Combined sunglasses and audio player

[Tel]

Oakley's Thump combines sunglasses and audio player

By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor

September 30, 2004 - 12:04 EST

Chicago (IL) - The iPod's days as the fanciest digital audio player may be counted: Sunglass company Oakley has announced that it will ship sunglasses with an integrated audio player for Christmas.

Technology innovation not always heads into the right direction. But this one appears to be just a logical evolution of the portable audio player. Instead of a box bouncing around in your pocket while jogging or riding your bike, Oakley's Thump sunglasses have the player already built in.

The company said Thursday that it will sell the glasses through its website and Circuit City stores with pre-orders being taken on November 1 and an availability date of November 20.

The glasses integrate either 128 MByte or 256 MByte of memory and adjustable earphones attached to the frame of the glasses. The speakers are custom engineered to offer a wide range of frequency response, up to the 20 kHz limit of human hearing. Oakley said that the battery provides enough capacity to play music for about four hours. All combined, the glasses weigh less than an empty CD case.

The glasses themselves feature flip-up lenses which will block all UV light and optimize viewing through Iridium coating, Oakley said. The 256 MByte model adds polarization for glare filtering.

The 128 MByte model is priced at $395, the 256 MByte model at $495.

Ref: Tom's Hardware Guide

Excellent!

[MadGutts]

Sounds good... Bit expensive for shades tho.... Not sure about the piccy tho!

I bet these weigh a ton.... or there is a ipod sized unit which is the actual unit and the shade only have the Ear pieces... And posibly a small screen so u can read wots on it!! that would be totally Cool

Think i'll wait till they come down in price....