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Oregon Scientific MP120
£100
The lowdown
While swimming might keep you trim, ploughing through the lengths can be boring. Oregon Scientific claims to have the solution in the £100 MP120, the first pool-friendly player, compatible with MP3 and WMA files.
What’s good?
While not the last word in high fidelity, the MP120 delivers a reasonable rendition of MP3s and radio stations via its FM tuner. Bizarrely, it seems to sound better underwater than above it.
What’s bad?
The downsides were that it does not play loudly, and to keep the earbuds in place I had to adjust the goggles' strap every few lengths.
Do you need it?
The MP120 isn't the iPod with water wings - it only has 128MB (two hours of MP3s) of storage - but for serious swimmers, it is £100 well spent.
7/10
September 14, 2004 in Personal Audio | Permalink
Comments
awesome news!! can i buy one online?
regards
mia
Posted by: mia van rooyen | Oct 4, 2005 1:57:41 PM
My first and my last Oregon Scientific product. When I first uploaded some songs, it said that the disk was full and after unplugged it from the computer it was completely dead. I went to the shop and they gave me another one. This one worked properly for a few times and then water leaked inside and it stopped working again. I went to the shop again and then I started having a lot of problem with the customer service. They wanted to charge me half of the price of a new one for the repair (around US$80) and it was still under warranty as I have purchased it only 2 months before that. Beside that, the sound is really, really poor and the earphones, like the rest of the unit, are not waterproof at all and they don’t suit your ears. They keep falling. You cannot swim with them, unless you wear something to hold them like a swim cap. The problem with the sound is really from its earphones because I’ve tried with another ones and the sound was much better but you cannot use your own earphones on the water because the design doesn’t allow you. And believe it or not, the only difference between normal earphones and this one is that those ones have rubber covers that keep falling all the time. And even more, the reception of the radio is very poor as well.
Conclusion: Very expensive, very uncomfortable, not waterproof, very poor sound. The customer service is the worse I’ve ever experienced. A rip-off!
Posted by: Patricia Russo | Oct 29, 2005 7:04:13 AM
Amazing little contraption! I swim with it all the time, and I really enjoy the music while swimming. The big complaint is the ear buds. I have a hard time keeping them in my ears. But I've had no trouble with the waterproofness or recording music onto the player. I also have not figured out how to get the player to start at the last song I was listening to, rather than starting at the beginning of the playlist. I've dealt with this by changing the order of the songs whenever I recharge the battery, but it's hardly ideal. Pretty silly to have so much storage capacity and then not loop through all of the music before starting again. But I'd hate to do laps without it, so hopefully they'll make corrections someday.
Posted by: Shari Steele | Nov 13, 2005 5:33:22 PM
