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Creative Labs Nomad MuVo² 4 GB MP3 Player (Version 2.0)

Creative Labs Nomad MuVo² 4 GB MP3 Player (Version 2.0)

List Price: $199.99
Your Price: $189.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: NOT long lasting
Review: I had this for about two weeks before it 'gave up' on me. I sent
it back for repair, but i sure wish the warranty was longer. I feel i shoulda bought a iPod-- longer warranty, & probably alot better built. Other than that the Muvo2 sounds real good, is small & lightweight, but i wish it came with a case (instead of shopping for
an aftermarket one). Thats all!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It's a great value so far!
Review: Got myself a MuVo^2 for my birthday and so far it's okay! 190.85 including shipping and a $50 rebate from creative when it comes, make this one of the best deals going. 1025 songs on 3.78 GIGS is about 20% of my music library and will be much more efficient than carrying around a bunch of CDs in my car.(I purchased a cassette car adapter. My techie sons have had a lot of problems with their wireless ones and I susally leanr from their experiences or I take their advice the first time. The menu is a little hard to use. I'm still getting the hang of it. I didn't install the software following my Navy IT son's advice. He says it will screw around with my Media Player 10 and I believe him. (He's been right about everything else.)The player worked easily with Windows without installing any software. I have XP and initially I loaded everything as drag and drop from Explorer- BIG mistake! I thought I was meticulously compiling this great continuos playlist in order of category - instead I found that Windows Explorer will save the files on the player grouped by track number or alphabetized (when I tried deleting the track numbers) so all the track 1s were grouped together. The track 2s were grouped together and so forth whether they were Gipsy Pop, alternative rock or electronica. I deleted all the files and started over in Media Player 10 (What a wonderful player!), grouping CDs in folders by category or genre, with subfolders by CD. This worked much better BUT- you can't access different artists in different folders- and you can't easily put all your music into the root folder- well, you could but it would really take all day to do that way and then it's hard to find.
I found that music loaded pretty fast even with the standard USB port. I haven't tried charging through that and probably won't since it tells you not to do it without installing the software. Is that correct? can someone out there tell me what that's about? My son's ship is out at sea right now. The sound is pretty good. It's a lot of sound for such a small device. The ear buds are a little big for me and if the device lasts longer than what everyone says, I will invest in another pair. I am disappointed that there is no case available for it. Creative sells one on their page but it just has a belt clip. yeah, I wear those all the time- NOT! It looks like they will soon have a wristband available but NOT YET! I am bifocally challenged myself, yet I found that the display was very easy to read and I like that blue backlight. The menu is still a challenge to maneuver and I'm not sure if it's my (not so gentle) touch or the player. My husband and 3 best friends have bought MP3 players in the last 2 months and since I have the most extensive music library backed up, I have been elected to load the music. So far, Lyra and Muvo^2 have extra points for ease (once you know what to do.)I didn't find the directions that helpful beyond the common sense interpretation of icons, but that was on the Lyra, the I Pod Mini and this one. I definitely recommened backing up your music library the RIGHT way from the beginning or it becomes an insurmountable job later- and that being done managing your files on this or any other player will be a snap.I've loaded about 5 GIGs on my computer and my New Year's Resolution is to load 5-10 CDs a day until I'm finished. (We're on dial-up and getting the Media information is the most time consumming part of the operation.) But now changing music will be much easier and as I buy new music it will be easier to add it into it's proper category rather than wallowing through thousands of random songs.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dead Out of the Box! A Creative Dud . . .
Review: Having worked for Creative in Singapore a few years back, and having owned a number of Creative products over the years, I know that there's nothing better than a Creative product that was developed with careful attention. I also know that when even a few people in the development chain do sub-par work, Creative is capable of bringing a total loser of a product to the market. Such is the case with the Muvo2.

My Muvo2 was a Christmas gift I received today. I knew that something was wrong when the screen lit up as soon as I put the battery in the unit. Sure enough, it froze before the menu came up. No combination of pushing and/or holding buttons with or without the battery or adapter could get it to budge. True to Creative form, the documentation contained no troubleshooting tips--only microscopic graphics and inadequate information in several different languages.

Thinking there might be a snowball's chance in hell that by loading the software and connecting the Muvo to my PC's USB port I might be able to jog it to life, I proceeded to install the included software. Since I didn't want to risk allowing some inane "Prody Parrot" software (early Soundblaster users will remember this) on my PC, I clicked for custom installation. I chose only the plug-in for the Muvo.

Imagine my displeasure when I ran the software and saw that it had installed the plug-in and PDF manual for the Nomad II! Correctly anticipating that I'd probably soon be uninstalling the whole Creative dud soon anyway, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it under "Full Installation." XP never acknowledged that anything had been connected to it, not that I was surprised.

Even if the device had managed to work, I would have been disappointed with it. The battery cover is frighteningly flimsy. The headphone jack is so shallow that about 3/16" of the headphone plug is left exposed even when it is inserted as far as it will go. And the jack's housing appears to be separate from the case, giving the impression that it would not remain secure for long even during normal use.

Although I didn't get to see how precise (or not) the buttons are, they have a very shoddy feel, as does the whole case--like a cheap FM walkman that one would find on the $4.99 table at a discount oddlot store.

