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Creative Labs MuVo V100 Review
Creative Labs MuVo V100 Product Introduction
MuVo V100 is Creative Labs ultra-light MP3 player with flash memory. Actually it is an updated version of earlier MuVo MP3 players. It has all the facilities of a great MP3 player and features an inbuilt USB interface which helps in easy data transfer without cables.
Description and Features of the Creative Labs MuVo V100
Creative labs are famous for producing easy to use, MP3 players. MuVo V100 is no exception. The player is 0.59 inches thick 2.93 inches long and 1.44 inches broad. It comes in various attractive colors ranging from pink to black. Compared to a few other MP3 players in market this might seem a bit larger. But considering the inbuilt USB connector the size is acceptable.
The player has a small LCD screen, four control buttons and a small scroll wheel. The wheel is used for various purposes. There is a power button near the LCD screen. This also acts as the pause button. On the side we have two buttons to control the volume. The multipurpose scroll wheel near the volume controls is used to control most of the activities of the player.
The scroll wheel is used to browse through the song files and between various folders. One slight press of the wheel will select the song and play it. The scroll wheel also controls the brightness of the LCD screen, the voice recorder and the equalizer settings. It is a bit hard to use the wheel because of its size, but only initially.
The whole set comes enclosed in a small L shaped case and could be operated easily using disposable AAA batteries. The ease of usage score for the MP3 player is 60 %.
Creative Labs MuVo V100 Performance
Creative labs MuVo V100 gives battery life of 18 hours with normal Duracell batteries. Since the support is mostly audio oriented the battery life is quite good. The battery usage score of the player is 80 percent.
The small LCD screen displays has a bright, adjustable backlight and displays all the basic details like song titles and folder names in sharp text. MuVo V100 has the facility of displaying the lyrics of the song in the LCD screen as it is played. But the LRC feature is not inbuilt. The user has to transfer the lyrics into the player and program it according the songs timings.
Audio quality is really excellent. There is no hissing sound or any form of distortion while hearing the songs. The equalizer presets for common genres like pop, rock, jazz and classical will leave even the people with pickier ears satisfied.
Audio file types like MP3, WMA and WAV files are supported. JPEG file format is supported for video. Voice recording facility performance is also acceptable. The unit scores 70 percent in its overall sound score.
Main features of Creative Labs MuVo V100
The specialty of the MP3 player is its ability to function as a USB connector. There is no need of any cables to transfer data as the unit could be plugged in directly to the USB port of any MAC or windows system.
It supports unprotected WMA files and standard MP3 file formats. It is capable of playing any DRM protected files purchased from Wal-Mart Music Downloads, Napster and many other online stores.
MuVo V100 does not need any special software to connect to a PC. The inbuilt Creative Labs MediaSource 5 suite acts as a wonderful audio batch converter. Hence converting MP3 files to WMA or WAV format is made easier than ever.
This SmartFit facility in the software makes transferring data from the PC or to the PC quite easy. It converts the MP3 file formats into smaller WMA formats making way to storing more music.
The Good
The highlight of the MP3 player is its ability to double as USB key drive. It could be carried easily anywhere and plugged into any system without any cables or conversion software. The audio quality and the equalizer settings are quite good. It is a very affordable MP3 player with wonderful, multipurpose inbuilt software. The overall score for the MP3 player is 73 %.
The Bad
Many advanced facilities like lyric display and voice recording requires lot of effort from the user side. Music could not be purchased from iTunes or Microsoft's proprietary Zune store which is a big drawback. The scroll wheel is quite hard to use initially. It takes time to get used. All the folders created by the user are taken as a subfolder under the main folders. Hence one has to navigate through the main menu each time.
Areas that could be Improved
A slightly modified scroll wheel would prove to be much more useful. Only basic audio file formats are supported and advanced audio file format support would be a worthy improvement. Many more people would likely use The LRC feature if its programming procedure could be simplified a little more.
Verdict
This is the most easily portable single piece MP3 player which additionally acts as a USB key drive too. The sound quality is excellent and the battery life is very good. MuVo V100 is such a worthy piece in such an affordable cost.
Score: 73 percent
Price: $79
Capacity: 1GB and 2 GB
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