The holiday season is approaching fast. In fact, it seems to approach faster every year. For those of you in the giving spirit around the office, it can be difficult to find that special gift for the person on the other side of the cubicle wall. It cannot be too expensive and it should reflect a certain amount of lightheartedness and fun. I mean, after all, gift giving in an office environment is really about generating smiles and feelings of goodwill with your co-workers.
With that spirit in mind, TechRepublic has acquired several inexpensive yet tasteful and useful desktop toys for review. One of these fine gadgets or gizmos should appeal to even the most difficult to buy for in your office.
Next on our gift list is the USB MP3 Sunglasses courtesy of KlearGear.com.
By Bill Detwiler
As a fan of gadgets, I was eager to test the USB MP3 Sunglasses.
Unfortunately, the numerous misspellings on the the box had me a little worried. Were these glasses merely cheap imitations of better quality products? After all, they look very similar to Oakley’s THUMP sunglasses.
Would they even work?
A close up of the controls and more misspellings. It never ceases to amaze me how many companies fail to adequately translate or edit their packaging. How difficult is it to look up the word “sport” in the English dictionary?
These musical shades have 1GB of memory, support: MP3, WMA, WMA with DRM, and WAV file formats, and the lithium ion battery is reported to provide up to 6 hours playing.
At least they are consistent in their misspellings.
Our glasses featured only the MP3 player, but you can also get glasses with a radio and bluetooth.
Well that clinches it. These are definitely replicas of the Oakley THUMP sunglasses. As best I could tell, the case says OKEY.
Clearly these glasses weren’t intended for sale in the US. The power adapter was designed for a European outlet. I’m not sure if every pair of USB MP3 Sunglasses from KlearGear.com contains a European adapter or not. It’s quite possible that we were shipped one by mistake.
Luckily, you can also charge the battery from your PC’s USB port. According to the manual, the battery is 80 percent charged after 1 hour and fully charged after 3 hours.
Although parse and full of bad English grammar and misspellings, the manual did provide all the information needed to successfully use the glasses.
The glasses come wrapped in plastic and with protective stickers on the lenses.
Here’s another indication that these are Oakley replicas.
The glasses were large enough even to fit around even my oversized noggin.
I assume the battery is housed in the glasses’ left side.
You can adjust the ear buds by pulling or pushing them in and out of their casings.
You can also swivel each ear bud for increased comfort and sound quality.
The glasses’ three control buttons are functional, but limited. You click the center button to power on/off the unit and play, pause, and stop songs. The left and right buttons allow you to skip between songs and increase/decrease the volume.
You transfer files to the glasses via the USB 2.0 port located on the right arm, beneath the controls.
Once connected to your PC, Windows XP, 2000, and Me should recognize the glasses a USB mass storage device–the same as most flash drives. Windows 98SE users must install the USB mass storage device driver–provided on a mini-CD.
When you don’t want to stop rockin’ but don’t need the shades, you can flip up the lenses.
With the protective film removed, you can clearly see the lenses.
The lenses are dark enough to adequately reduce glare.
The lenses are plastic and do provided adequate glare reduction, but they cause a very distracting color shift in some objects when you look through tinted car or building windows.
I liked the USB MP3 Sunglasses and the sound quality was surprisingly good, but they aren’t without limitations. The controls were functional, but not the easiest to use and the buttons were difficult to press. The color shifting when looking through tinted windows or at some object was very distracting. And, the overall construction just seemed cheap.
So, what do these glasses look like on? Here I am modeling–if you can call it that–the USB MP3 Sunglasses. I think the lenses are a tad small for the melon that sits atop my neck, but at least they sound better than I look.
As of this writing, KlearGear.com sells the USB MP3 Sunglasses (1GB) for $79.99. In contrast, Oakley sells its THUMP glasses (512MB) for $229. While I have never tried the Oakley product, I presume the THUMP glasses have a higher quality construction and better warranty policy.
Are the Oakleys worth an additional $149? Perhaps, but I’m not totally sold on the concept of MP3 sunglasses. What if you wear prescription sunglasses? What happens if a lens breaks? Then you’re left without an MP3 player until you get them fixed. You could wear them with only one lens, but the pirate look went out last summer. For me, MP3 players and sunglasses aren’t like chocolate and peanut butter–they aren’t great technologies that taste great together.
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
