Creative Muvo 20 Review

The Creative MUVO 20 is a wireless Bluetooth speaker with a number of useful features that you don’t always see on a speaker at this price. However, we really aren’t fond of the speaker grilles, as we thought the honeycombed cut-outs made the MUVO 20 look a bit like an air freshener. With its angular design, the MUVO 20 is otherwise inconspicuous and shouldn’t look out of place in a kitchen or bedroom. The front panel is angled in such a way to improve audio dispersion and we found this did help to fill a room with sound.

On the back is a power button, a micro USB port for charging and a 3.5mm auxiliary connection. Disappointingly, you don’t get a USB wall adaptor for charging, so you must connect it to your computer or use an existing adaptor. You don’t get a 3.5mm audio cable, either. Conveniently, the Muvo 20 has a second USB port that allows you to use the MUVO 20 as a portable phone charger. However, the MUVO 20 doesn’t come with any sort of protective case and the plastic body feels slightly fragile, which means you’ll probably be more comfortable moving the speaker room to room than carrying it outside. This might negate its usefulness as a portable charger.

While listening at a reasonable volume, we managed to get just shy of 10 hours battery life from a single charge, but you’ll obviously get less time if you’re charging another device at the same time. You put the MUVO 20 into pairing mode by holding a button on the front of the Muvo 20located on the front or if your device supports NFC, simply touching it to the top of the MUVO will make a Bluetooth connection. The multi-function button can also be used to play or pause tracks as well as accept or reject incoming calls, and a quick double-press will have the speaker read out the current battery level, which is always useful. You’ll also find volume controls located on the front of the Muvo 20.

The Muvo 20 supports the aptX audio codec, which provides higher quality audio than the more common A2DP codec, but you’ll need a compatible device to use it. In testing we found that the Muvo 20 provides a distinctly warm sound that emphasises lower frequencies. Detail in the mid and treble were a bit subdued and muddy, which made it difficult to pick out individual instruments in our test tracks that featured orchestral strings. The Muvo 20 didn’t handle vocals particularly well, either, with poor separation between the guitars of our rock music and the bass of our jazz-hop tracks.

NFC pairing and a USB charging port are useful features, but we found that the Creative Muvo 20 was let down by its overly warm sound. At £70, though, the Muvo 20 is good value.  However, if you can spend a little more, you should buy the Best Buy-winning Cambridge Audio Minx Go .