Creative MuVo2 4GB

It's hip to be square - especially when you can pack 150 albums in your pocket

If you've already been to the Big Apple, bought your iPod mini and flown back, you may as well stop reading now. If your love of gadgets hasn't reached such fanatical heights, however, we recommend taking a look at this little 4GB jukebox from Creative. Thanks to its support for Windows Media Audio files, it can store virtually twice as many albums as Apple's cutesy contender - 150. Plus, more importantly, it's available to buy right now.

The design is pretty unusual for a digital audio player. A perfect square about the size of a Post-it note and the depth of a pack of cards, it fits pretty comfortably in both pocket and palm, but not quite as snugly as the 1.5GB Rio Nitrus (T3 96,5/5). Although there's no choice of alternative iPod mini- style colour schemes, the silver-and-black finish is fairly smart - just don't expect to set your friends aglow with jealousy. Weight-wise, it's a fraction heavier than the Rio Nitrus and a smidgen lighter than the iPod mini.

The weak spot in the actual hardware is, surprisingly, the screen. We say surprisingly, because the last MP3 player that Creative released - the Zen Xtra 60GB (T3 95,4/5) - had a monster-sized screen capable of displaying hordes of track info or a big list of albums. The MuVo2's display only has room for a measly two lines, which works out at one song or album when you're attempting to navigate through your collection. When you're trying to find one song out of nearly 2,000, that's a pain in the butt.

CREATIVELY CONFUSING
Finding that one song isn't made any easier by the unnecessarily confusing interface. While it's fine for Creative's smaller 128MB and 256MB MP3 players, a device that stores this many tracks needs a touch more sophistication. What you get instead is something that's laborious (everything takes too many clicks), messy (for such a tiny screen,it could do without icons and text) and basic (you can't browse by tag info such as album titles and genres). These shortcomings are compounded by the navigational buttons. The main pad is too flimsy and imprecise, and disappointingly, there's no proper 'hold' button - you have to go through the menu to lock it.

Getting tunes onto this model in the first place is an easier affair, as you can just drag and drop songs (or other files) via Windows Explorer. You also get an MP3/transfer app called MediaSource, which is better than Creative's old software, but it's rudimentary and nowhere near as feature-packed as the app you get with Rio's latest MP3 players. Connection to a PC is very zippy, thanks to the USB 2.0 socket.

Audiophiles will be pleased with this player, as it sounds clear,goes plenty loud enough and comes with a surprisingly decent pair of in-ear headphones. It's also one of the few units to support WAV (uncompressed) music, for when quality's the priority. The bundled TravelSound speakers are good fun - they sound as good as those on a cheap portable FM radio - although ditching them saves you around £35.

Battery life is one of the product's stronger points - it clocks in at 14 hours, just two short of the Rio Nitrus's 16 hours. In the model's favour, you can remove and replace the battery if it dies.

There's stuff to like about this small-size, big- capacity jukebox, but it's hard to recommend when you compare it to the competition - Rio's 1.5GB Nitrus is far slicker to use, while next month's iPod mini offers a 4GB disk for £100 less. Adam Vaughan

KEY FEATURES:
4GB hard disk, plays MP3,WMA, PC-only, USB 2.0, 14 hours' battery life, dimensions: 66 x 66 x 20mm, weight: 91g