Mophie Bevy iPod shuffle Keychain and Bottle Opener

The Mophie Illuminator project started earlier this year at MacWorld 2007. Attendees doodled product ideas and submitted them for the community to vote on. The Bevy iPod shuffle case, keychain, bottle opener, is the first such product to come out of this project.

I was disappointed in this product from the moment that I opened the box. The first thing that caught my attention was the packaging. The Bevy is only a $15 keychain, but it comes packaged in a plastic container with a cardboard insert and another plastic insert to hold the product in place. It just seems a bit too much in my opinion.

The Bevy is a clear plastic shell surrounding a thick aluminum plate. This plate comes in 5 different colors including: Green Blue, Pink, Orange and Silver. Yes, these colors match those of the iPod shuffle. I was sent the Blue Bevy to test.

The back side of the Bevy has an open cavity that can accept the iPod shuffle.

With a little pressure, the shuffle snaps into place. The cutout in the middle of the Bevy allows for unhindered access to the main navigation buttons on the front of the shuffle.

The back (clip) of the shuffle is exposed and not protected while inside this case. As you can see, the back of my shuffle is considerably scuffed up from keeping the Bevy in my pocket while keys were attached to the included key-ring.

There are also cutouts for the earphone jack and…

the power and shuffle switches on the top and bottom of the audio player.

The ends of the Bevy have been designed to have grooves so that you can wrap your earbud cable around the entire case. I found this feature to be somewhat useless given the fact that there isn’t a clip to hold the ends of the earbuds to keep them from unwinding. If you pay attention to how you’re winding the cable, you can use the shuffle’s own clip to hold one end of the earbud cable, but this is not a very convenient solution. Also the grooves are just barely deep enough to accommodate the cable from stock iPod earbuds.

Besides holding your iPod shuffle, your keys and your earbuds, the Bevy can also double as a bottle cap opener. I find this to be an odd feature to include, but hey, that’s just me. You have to remove the shuffle in order to use the Bevy for this job. I found removing a bottle cap with the Bevy to be a little difficult because it is hard to get the leverage needed when the opener is so short. I was able to do it though after a couple of tries.

The Mophie Bevy is the first product released from the Mophie Illuminator project and for $15, I guess I can’t complain that much about it. But it really doesn’t seem to be all that useful in my opinion. Here’s hoping that the next product that they release is a better one.