Native Union's first product, which was basically a classic 1950s Bakelite telephone handset with a cord that plugged into a mobile phone, was an expensive piece of fairy floss, a visual joke which soon stopped being funny. The company's premise for selling it as an anti-radiation device was as thin as the phone's value proposition and when I found that was all the company produced, I feared for its future. It's taken them four models to create something genuinely useful, beautiful and clever, but the new Moshi Moshi 04 is worthy piece of kit indeed, even at its premium price of GBP150!
It's a Bluetooth stereo handset that's acoustically engineered by sound specialist NXT, includes a high performance Bluetooth 2 x 2W stereo speaker system for playing music from your computer or phone or taking a conference call or it's just an elegant personal telephone handset with noise reduction technology. It's cool and an ideal reward for cutting the landline yet still having a beautiful home phone.
The MM04 uses Bluetooth 2.1 to connect with wireless computers and mobile phones within a range of 30 feet, allowing users to conduct both internet and mobile phone calls via the speakers in conference call mode or via the handset for private calls. The Mutli-point Bluetooth chip enables the MM04 to be twin-paired with two mobile devices simultaneously and also features auto pick-up/hang-up and auto connect/disconnect.
For my money, the copper colored MM04 is the pick of the bunch visually, though it's also available in taupe, black and silver.
Keeping the Native Union MM04 away from its charging base might prove a bit of a problem as it only has two hours of music playback time. In its other two modes, it has plenty of usability time – six hours of talk time and 120 hours of standby time.
