I’m all for simple and easy to carry around DAPs. They just make sense. When it comes to Creative, they have this tendency to test the waters first with a simple ultra basic DAP and then proceed to subject it to re-release under a different name and with a couple of add-ons. The Creative T200 is an upgrade to their MuVo T100 ultra basic USB drive styled DAP. Here’s how this one fared.

Form Factor
The T200 is exactly like its younger brother in design except that this one has a small color LCD display. Still bearing the pen-drive styling with a built in USB port, the T200 also has a five way nav-pad. A shortcut key and play and pause button that doubles as the power key are located at the top. This has replaced the folder selector/shuffle, repeat switch that was present in the older version. The 3.5mm earphone socket is at the other end of the device. The color display (background colors can be changed) adds a little more versatility to the device as well as styling and additional features. The earphones have been changed to the in-ear style (not my favorite choice).


Although it may be easy to misplace the USB cap as it has no tether, the T200 is a good looking DAP.

Features and Performance
The navigation through the UI is fairly simple to figure out after you've played around with it for a little while. Although I was able to simply copy paste my music onto the drive for immediate playback, there was no option for creating or using a playlist. That’s not a problem if you store your music in folders according to preference. The folder explore option can be easily accessed from the Now Playing screen along with all other music oriented features. One minor issue was that the music in the background would stop if I decided to scan through a different folder.


Audio quality was good but not great. It never became necessary to ever peak out the volume as the T200 is capable of some pretty steep decibel levels. There is a slight jarring of the audio when the volume is peaked though but like I said, it rarely became necessary to ever reach that point.


There was a significant amount of bass but unfortunately there was also a significant amount of highs and mids as well. The tones were a little too sharp for my taste and the bass didn’t compensate for the same too much. Thankfully there are EQ presets available to help adjust the tones. However, even with a 5 band customizable EQ option, the highs tended to be a little sharp, but the bass did get better. There are also multiple Shuffle and Repeat options. The player reads - MP3, WMA and WMA (DRM9) formats.

The FM radio is one of the new additions in features to this upgrade. It worked out well enough. The reception wasn’t as good as some of Creative’s other players, but was decent.


Another addition to the feature set is the inclusion of a built-in microphone to be used for voice recordings. It records voice clips in .WAV format and the quality is quite average.

Battery
The MuVo T200 did not fare too well in this department. On a single full charge the device ran non stop for just about 7 hours for music playback. Considering its price one would expect more.


The Bottom Line
With a price tag of Rs. 2,999 for just 2GB and Rs. 4,499 for 4GB I don’t think that the Creative MuVo T200 would do too well. Sure it’s a good looking device and it’s easy to use with good features etc. but the space is too little and the battery life isn’t anything to write home about so the addition of the display and other features doesn’t fully compensate for that.