MP3 Gaze

Want to look like a complete idiot? Then why not try Boomers ear muffs?

Nobody wears ear muffs. Why? Because, as I said, they make you look like an idiot. These come in black or bright pink. Bright pink would, miraculously, make things even worse. Black would be the better option, because there’s the outside chance that you could pass them off as hair.

The manufacturers are clearly borderline demented. Here’s one of their sample exclamations: “A new dawn has arrived of ear comfort and functionality!”

Catchy. It’s not an exclamation that’s likely to get used as much as, say, “stop!” or “no!” is it?

Okay, so this isn’t actually an MP3 player. I’m only covering it because I’ve a weakness for all things wind-up. It’s portable at least, so we’re in the same ballpark.

We’re all eco-friendly these days and there’s no burning of fossil fuels when you wind up your radio. I’m a little bit sceptical about things like this, however. The DEVO (is it a ‘the’?) can run on mains power or a conventionally charged battery. Could the wind-up mechanism merely be a gimmick?

Yes and no. The press release is honest enough to give some indication of how effective a minute’s worth of winding will be in charging the battery. A minute’s worth of winding is probably more punishing than you envision, by the way. I’ve got a wind-up torch and a solid minute of winding works the biceps something chronic.

A 60 second wind gives you three to five minutes of digital radio. This is rubbish. It’s nowhere near worthwhile. However, that same amount of winding will give you an hour of FM radio, which is also an option. That’s more than acceptable. It also puts into perspective just how energy-hungry DAB is.

Strap your iPod nano to your arm with velcro. It’s hard to know what to add to that.

The strap should fit ‘almost any arm size’. XtremeMac are presumably working on the assumption that if you’ve got huge, gargantuan, blubbery arms, you aren’t the kind of person who needs a means of securing their MP3 player when they go running.

But wait. Surely we should be encouraging everyone to partake in sport, thus benefiting from its life-enhancing, happy-hormone-stimulating properties. Come on XtremeMac, let’s have a product that fits ALL arms.

A second Sandisk Sansa MP3 player reviewed in the same week, you ask? Well, er, yes, because there is literally NO rhyme nor reason behind my product selections.

The Sandisk Sansa C240 is in colour. Colour’s always better than monochrome. On the other hand, it might just play a part in limiting this MP3 player’s battery life to 15 hours.

Music: Not greatly improved by the addition of colour.

It’s crooked! Is it not broken?

Apparently not. Apparently it’s supposed to have a corner in the middle. That bit on the end’s so you can tie it down as well, which is just as well because at under 9cm, the iRiver T10 falls into the category ‘easy-to-lose small’.

Size: Easy-to-lose small.
Name: Starts with a lower-case letter, features a mid-word upper-case letter.
Battery life: 53 hours.

Verdict: One out of three - the one’s for the battery life, if you hadn’t guessed.

Is it a sphere? Is it a cube? No, it’s a sphube.

That joke was rubbish the first time we did it and it actually made sense then. This time the answer is actually ‘no, it’s a Cubisto’, so we’ve not even told the truth.

Why the hell is it called a Cubisto anyway? I get the ‘cube’ part, but why the Italian/Spanish flavour. Perhaps their hinting at the romance languages is meant to indicate that this is a suave, desirable product. Whatever the name, it’s still square. Square’s not suave.

Square and tiny, to be precise. Easy-to-lose small, which is next on my list of MP3 player things to get annoyed about. Also on that list (headed by badly positioned upper and lower case letters) is battery life. The MobiBLU Cubisto ‘boasts’ a battery life of 10 hours. Mayflies would feel they’d got a raw deal with 10 hours.

I can see that you’re stunned. How have you managed without this product?

It’s a stand for your MP3 Player. And here was me selfishly forcing the thing to lie down on tables all this time. No. Your MP3 player needs a good view. You should prop it upright so that it can look around and survey its surroundings.

It folds up flat as well, so you can carry it round with you. You never know when you might need to stop and display your MP3 player.

A quick note about the name as well. Firstly, ezGear has the capital letter in the wrong place. iPod’s have started a worrying trend in this regard and I think we should all pitch in to nip it in the bud. Capital letters go at the start. No debating.

Also, I’m presuming that this is meant to be pronounced ‘easy gear’. Unfortunately, to me it says ‘ee zed gear’ which is far less catchy. Think internationally people. A little thing like that might be the difference between selling three totally needless plastic stands and selling none at all.

I like this MP3 Player. It’s straightforward.

It’s 4GB which is pretty good. It claims to have 20 hours of battery life, which is decent compared to most MP3 players, although it’s still not enough (battery life’s undervalued). It’s also got its capital letters in the right places, which is a welcome change.

