The MusePod features the entire set of control buttons on its face. It’s powered by a rechargeable lithium battery that becomes fully juiced up after three hours and lasts for 10 hours in standard MP3 player mode. The device comes with a recharging unit, an USB 2.0 data transfer cable, and a line-in jack extension for traditional headphones (not included).

The 1.8 inch LCD is smaller than iPod Video’s 2.5 inch display and not suited for viewing widescreen files – they get even smaller. The MusePod comes with a few widescreen music videos (Britney Spears’ Oops I did it again and Ricky Martin’s Livin’ la vida loca) that play poorly on the tiny screen.

There’s a big LED on the center of the arrow buttons that is a completely waste of space: it could be a select button but instead it just lights up when you power up the unit. You gotta use either the play/pause or the stop/on-off button to accept the choices you make navigating the menu. Our finger kept on pressing the LED button instinctively while nothing ever happened.

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Figure 3: The menu.