If anyone is up for it, I’m posting to call out more personal experiences with the SwiMP3. There were a few personal reviews back in February and January, but not much since.
This first link is from CNET, I really trust their product reviews. It was the first time I’ve heard anything about nausea.
Anyway, back to the question. Consensus seems that the sound quality is reasonable and it’s a little fumbly if you like to tinker with volume/tracks. Past that, with prices down to $200, they’re now a little more attractive. Anyone have any comments? battery life good after continual recharging? issues with nausea? is the ragging from fellow swimmers as bad as if you had used a snorkel? found a way to insert more memory? etc…
Thanks Jim, maybe my questions could be a little broader. I was intending to talk about that style, but your comment suggests that maybe there’s more experience with other players out there. Does anyone have experience with earplug style vs bone conduction swimming mp3’s?
From the reviews and comments of earplug styles, I got the sense that sound quality didn’t compare. The player you linked to did strap to your goggles, so drag and comfort would not be an issue. The dork factor is high on both, so that’s a wash. The earplug style has more memory for the money, a big plus for me personally. But in the end, sound quality seemed to be too much of a hurdle for ear plug style.
I love mine. I’ve posted about it before. The bone speaker design works great - much better when submerged than earbuds. To address some of your questions: Battery life on mine has been fine. But I am compulsive to recharge mine as soon as I get home from the pool, so I have never tested it to it’s limits as far as how long it can hold a charge. The only issues with nausea I’ve ever had in the pool is when I have swam hung over. I use my SWIMP3 player every time I swim, about 60-90 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. Never had any music induced nausea, except once when my daughter loaded up my player with Ashlee Simpson and Lindsey Lohan songs as a practical joke. No way to insert more memory, but I have found that mine holds a pretty good playlist for swimming. I think I get close to 30 tracks on mine. I have fallen into a pattern. I start my swim warming up to about 4 Norah Jones songs, then I kick in the old school Guns-n-Roses, old Van Halen, and then I get my latin groove on with Shakira. Then I usually cool down to a few Garbage songs. I’ve long since not payed attention to any ragging I get from others while I work out. I’m still working on blocking out the ragging I get from my wife at home, but that’s another thread.
The buttons are clunky, and the volume doesn’t really adjust very well while you are swimming. Overall I love mine. It is my favorite single tri toy.
The sound is very good. It says it is rated to last for four hours, that is a pipe dream. I get about 2:00 out of mine tops. The 128 megs of memory also means the number of titles is limited.
I’ve never had any nausea.
The potential problem with the device is how you intend to use it. If you are only swimming for an hour at a clip I think yo uneed to really ask yourself if this device is for you. If you are supposed to be cranking out 10 x 100 with ten seconds rest as fast as possible then will this really help you?
It only is really helpful for long relaxed swim sets. And how many of those should you be doing?
I used mine when I was training for a marathon swim. Every sunday I did a 10k and used the swimp3. The batteries would last for the first 8k and that was it for the day. But it did help for that time that it was working .
I’m still looking into mp3 players in general, this link was one I had stored as I am considering the waterproof player from oregon scientific. I will probably end up with one eventually. I will post a review when I do.
found a way to insert more memory? etc…