The MuVo Response
Creative Labs started off from this premise, telling itself it needed to work on the essentials in order to reduce the costs. The MuVo has 64 MB of memory (a 128 MB version is marketed in the United States and may eventually reach Europe), and uses a single AAA battery. Its functions consist of just the basics. As a result, it is tiny and very light (28 grams). You really can take it anywhere. Even if you are wearing nothing but a tiny tanga on the beach, you could slip its elastic strap around your waist! Yet despite this, Creative Labs have not stinted on the audio quality.
The sound quality is perfectly comparable to that of other brand name personal stereos. The MuVo replays samples with natural sound and without losing any of the registers. The sound is slightly rounded toward the low notes and that's a good decision to make because listening with the earphones, the high notes tend to sound louder than the low notes. The headset that comes with the stereo is well-made and has not cut down on the spectrum, ensuring that every musical instrument can be heard accurately. On the other hand, it tends to veer toward the sharps. In any case, if I may give you a word of advice, whenever you need to listen with earphones, buy the Sennheiser MX500 ($17.95). They are high-fidelity and reproduce the sound evenly.
But back to the MuVo. The functions are limited to the strict minimum: start/stop, next/previous item, volume and carrying strap. Frankly, that's plenty. An equalizer is the only luxury that one might miss. The only other feature is a light that shows green when the MuVo is in play mode, orange when the battery is charging and red when the power supply has run out or when the MuVo is connected to a PC. The single battery offers a lifespan of continuous listening that we measured at 10 hours. That is really good performance and if you look at battery price, it's really not expensive and means you won't have to pack a charger in your suitcase for your next trip.