I know . . .it's a fact of life for someone who likes gadgets that one every once in a while will turn out to be a loser. So I got a RMA from Amazon already, and I'll head out into the day-after-Christmas crush tomorrow to get a Zen Micro, which has collected some good reviews so far. But if there's even one tiny thing I don't like about it, it'll go back, too; and I'll probably join the other zillion people who are scouring around town to see if there's a store that has any Ipod Minis left! A replaceable battery doesn't make much of a difference when it powers a unit that doesn't work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: great player
Review: I bought this for my partner as a Christmas present and he loves it. Besides the price, the main selling point was ease of use for loading songs. You can't beat drag & drop for loading your tracks. The display is small, but workable. There isn't a case, but after I received it I got a BodyGlove case with armband at Best Buy for $9.99 that is the perfect size.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: And then there was silence...
Review: I bought this MP3 player and was initially satisfied with it. It held 1,000+ songs and fit unnoticed in my pocket. The only complaint is that in the duration of it's working life, if I were to transfer full-length albulms, the player would organize it in alpha order and not in the order of the CD. Three months later and out of the blue, the damn thing stopped working for no apparent reason. There is no point in trying to repair it because I've tried everything; it's dead and buried.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A porsche engine in a kia body
Review: I decided on the MuVo 2 after researching several devices including the IPOD Mini. ITunes has a great simple interface and my employer provides educational discounts on Apple products. These factors made the IPOD Mini tempting. However, the non user replaceable battery and an additional fee for a wall wart style charger (IPOD Mini comes only with USB charging which is reportedly slower than the wall charger) are what convinced me to look elsewhere for a micro hard driver mp3 player.

The Good -

- Replaceable battery and wall wart for charging - various reviews have reported that a charge lasts anywhere from 4 to 12 hours.

- Current rebate makes the total cost of this device around $140.00 which is almost half the price of an IPOD mini with wall charging device.

- I like the fidelity - the sound is a little more focused and compressed than the mp3 cd player I was using...surprisingly big sound for the size of the device which is less than a pack of cigs.

- 4 gig drive holds a lot of tunes - I currently have 3.5 gigs of mp3's - 850 songs.

- It is simple to move tunes back and forth between and XP machine and the MuVo 2 via the USB port. Just make sure that you follow the directions about disconnecting the MuVo 2 from your pc.

The Not so good -

- 90 day warranty - it should be a year. I recently got screwed by Sony's 90 day warranty when my minidisk quit functioning after 110 days. Hopefully, I will not repeat that experience with the MuVo 2
- The reports of the semi cheap plastic feel are warranted. I don't think it would have cost that much more to make the thing a little more rugged. I'm looking for a short stereo jack with a male and female end which might prevent some of the problems I've read about concerning the stereo jack wearing out.
- The Menu is tiny and song navigation is clumsy, but better than I had assumed based on reviews. I can make out the icons with my bi-focally challenged eyes.


Overall, I'm happy with this purchase - especially for the price of $140.00. But I am aware that some reviewers have had the player lock up and have had problems with the stereo jack. The MuVo 2's internals are really slick and the replaceable battery is a feature that all players should have. However, external design could have been easier to use and sturdier.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's nothing less than brilliant
Review: I have a first gen version (the one that came with the case and harddrive that you can use in your camera/pda) and it is such a breeze to use. Driveless operation on PC and Macs, no software required (fricken SOOO nice), it's increadibly light and small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. I've never had any hickups with it EVER. Removable battery. USB 2.0, perfect sound quality, trust me I've used both Creative and Apple products for a long time and there is no questioning the superior sound quality of Creative's products, the MuVo^2 4gig is not an exceptionj to this rule. It's a quality piece of equipment. In addition, for anyone who's curious, the menu system is the same as the other MuVo's in that you have a root folder that contains all your music, divided by folder. It will seem rather streamlined if you're coming from a Nomad Jukebox or an iPod. I have no regrets in purchasing the MuVo^2, it is a quality machine. Also check out the Creative Touch and iPod Mini if you're considering this item.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Creative's products are complete junk
Review: I have an earlier MuVo player and it was the worst electronic item I've ever owned. On that product, the warranty was so short that it was useless, so check the length of this warranty before dropping your money. My player used up batteries much faster than it should have, frequently corrupted its file system (meaning I would have to reformat and start copying songs all over), and most of the time just wouldn't turn on. Also, the Creative customer support sucks. At this price, you should go with a company that has a better track record and that sells more quality products.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great player, but breaks quickly
Review: I received a Movo for my birthday, and only 4 months after receiving it, it stopped functioning. I've never had problems with gadgets -- my laptops, PDAs and cell phones have all worked for years.

Creative has only a 90 day warranty, and it costs as much to fix it as to buy another one. I'd probably go with a more reliable MP3 player in the future. Ipods, for example, are purported to last at least 18 months.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: MP3 player perfection!
Review: The carrying case is a bit bulky and the control buttons take a some getting used to, but these were not the reasons I bought the unit in the first place. They were the sound it produces and the storage capacity along with its ability to handle wma AND mp3. Heard through my stereo or a decent set of head phones it is difficult to believe it's coming from such a compact little thing like the muvo2 sitting in the palm of my hand. 4 gigs of music is more than the average person can keep track of - what's in all those folders and playlists is forgotten over time.

Ease of use with your computer is a HUGE plus. Charge the battery, plug muvo2 in to a USB port and you immediately have a new hard drive to work with - you don't even need the Media Organizer software that comes with it. By the way, you can store data as well as music on muvo2's tiny hard drive you can carry around from computer to computer.

I've had mine for a couple of months now and it has performed flawlessly. There isn't a better buy around right now.


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