Mavizen Blueye

We gave you a sneak preview of the Mavizen Blueye in the PCW Testbed last week and now we have a fully working version on our hands.

Designed to sit between your mp3 player and headphones, the Blueye communicates with your mobile phone via Bluetooth. The idea is that you can listen to your mp3 player and take incoming calls without having to unplug your headphones.

The pack consists of the Blueye device, a USB cable for attaching it to your PC (this also charges the battery) and another cable for hooking it up to your mp3 player.

A microphone is built into the device, but you also get an external microphone to clip to your shirt, which is useful in noisy environments.

Using one of the two switches on the rear of the Blueye you can switch between Manual and Voice mode. When in Manual mode, calls are answered (or rejected) by pressing the up and down buttons.

Voice mode lets you assign voice commands to answer or reject - during testing this only reliably worked in very quiet environments.

We also got some odd looks when we shouted 'reject' while listening to music on the train.

Thanks to the extra large buttons it's easy to operate when wearing gloves, but lacking a proper display the Blueye relies on just a single LED to let you know what it's up to.

This can get confusing, especially when setting up voice commands. The manual does a reasonable job of guiding you through the process while audio notifications on the device are also played, but it's not as clear as it could be.

If you don't want to use your phone as an mp3 player, but equally don't enjoy having to unplug your headphones to make or receive calls, the Blueye is worth considering.

The potential is there and we like the way Mavizen allows you to create your own Blueye functions (click here for more information), but it does increase the number of wires you have to contend with when listening to music.

At a time when people are looking to go wireless, this could prove to be a problem for Blueye.

UPDATE:
Mavizen has got in touch to say it has reduced the price of the Blueye from £69 to £59.

See also:

Zicplay Minikey 256MB FM

A low-cost flash-based mp3 player  18 Jan 2006

Buyers' Guide: Portable Media Players

The latest must-have gadget comes in many forms. We show you what to look for  04 Jan 2006

Supportplus Q-Be

Not only stylish, but also the world's smallest mp3 player  20 Dec 2005

Ipod Nano

Impossibly small, but by no means perfect  10 Oct 2005

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