the MuVoNX than you would have been able to if it was MP3 only, but that figure is at best unrealistic.

Regardless of that, does the MuVo NX mark an improvement on the previous incarnation, the plain old MuVo Yes. Its got slightly better styling and its slightly more practical.

First of all the obvious: The MuVo NX has a screen. Woohoo! Now you can actually look to check which songs are on the little MP3 player and not have to skip and listen to the intros before you find the one you're looking for.

Creative MuVo NX Info

Size of a cigarette lighter Built in screen for easeier navigation Just needs one AAA battery

The MuVo NX has a built-in microphone for voice recording. Creative have seen the benefit of this to journalists and they're not wrong. Especially since you can record whilst running due to the ram drive - it won't crash or skip as its got no moving parts, so you can record those tricky interviews where the subject keeps running away : > ) You can record up to about 8 hours with this device.

Like all USB RAM Players it easily doubles up as a portable data storage device, so you can take data files to and from work, school, college, whatever. Most XLS worksheets, for example, are less than 2MB, so you could fit plenty of them on this little device. And now since there is actually a screen you can check the name to see which worksheet it is that you have on the MuVo NX without having to connect to your PC first.

Battery News:

Battery included. In fact its the main part of the player, and as such its rechargeable.

M-PORT connectivity ensures direct links with compatible loudspeakers. Those compatible loud speakers are Creative only, and even so its only some of them. If you have the speakers you probably already know, if you don't its not M-Portant

Like its predecessor, the MuVo NX is tiny; about the size of a cigarette lighter. It weighs next to nothing, so it's very easily portable. It has very good looks that will still look good in years to come and it can do a variety of simple jobs with no fuss and no faff.

Red Chair Software: Notmad Explorer

Most people who use Creative's PlayCenter will have come across its limitations. It's not a terrible piece of software, but then again it is ...

We heartily recommend that anyone with a Creative Jukebox buys themselves this piece of software to use instead. Notmad from Red Chair Software has just about every feature you can think of to give you full control over your Jukebox and its contents.

Manage all your music on your PC and on your Jukebox with this one all-embracing program.

Navigate through your Jukebox using the 'Notmad Explorer'. It has the look and feel of Windows Explorer, so it's instantly recognisable. It has very similar features too:

Drag-and-drop or copy/ paste Playlists, files or folders. Where did you put that song? Is it on your Jukebox at all? Is it on your Jukebox 4 times under different Playlists? Find out quickly with a search that uses a built-in, powerful SQL engine. Synchronise the contents of your PC and your Jukebox with one click. Notmad will automatically build any necessary new Playlists and directories when you transfer the MP3s (or WMAs) from your PC.

This software has advanced features as well. You can set your Jukebox up so that you can control it over a Network, for example, meaning you could access your Jukebox from the other side of the world!

Boasted features include:

• Clean, intuitive integration with Windows Explorer.
• Transfer files, folders, and Playlists by drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, and SendTo.
• Automatic playlist and directory generation following transfers.
• Drag-and-drop playlist and ID3v2 and WMA tag editing.
• One-Touch PC-to-Jukebox synchronisation.
• Search and HTML/XML reporting provided by embedded Notmad SQL Engine.
• Internal Memory, SmartMedia Card, and FM Tuner support for Nomad II series.
• Tunes2Go: Automatically fill your Nomad II with songs on your way out the door.

Unlike some software manufacturers (e.g. Realnetworks) Red Chair have not taken the "Cash Cow" attitude that customers should buy their goods and then buy an update every six months for life, because with one purchase you can get lifetime updates, if you so choose.

All-in-all a great piece of software that does exactly what software should do: make your life easier.