And so  that the fateful "LP you might like this" phrase was uttered and there in my sweaty paws was the Creative Muvo TX 256mb, I could barely contain my delight, you see there flash based players are caught in a kind of audio no mans land. Too small to hold your entire collection (or even close to it) and yet expensive enough to worry about leaving it on the bus.

Never the less the Muvo TX was to become my weekend friend and things started well with the 36.7 x 74 x 16mm 43gram baby tucked into a pair of combats, the Muvo TX is little heavier than a USB key and surprise of surprises it is a USB key, USB 2.0 to be precise which gives it a good throughput for loading up any kind of files not just MP3 and WMA as supported.

In fact design wise the Creative Muvo TX is a technological mongrel with it being tricky to tell if its parentage owes more to a USB key or Dictaphone which betrays one of its extras as the MuVo TX can indeed act as a Dictaphone recording up to 16hrs of compressed mono audio within the 256mb capacity. The disk can hold about 4 hours of MP3 tracks or roughly double that in WMA.

The Dictaphone style controls make it easy to use and possible to operate without taking out of a pocket which is a neat trick, the single AAA battery should see it ok for 15 hours of replay, I managed a good 10 hrs without having to replace it. Audio quality is good despite the cheap set of headphones supplied but then at this price point anything decent would be unusual, running with LP's sennheisers the Creative Muvo TX did perform well with a reasonable amount of bass and clarity at the top end.

These little players have a niche market appeal and ideal for situations where vibration would stop a hard disk version functioning, we stopped short of testing the Muvo TX while jogging as LP is allergic to strenuous exercise but some vigorous shaking proved it should stand up to a race around  the block.

Getting MP3 files onto the MuVo is a  simple drag and drop but there are a number of methods which are more structured, Notmad Explorer from Red chair software is a goody for use with creatives range, plus for our friends with Macs then try MuVo helper which allows iTunes to work with the Muvo.

Retailing at the £120 mark its mid priced in this competitive market and for our money is just a little too much for a device which lacks a few niceties like support of Ogg Vorbis which with a small disk would have been a useful addition.

Overall if you want a small MP3 player come USB key this is a good solid choice its no better than the others out there but its a good choice from a respected brand, sorry I can't sound a little more enthusiastic about it but I do have another 3 of these things in the house somewhere!

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