Creative MuVo² FM (5GB)

As Creative's latest entry into the microdrive-based player market, the MuVo² FM certainly seems to have the functional capacity to take a bite out of the trail-blazing Apple. With a smaller form factor and increased storage capacity (5GB), it definitely shakes the Apple's tree, though with design still remaining the bane of Creative's efforts, the MuVo² FM would almost certainly be favored by those who value function over form.

Design
Very handy at 66.5 x 67 x 20mm and 103g, the MuVo² FM is small and light enough to pop into jeans without any significant bulge. Indeed, it compares favorably with the iPod Mini in terms of size, with the latter being slightly lengthier (104mm) and the former being slightly broader.

	Thumb-tied: The navigation joystick

While our earlier first look at the MuVo² FM encountered a slight issue with the navigation joystick, we found in further testing that it was only a question of familiarity to get the joystick responding adequately under the control of our thumb. With Creative relegating menu navigation, volume control and song skipping to the joystick, this freed the unit of a lot of extraneous buttons that could have potentially cluttered up the player surface. What's puzzling is why the HOLD button is relocated on the in-line remote. If you are inclined to leave the remote at home, the HOLD function can be found within the menu itself; not a very smart move considering that there were occasions when we had to shove the player into our pocket in a hurry.

	What? Scrolling through 2,000 songs with that itsy bitsy screen?

For menu navigation, the MuVo² FM performs very well, considering that most of the menu functions are at most only three levels of clicks away. However, if the user is one who likes to browse through the song archives every so often, he will no doubt be exasperated with the miniscule LCD display (33 x 9mm) which can display only one song title at a go. There is also no conceivable search function to hunt up a desired track, either by song title or artist. This is a significant oversight, especially when taking into account that the MuVo² FM has one of the largest capacities for microdrive MP3 players out there. We had to get around this by creating multiple folders via the provided desktop music management software and dumping songs into alphabetically arranged folders.

Features
We are glad Creative has finally decided to ditch the old in-line remote that came with FM and voice recording functions in favor of a new remote that smacks of the utilitarian. Stream-lined and small enough to even look chic, the pearl-colored controller comes with only one bane--lack of a LCD display, which also naturally means lack of menu access. For users with a tendency to tweak their menu settings every 15 minutes or to switch between FM and MP3 playback, they will probably be miffed that they have to whip out their players every time the occasion calls for it.

	Here we are. Pretty as a picture.

For portable audiophiles, the MuVo² FM caters to their fidelity cravings by including four preset equalizer settings (Rock, Pop, Classical and Jazz) which, though a little on the stingy side especially when compared with the iPod Mini, is redeemed by the four-band user-defined equalizer option.

As well as the usual playback options of shuffle and repeat all, the MuVo² FM, unlike its older brother the Creative Zen Touch, can be instantly recognized as an external hard drive without the need to install any other driver or software. This bodes well for the executive type who might have a need to download office files for home.

Using Seagate's new ST1 1-inch hard drive, which looks exactly like a conventional CompactFlash card, the MuVo² FM is touted to be able to stand up to the rigors of a workout or run with a 2MB buffer and a G-Force protection technology, though we will still stick to our old advice of using a flash-based MP3 player when flexing out in the gym.

Performance
In our test, the preset equalizers were not particularly impressive. Using the Sony MDR-G74SL headphones, we tried out X-Japan's shock rock track Wiggle and then put Diana Krall's They Can't Take It Away From Me through its paces with the Sony MDR-EX051 earbuds. Both underperformed when we switched to the respective equalizer settings, Rock and Jazz, with less than impressive performances on the bass and treble. However, when we used our own recalibrated equalizer settings, the sonic pedigree of the MuVo² FM won through with booming bass for the X-Japan track as well as tight mids and highs for the Diana Krall song.

FM radio clarity is pretty decent, but we did not like the fact that the autoscan function missed a couple of weaker stations like BBC and WKRZ, which we had to manually tune in to. Another issue we had being unable to conduct a thorough battery test on our unit, with the MuVo² FM hanging twice on us halfway through each test. However, since Creative tends to have a tradition of understating its product's playback stamina, the likelihood of the MuVo² FM fulfilling its 14-hour battery life is pretty high.

For download speed from the computer through the USB 2.0 connection, the MuVo² FM managed a speed of 4.2MB per second, which roughly equates to a speedy 19 minutes for a full top-up of the player to 5GB.

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