Home > Consumer Reviews > MiniVox USB Speakerphone

I came across this comprehensive review when browsing the Internet. I would have written a review but this review says everthing I wanted to say:

"mVox is a Cupertino based company and we all know great things come from Cupertino.

The miniVox MV100 portable USB speakerphone is designed for Internet telephony and web conferencing applications such as Skype, Vonage, Webex, Marratech, Breeze, GizmoProject, or iChat AV. The miniVox is a nice solution for PowerBooks, laptops, or even desktops when you want engage in hands-free conversations or conference calls. It is small (Dimensions: 3.2 x 2.2 x 0.8 inches - 8.1 x 5.5 x 2.0 cm) and light (Weight: 1.5 ounces - 42 grams) and cheap. The miniVox MV100 also has a 2.5mm headset jack on its left size.

As anybody that has engaged in VoIP or web conferencing with a computer has experienced, audio works best with a PC headset. When you try and use your computer speakers and a mic, echo will plague the other participants. It is a simple matter of acoustics, the audio from your speakers will leak back into your microphone and cause the person you are speaking to to hear themselves back with an annoying delay. If more than one participant is connected this way, your conference may end up being a nightmare.

The solution for this is echo suppression. Many of the VoIP and web conferencing application do not have any echo cancellation or it is not robust enough to handle a acoustic situation like this. miniVox MV100 portable USB speakerphone is a full duplex speaker phone (110dB peak volume) with DSP voice processing for noise suppression and echo cancellation. The miniVox MV100 portable USB speakerphone sounds better when I use it with Skype than my expensive Nortel Networks speaker phone on my companies PBX. It is USB plug and play and no driver installation is needed.

I have used it on several Macs and Windows machines and I was impressed that such a low cost device worked this well. Since it is about the size of a portable bluetooth mouse it now has a place in my PowerBook's backpack.

mVox also makes the mVox MV900 which is a bluetooth version and costs about $160. There are several other USB speakerphones on the market some costing over $300. But miniVox MV100 portable USB speakerphone works well, is low cost, and it is small. You will find it a pleasure to conference without a headset. Try it you will like it."

by Stephen Antonucci of reelsmart.com"

I bought this to use with my Mac for Skyping and Gizmo'ing. I wanted something small and the optional headset jack was a plus for privacy. Be aware that the headset jack fits your standard Cell phone headset, not a standard PC headset. It works okay, as advertised.
Positives: Works with no drivers, small, sound quality is above average, better than the built in microphone on my iBook.

Possible negatives: Draws too much power to plug into the usb port on my keyboard, and the cell phone size audio jack requires you purchase a cell phone style headset.

What I'm actually using now is a dinky, single ear/mic headset with a plantronic's usb headset adaptor.

Over the years, I have used many different tools for conference calls. My favorite has always been the various Polycom Soundstation devices which are excellent. Polycom has two big drawbacks however - they are quite expensive ($500-$1000 depending on options) and very bulky.

mVox shows how to provide a similar facility for VoIP calls, at a fraction of the price, and with the added advantage of being quite portable.

This small, credit card sized, speakerphone plugs into a USB port and just works. The small size allows it to easily travel with my laptop. It has excellent echo-cancellation. It handles jitter reasonably well. Since its an audio device, it can't directly handle packet-loss itself. However, Skype handles that as well as any VoIP application ever does. The microphone is fairly sensitive - I've used it will eight people around a table and all could be clearly heard at the other end of the call.

The mVox is one of those joys of life which just works. It doesn't have any complex setup. I can connect it to a colleagues laptop and confidently expect it to work correctly first time.

It only has one drawback - it has a limited frequency response. Calls over the mVox sound like AM radio talkback. The conversation is very clear, but it lacks high and low frequencies. For conference calls, I have never found this a major problem.

Highly recommended.

I bought the mVox MV100 USB speakerphone for use with Skype. It works quite well as a speakerphone.

The speaker is plenty loud with little distortion. As with most computer audio devices I find myself turning up the microphone to full volume which is barely adequate, I am a low speaker so it's not all the products fault.

The device comes with an earbud in case you want to have a private conversation, a really handy feature. You could use walkman type headphones if you don't like the ear bud.

The thing I like the most about the device is it's size. It's tiny - so is ideal for the Laptop user. It is much easier to pack in a laptop bag then a headset and is less likely to get squashed or damaged. I can see myself using this to call home froma Hotel when abroad.

I wish there was a manual volume dial on the device itself, it's not always convenient to access computer volume controls on the desktop while working on other things

The USB cable at the device end is of a type I've not seen before. They call it a mini-USB-B connector which is avalable on the internet should you lose or damage the cable. I realize they went with a micro sized connector due to devices small size, but why not use the same connector as a digital camera? Those cables are freely available everywhere.

It comes with a mini-sized CD. No software is required to use the device. Oddly enough the most useful utility, a customized volume control utility is not included on this CD but instead provides you with a link to download from their website. Why not put it on the CD? It's a tiny download. PDF manuals are included on the CD.

They also provide hyperlink to another VoIP software vendor, gizmo. Their website's testimonials tout themselves as a 'Skype Killer'. Probably worth a look, but their premium services are on a smaller scale then Skype's and it's still currently (7/28/05) in Beta.

JP

bought this thing a few months ago. it's awesome. the sound quality is almost perfect. it's easy to use, just plug into usb and go, and it's reallly small and portable. i use it to talk via skype and everything else.... i never write reviews but i really liked this product after my friend recommended it. it's like those small bose speakers except smaller and for your computer. mvox rocks!