H2Oman
I finally received the H2Oman MP3 waterproof player. I could tell you the good points, but a product is only as good as its weakest links, so the good points really don’t matter much. The worst thing about it is the headphones. The are what make a pretty good product, stink.
The headphones look like Sony water resistant ear buds. Except they come with two silicone covers the go over them. The covers have ribs on them, which is apparently for sealing them in the ear canal. The problem is the headphones were made to sit in the ear being held in place by hooking over that little lope protruding up from the bottom of the outside ear. With the covers on them, they don’t fit at all in the ears. The only possible way they could stay in the ears is with a hood or swim cap, but even then its frustrating to try and keep them straight and not turn sidewise in the ear canal.
One cover says its splash resistance and the other waterproof. They both have holes in the end of them, the only differences is the size, with the waterproof one being smaller. I suspect that the ear buds headphones were not designed for the covers so a hole has to be in them to have any chance of enough volume reaching the ear. The problem as I suspect and predict is the earbuds are not waterproof and the micky mouse covers with holes in them will allow water to reach them. I should soon know, because each time I removed my hood, which is habit after a static, the headphones immediately fell out and were submersed before I could retrieve them.
The cheesy silicone covers with ribs means its really difficult/impossible to get the ear buds very far into the ears and very likely they won’t be placed even and will probably change position during use. This means getting the volume level is almost impossible! On land in an indoor pool during children swim team practice, I had to really strain to hear anything. Breathing up with the head out for static or dynamic and trying to hear the thing was more distracting than not having.
When I would submerse the volume would increase and in some instances sound good, but this was not consistent. Some times I would get blasted out on one side when the water pressure would position one earbud just right, etc..
The MP3 and waterproof case are pretty good, especially considering the price. It would be possible to cut the wires to the headphones and then solder and shrink tube the wires to a different set of headphones, but I don’t know how well any non-amplified headphones are going to work. H2Oaudio uses an amplifier in their underwater case to power their headphones that sit on top of the ears rather than in them. New SwiMP3
http://www.waterproofmusic.com/swimp3.html is another new waterproof MP3 player that uses uses bone conduction behind the ear rather than a headphone speaker.
I’m going to experiment with H2Oman since I already have it, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. I think eventually there will be reasonably priced underwater MP3 players that work.
don