My only reservation is its size. It’s about 9cm long. I’m looking at 9cm here and it’s really very small. Surely we’ve reached the point now where MP3 players are small enough? Pocket-small’s good. Easy-to-lose-small’s bad.

It’s got a screen for pictures and videos as well. If you want a screen, you’ve surely got to accept a larger product. It’s a trade-off. Tiny’s good, so long as visuals aren’t involved.

If you’re a music-loving lepidopterist who needs to carry large amounts of life-size photos for work, this is the MP3 player for you.

It’s a hard and uncompromising world we live in. If you’re a music-loving runner or cyclist, it’s tougher still:

“Athletes have endured the ‘ball and chain’ of portable players for a quarter of a century. Cords dangle. Wires tangle. The base unit knocks around.”

But have no fear, for Oakley have come to your rescue. There’s no point describing it. You can clearly see what it is. It’s a pair of sunglasses with a built-in MP3 player.

I’ll be honest and say that I was going to heap scorn and ridicule on this self-consciously stylised, yet paradoxically lumpen and unattractive device/eyewear. But then I saw something that made me change my mind.

The Oakley THUMP PRO (big letters please) 512MB Sunglasses feature components made of my favourite substance - unobtainium. Yes, some part or other - they don’t specify what - is made of finest unobtainium - the most ludicrously-named of all the made up substances.

Not only that, but there’s an added bonus. The lenses are made of plutonite, which, if I’m not much mistaken, is also made up.

This product’s a winner, despite looking totally ridiculous.

Protect your iPod nano by putting it in a metal box. Express your individuality by selecting one of six predefined colours of officially sanctioned protective cases.

I’d probably opt for the understated grey. That way you wouldn’t know that I was expressing myself through my choice of colour. You’d think that the grey had been foisted upon me through circumstance.

That’s what my selection of grey says about me: I’m the kind of person who doesn’t need to express his individuality through the products he buys.

So that’s what you have to think when you see me with all my grey stuff.

“Small is the new beautiful,” say Creative. Great news for gnats, flies and other previously hideous insects. Bad news for the Sistine Chapel.

And yet, “your music and your life now fit perfectly in the ZEN V Plus”. Your music AND your life. This ZEN V Plus has some seriously Tardis-like properties. So as well as containing a load of music, I can also walk in the Peak District, ski in the Alps and bask on the beach in Karnataka all the while remaining inside the ZEN V Plus’s minuscule 7cm form. Incredible.

But wait a minute. The specifications say that even at its largest (8GB), the ZEN V Plus can only hold about 133 hours of MP3s. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t cover all my music. If my music doesn’t fit in the ZEN V Plus, could Creative conceivably be misleading me about its potential to contain my life?

Samsung have at least got the decency to give their product a vaguely memorable name, but then they go and ruin it by putting a capital letter in the middle. Capital letters don’t go in the middle. All you’re doing is making the word annoying to read.

The NeXus’s big boast is that it can receive XM Radio, which is, apparently, satellite radio. I live in the UK and I don’t think we have XM radio over here and even if we did, no-one would listen to it, because it would be precisely as bad as normal radio, only you’d need special contraptions to hear it.

The specifications say that the NeXus is 3.4″ long, which is a bizarre decimalisation of imperial measurements, if I’m not much mistaken.

Record things onto your iPod nano. Like what? Some suggestions are given.

No, the real benefit of the XtremeMac MicroMemo is for eight-year-olds to record themselves talking and to feel embarrassed at what was recorded afterwards. That’s who this should be marketed at. ‘Make your own amateur radio show and wince when you play it back’. That could be the slogan.

Also, I can’t help but notice that this is another product name where the space bar has been under-utilised.

What has happened to everyone’s space bars? Here are some of the features associated with the SA9200/05:

Here are some features that not only include spaces, but also make sense:

Except the 2GB memory has an asterisk next to it, yet I can’t find the footnote. Also, the battery life is listed as ‘up to 14 hours’, which, if you think about it, could mean six minutes on occasions. You’re not getting more than 14 hours, that’s for sure.

Technological devices always have the catchiest of names. Witness Sony’s NW-S706F. People will be naming their pets after this bad boy.

The best feature of the NW-S706F seems to be the battery, which isn’t a state of affairs that Sony should be too proud about. They describe it as having ‘great stamina’ which isn’t a phrase you often hear about batteries. It means it should last about 50 hours, which seems long enough.

It’s 88mm long and has 4GB capacity. That’s all you really need to know.