Philips GoGear Muse
Philips has launched the new media player GoGear Muse, with a larger screen and a slicker design, making it the best portable media player available in the market. With the user interface being tweaked, the player is more responsive and it is easier to navigate. A wide range of audio formats are supported by GoGear Muse ranging from MP3, AAC, FLAC, WMA, APE, Real Audio, OGG and WAV tracks. Hence songs in almost any format can be stored in the library and played using GoGear Muse.
GoGear Muse can handle various audio formats but on the downside, the audio quality is only average. The bass frequencies are slightly woolly and the high-frequency sounds such as cymbals and hi-hats are crisp. The mid-range audio frequencies are rather hollow. But the issue is not with the headphones provided along with the player. The headphones have small mics in the ear piece which enables the noise-cancelling technology. Though the ambient noise is reduced, it is not very effective.
GoGear Muse is also capable of displaying videos and pictures with a 3 inch WQVGA display. The pictures come with 400 x 240 pixel resolution similar to that of a standard digital camera where the pictures are displayed with a black bar. But the zooming control is absent and hence you cannot zoom in to avoid those black bars on the screen. Muse is equpped to play a wide ange of video formats as well ranging from MP4, WMV, AVI and RMVB. The Muse, by default, plays the video files with standard TV resolution and hence you need not resize the DivX and Xvid files to a lower resolution level.
As the review, Philips GoGear Muse can be recharged from your computer ports with the short USB lead provided with the player as the charger is not supplied with it. But Muse’s battery life is extremely good and hence it can play comfortably play 5 hours of video and 25 hours of audio playback with a single charge. On the whole, compared to GoGear Opus, Philips GoGear Muse is better with its sllicker design and noise-cancelling technology, though it has some shortcomings such as average audio quality and poor interface. Muse is available in Singapore at a price of $237.
