Portable amplifiers aren’t exactly known for its fancy features and bling blings – and that’s where many amplifiers dons a furniture-like look on itself to disguise as a part of the furniture. The GoVibe Rivo is one that stands out from the portable amplifier crowd – as it has a pretty large screen.
Of course, let us start off with the package. Again it comes in a plain and compact cardboard box with no fancy printing on it.
There isn’t much free space inside other than just two compartments separating them apart.
Removing everything from the box, there’s a male-to-male 3.5mm audio jack, a micro USB cable, the amplifier itself, and a rather strangely coloured green carrying pouch.
[nextpage title=”Design”]
Taking a look around the GoVibe Rivo, there’s really nothing much to see. It has a brushed aluminium body, and a total of 4 buttons. One on the left, and 3 on the right.. Then, there are some ports along the top and bottom of the amplifier.
At the top, there’s an 3.5mm audio jack for analogue input, and another 3.5mm audio jack for analogue output. Around the left side of the device, there’s a power button.
Around the right side of the Rivo, there’s a volume up and volume down button, and a Menu button found below them. At the bottom of the Rivo there’s a factory reset button and also a micro USB port. Once connected to the micro USB, there is a red light found on the left side of the micro USB port.
At the back, there’s this huge name printed at the top, and a little but of its specifications right below it. The website of this product is also printed at the lower part, but then again the website does not work at all.
At the front is where the GoVibe Rivo stands out. There’s a fairly big screen, but the experience is something to be told…
[nextpage title=”Experiencing the GoVibe Rivo”]… right now – because with the help of a screen, many of the button-controlled settings can be moved into the software part and be controlled in a menu instead. Sure, it’s difficult to screw this up right?
NOPE.
Somehow, GoVibe can actually screw up the entire experience with the worst utilization of the screen’s real estate. Combined with the extremely horrifying buttons, the experience to setup the device was horrendous.
Hitting the Menu button brings up screen, where only one small part of the screen is used. I thought only the “home screen” (where it shows the volume and some other minor details) is made this way, but nope, the entire screen is only that big.
To navigate through the menu, you can scroll up and down using the volume buttons, select using Menu button, and to go back using the power button. 4 buttons to navigate through everything is fine, but the buttons are just too horrible to press.
The EQ setting is also misleading, as what they meant by EQ was actually bass boost with levels 0 to 4, and does not even have a treble boost. After that, there are some other minor settings to control USB charging and to have the device to sleep or not.
Meanwhile, the other menu had an option to enable key lock, to set the maximum volume available by this device (60 is the maximum) and for volume memory to switched on or off.
At the very bottom of the menu screen, there’s a System option.
Inside that menu option there’s a firmware version option to see what firmware you are using, but then it offered no options to update its firmware as the official GoVibe website is dead. There’s also another menu to see how long the GoVibe Rivo had been used, and the last menu is to reset all the settings back to its default state.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]The GoVibe Rivo is indeed a decent performer, as it can amplify the produced sound and add another layer of depth into the music. Without the EQ (again, it’s actually bass boost) there are certainly some other subtle instruments being heard.
Giving the EQ a steady increment, the bass is increased subtly in a way that it can be heard and felt, and able to fine tune the level of bass by just a little so that it can hit your sweet spot. At the highest EQ level of 4, the bass is certainly higher than EQ level 0, and yet the bass is still enjoyable to listen to.
At higher volume however, there is a noticeable hiss in the amplified audio. However that volume is beyond the comfort level. At about 70% volume from my phone and at level 60 volume on the GoVibe Rivo, the sound is still great but the volume started getting uncomfortable.
[nextpage title=”Battery”]To be honest, I thought the screen would take up a lot of juice – but then again, the screen actually had minimum effect on its battery life. I managed to get about 2 full days of usage with the screen turned on the entire time. Again, impressive.
Plugging the GoVibe Rivo using an OTG cable, it drained 0.28A with USB charging turned on and 0.16A with USB charging turned off. Under non-charging USB mode, it drained just as much power as the Hippo CriCri+ which we reviewed not too long ago.
Also another thing to note, charging or non-charging mode did not affect the audio quality.
[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]Here’s the last bit about the GoVibe Rivo. It’s a great product, It’s a nice little portable amplifier with decent performance and superb battery life, but the buttons and menu were horrible. Oh – I forgot the one little accessory that is included.
The small green pouch can only fit the GoVibe Rivo alone and nothing else. Absolutely nothing. It is really that tight. Of course, it’s a minor pet peeve of mine personally, and your mileage may vary.
Then again, the price tag on the GoVibe Rivo is RM399. A lot less than the CriCri+, but performs more or less the same, albeit the CriCri+ is a lot smaller than the Rivo, yet performs equally. Then again, the Rivo also has an EQ to control the bass boost, which is not present on the CriCri+. To be honest, the GoVibe Rivo has all and more features compared to the CriCri+, and costs a lot less, albeit having to live with the horrible buttons and slightly larger size.
Thanks Jaben Malaysia for letting us review the Hippo CriCri+! Check it out here!
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