Creative MoVo²
Buy Now...
I often have cause to disagree with stated figures nearly always they are not as good as claimed, here however the claimed battery life for the Creative MuVo² is 14 hours in itself one of the best on the market, the only others I know of that gets close are from Rio. However I did the test three times and each time it played my music in MP3 format for 18 hours.
The tests were done in different ways firstly over two days 12 hours on the first and then 6 hours on the second. The other two occasions it was in smaller chunks, over as much as a week. So I am sorry as far as I am concerned the claim of 'up to 14 hours' is wrong it's 18 hours.
The unit is small enough to fit in any pocket, most of my time on my travels it lived in my shirt pocket. It is 6x6x2cm and weights only around 100 grams. It is a USB2 device (however it will work on USB 1 systems). Unlike earlier Creative devices it can also easily be used as a Mule as it appears as a drive letter in My Computer and you can therefore drag and drop items to and from it. Software is provided but if you already have MP3 or WMA files stored on your PC then just drop them onto it. That's it you now have a unit ready to play files for up to 18 hours.
It is 4GB (actual size 3.78GB), I copied 80 MP3 tracks of varying lengths that took up 341MB of space, the total continuous playing time was 6hours and 10minutes. Most of these tracks were ripped at 128mbps. If you a fan of WMA it is stated that 64mbps in WMA is as good as 128mbps in MP3. So if that is your bag you could halve the space to around 170MB for 6hours or music. Now the maths if 370 minutes of music takes 341MB of space how many minutes can you fit in 3.78GB, answer a lot. The box states up to 1050 MP3 songs at 3½ minutes a song, mine were a lot longer than that but it still adds up to a lot of battery recharges to play the full content just once.
The battery recharger is included and plug it in to the top of the unit for a couple of hours and you are good for as long a working day as most are capable of and certainly enough to get the European Parliament screaming you are working too hard.
There are three inputs on the top of the unit one for earbuds, one for USB lead and the other for the charger (all provided). There are just two controls on the face of the unit, a small button for on/off and start and a larger button for menus this has four positional movements round the outside. However to just play the music in a once for everything mode you only need to press the on button and then briefly again to start it playing. It will then stop playing only when you have played all your tracks providing the battery lasts that long.
It has a 3x1cm two line LCD display that shows track time elapsed track number and battery state on the top line and track and artist name (this scrolls) on the second line, this information is small but readable. There is a backlight that could be useful.
Should you be a novice to MP3/WMA then the Creative Media Source software can handhold you through converting CD's to MP3 or WMA easily and simply. Dabs have it for £143.98 and remember you can also use it transfer files between PC's.
Link : http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=215&product=4908
| add to del.icio.us | Digg this review |
| StumbleUpon | |
!!
