The Samsung Muse is a beautiful clone of the iPod Shuffle.
It's about the size and shape of a pebble. Its comes in white or the same attractive purpleish-blue sheen of the Galaxy S III smartphone. It's easy to clip just about anywhere and music playback sounds great. It's a charming little gadget.
Touch controls on the face of the device work well. You can play and pause music, and skip between whatever tracks you've got loaded up on the Muse, and adjust the volume. There's no display -- We did mention it's the size of a pebble, right? -- and you have to cycle through songs to find what you want, but that's no real bother. This after all, is an accessory and not built to replace your main digital music player, which is likely your phone. On the side of the Muse, there's an on/switch, a hold switch (so you don't trigger the touch button while clipping the Muse to your shirt or pockets) and a switch to shuffle songs. It's all pretty self explanatory and easy to use...
Until you hook it up to a smartphone.
The Muse ships with two dongles. One connects the Muse's headphone jack to a microUSB port, as used on the Galaxy S III and most other Android phones. The other connects the Muse's headphone jack to a computer via a standard USB port.
In order to sync the music you have on your phone with the Muse, you need to download the Muse Sync app from Google Play. Once you've done that, connect the Muse to your Android handset and voila, the Muse Sync app should recognize your Muse and all the music you have downloaded on your phone. Then you move move music from your phone to the Muse. Easy right?
It might be, if it worked. We tried using the Muse with an HTC One X and a Nexus 4, and the Muse Sync app wouldn’t recognize the Muse when I had it connected to either phone.
The Galaxy S III recognized the Muse the first time I hooked it up using the microUSB dongle, but after that, it failed to see the mp3 player. Worst of all, I ran into trouble because my music library is stored in Google Play, which isn't compatible with Muse Sync. So the app couldn’t see the music I had stored on my phone either. This has more to do with the way Google Play stores music to Android phones, but it’s still a pain and makes for a disappointing experience.
The only way I could get music on the Muse was hooking it up to my iMac and dragging music over to the device as if it were a USB drive. That process was easy. But, because the Muse Sync app on the S III never again recognized the music I had on the Muse, I wasn’t able to manage the music I had on the player unless I was hooked into a PC.
Now, I’ve got plenty more testing to do with the Muse before a full review. But there’s already some obvious quirks that aren’t amusing. Still, one thing that I really liked was the price -- $50. Same as Apple’s iPod Shuffle. Kudos to Samsung for getting that part right.
