Creative Muvo V100

I got a gift card for Future Shop valued at $50 and had to decide what to spend it on. It was a gift from work, which is one of the things I like about my employer - the random stuff and the built-in incentives. I decided to upgrade my MP3 player, as I use it quite a bit. If you read my blog at http://coreythompson.com/, you may have read my post entitled A Recommendation, which was a mini review of the Sony NW-E403, a 256MB MP3 player. I still recommend this player (but get a larger one - this one actually is hard to find in this small size now) for ease of actual use and portability. The battery life claims seem to hold true as I've never lost a charge before I got tired of the songs or podcasts on it. If you use Windows and you like to use a music manager to move your music on and off the device, then get one.

My new preference is my new toy, though. Future Shop had the Creative Muvo 1GB V100 on sale for $54.99CDN (reg $67.99) and they included the $34.99 armband/belt clip with the purchase. This brought my actual cash outlay to a bit over $12 after the taxes. I was hesitant at first about a player that ran on batteries rather than a built in one like the Sony. However, after researching inexpensive MP3 players regarding features and battery life, I decided that the average 8-10 hour charge you get with most players on the built in battery was not as desirable as the 18 hours that you could get from the Muvo on a single "AAA" battery (included in the box, BTW). There is another advantage that came up as well. With 1GB of space, one could theoretically put up to 500 (really crappy sounding 64k wma) songs on it, which would be hours and hours of listening. If I took the player on a camping trip or whatever and could not get to a free USB port to charge my player, I'd still be okay, as it runs on batteries found at nearly any corner store. I will be getting some NiMH rechargables, though - likely Pure Energy (and not because I was really trashed when I saw the first commercial for that brand back in the '90s).

Feature for feature, this player seems to be all value. Some things that I like about it:

1. The battery option - disposable bad but better for traveling
   
2. The simple controls that I learned without the instruction manual
   
3. The 18 hour battery life - which seems to be the right estimate
   
4. The fact that you can "drag and drop" songs to the player
   
5. Works under Linux - recognized as a flash drive by Ubuntu
   
6. Built in microphone for voice recording to wave file
   
7. The clear, readable LCD display - even in sunlight
   
8. Plays MP3s, WMAs and WAV files
   
9. Handles low bitrate files, often used by podcasters
10. 5 band equalizer with several presets
    

Some things that I miss from the Sony:

1. The cool organic LCD - unreadable in sunlight, though
   
2. Hackable screen saver - useless but fun
   
3. The simple controls
   
4. Small rounded size and shape
   
5. Looooonnnggg battery life - about 35 hours with MP3s
   
6. Tough - dropped many times to the sidewalk and not a scratch
7. Built in clock
   

Some things that I really don't miss about the Sony at all:

1. Sonicstage - slow, buggy, proprietary
   
2. lack of support for low bitrate MP3s
   
3. Unusable without Windows
   
4. Small storage (256MB) - there are up to 4GB NW-E's though
5. Only 3 bass/treble settings
   

So, as you can see, I see a few advantages over the Sony with this new player. There is still room for improvement, though. It was nice to be able to use the Sony player to tell the time and it was definitely a sleeker unit (except for the belt clip). I came to rely on that, especially when I needed to catch a bus, for example. However, the "drag and drop" functionality and the compatibility with Linux, combined with the decent storage size, made this player a good investment for me. There was a nice Samsung model that I was drooling over when I went to see this unit (reminded me of an iPhone) which would have been nice to have, but it was too expensive for my modest budget. It had a slot for an SD card, which really expands your ability to store your files and songs.

I've been using this player all week and the battery life indicator finally showed some signs of weakness, so its been pretty good on the included Duracell. Its got about 120 MP3s on it at high bit rate, mostly 320K and I've got 4 podcasts on it over an hour each. So far so good. This one seems to be a keeper.