BIOS: Technology Means Business

Creative's latest flash memory digital audio player packs plenty of features and great sound quality into a tiny package, making it much better value than Apple's iPod Shuffle. In fact, it's hard to believe there's so much functionality on offer from such a small player. The MuVo Micro N200 is also so small that you'll forget you even have it when it's in your pocket or clipped to your waist in the gym. With eight different colours and a choice of four storage capacities (128MB to 1GB), the MuVo Micro N200 is a great choice for easy listening on the go - as long as you can live with the small LCD, unintuitive menu system and no true playlist support.

Pros: Small and light; line-in and FM recording; up to 1GB of memory
Cons: Small monochrome LCD; frustrating menu system; mono mic

The MuVo Micro N200 adds yet another product to Creative's ever-growing range of portable digital audio players. The MuVo Micro N200 is a fairly nondescript solid-state device, but its saving grace is its extremely portable form factor (34x66x13mm, 34g) and choice of four flash memory storage capacities (128MB, 256MB, 512MB or 1GB).

Fitness fanatics will also appreciate the inclusion of an FM tuner, whilst others can enjoy voice/FM recording and line-in encoding for direct connection and recording from any compatible audio source. Business users can also record voice notes, interviews or lectures thanks to the built-in mono microphone. All recordings are saved as WAV files.

Available in eight colours (red, pink, green, dark blue, light blue, white, silver, black and purple), the MuVo Micro N200 supports only MP3 and WMA files formats, but it has a good battery life of up to 15 hours from a single AAA battery (included). Creative also bundles matching stereo earbuds, neck cord, transparent rubber carrying case with belt clip, line-in cable (for recording from external audio sources), USB 2.0 cable, as well as a Quick Start booklet and installation CD-ROM.

Even though it has an incredibly small size, the MuVo Micro N200 enables line-in recording to create MP3 files directly from a CD, MiniDisc or record player. You can choose between three bit rates (96-, 128-, or 160Kbit/s) and even enable a function called Sync Track that automatically splits tracks.

It also plays and records FM radio, a feature that really should be standard on all portable digital audio players. We also really liked the bundled 'dynamic bass' earbuds, which were comfortable and provided good quality playback. The player supports DRM-protected songs, but there's no true playlist support.

The controls on the MuVo Micro N200 are minimal and its features are accessed through the single side-mounted three-way jog dial (press to confirm). There are also two dedicated volume keys and a play/pause/power button. At the top of the player is a single 3.5mm headphone jack, and the bottom of the player accommodates a line-in jack and USB 2.0 port. The built-in microphone is situated next to the LCD. There's no hardware Hold switch per se, so you have to navigate the player's menu system in order to deactivate the buttons, which is time consuming.

When it comes to playing back stored audio the MuVo Micro N200 offers a number of playback features, including shuffle, A/B loop, and repeat. There's also a five-band custom equaliser as well as five presets: Normal, Rock, Pop, Classical, and Jazz. Another neat touch is the way you can alter LCD orientation, allowing you to flip the screen to optimise it for either right- or left-handed use. There's also screen settings for contrast, backlighting, and language are also available.

On a more critical level, the blue backlit LCD screen - which displays song title, play time, play mode, FM tuner and preset settings - is small and hard to read, and the side-mounted jog wheel is cumbersome and unresponsive. The ability to scan and store analogue radio broadcasts is a welcome feature, but there's no quick way to select radio channels - you have to cycle through each station one at a time.

The LCD screen doesn't display the radio channel, album and artist info either, and navigating the player's menu interface is frustrating. There's also no option to sort songs by artist, album, or genre, and there's no playlist support. Instead, songs are simply listed in alphabetical or numerical order depending on file name.

Thankfully, the MuVo Micro N200 requires no software, you can simply hook the player up to your computer's USB port and drag-and-drop music, files and images (playback not supported on the LCD). However, you do get a copy of Creative's mediocre MediaSource application, should you not have a program to manage your digital music library or rip audio. If size, weight, convenience and skip-free playback are more important factors than a large storage capacity and LCD, the MuVo Micro N200 should be at the top of your shopping list.