NMR provides outstanding information in chemistry and in medicine. But the equipment is expensive as high-field magnets are employed. Low-field NMR works with inexpensive permanent magnets. Until recently these did not provide fields sufficiently homogeneous for spectroscopy and were mostly used for relaxation measurements. Relaxation can also be measured outside the magnet, and small mobile NMR devices have been developed for non-destructive testing of large objects. Today small stray-field magnets and small magnets with homogeneous fields are available for relaxation analysis, imaging, and spectroscopy. Their availability is believed to be essential for shifting NMR analysis from a specialist's tool to a convenience tool. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.