 Gear Reviews Freestyle Audio Fusion DMP Waterproof MP3 Player $130-$250; (858) 481-0811; www.freestyleaudio.com SPECIAL 20% OFF ON 256 AND 512 MB PLAYERS FOR HOOKED READERS! CLICK HERE TO GET SPECIAL DISCOUNT PRICING
Face it audiophiles, there’s a reason why iPod commercials appear on buses and urban streets. When it comes to the outdoors, portable music players have been like your city friends who come to town for the weekend; nice enough, but too soft to go all out without hurting themselves.
For years, I’ve gone through several players, most succumbing to minor but fatal injuries. Those frustrating days may be over, however, thanks to a new MP3 player infused with the rugged, simple spirit of the outdoors. Freestyle Audio’s Fusion DMP Waterproof player has emerged from the flock as the consummate outdoors music machine, surpassing our expectations and leaving us with nothing but good vibes.
Right out of the package, we were instantly impressed with the feather-light construction and slim, shark’s tooth profile. Unlike most other players, the Fusion has no digital screen to fiddle with, a plus for those of us who are happy to have one less component to break. The Fusion fits nicely in hand or in the provided neoprene armband.
Four tactile buttons make for easy, no-look operation, and the entire case is coated in a waterproof (but not bulky) skin. And when we say waterproof, we don’t mean just deflecting a few raindrops: This baby is ready to dive! Designed with surfers, wakeboarders, and swimmers in mind, the airtight internal compartment is complimented by a pair of unique water-specific earbuds for underwater listening. Our testers were almost giddy with delight swimming laps at the rec center pool while rockin’ out—the music alleviated the monotony of the routine and the earbuds doubled as waterproof earplugs.
Out of the pool we saw equally great results. The Fusion uses flash memory instead of a hard drive to store songs. No moving parts means no skipping songs. Even after the jarring rigors of mountain biking and snowboarding, the Fusion performed perfectly—even though we had enough hard spills to send a dozen other MP3players to their shiny, white graves. A big plus was that the music was always loud, though I would suggest getting a pair regular earbuds and save the packaged-in pair for water pursuits. When running, the unit fit nicely in my hand (one of our testers preferred the armband). I never accidentally hit any buttons, though if you unplug your earphones from the unit you’ll turn it off.
When it comes to performance and ease of use, Freestyle’s innovative system should cause waves beyond the outdoor community. An internal battery is charged by plugging a USB cable into your computer; a full charge only takes an hour or two. The Fusion gets an amazing 40 hours per charge, nearly double or triple that of other MP3 players. Seriously, we just waited and waited for the thing to die, but thanks to the fact it doesn’t have to power a display or access a hard drive, it concentrates on one thing—playing music.
The headphone jack doubles as a port for your USB connection, meaning the Fusion will work with PC or Mac without any software. The plug-and-play feature means your computer will recognize it as a storage device. Songs are added and deleted by simply dragging and dropping (or copying and pasting) onto the drive. One slight downside is that Fusion will only play MP3s—other formats such as iTunes or Windows Media Audio are not supported. You’ll need to hook up to a computer to visually see what songs are currently on your player.
Once your songs are loaded, the Fusion functions like most other players. There are forward and reverse buttons that serve to skip ahead tracks or to fast forward/rewind a current song (by holding down the button for a second). Stop and play are obviously there as well. The unit is turned on by securely plugging in your headphones and turned off when you remove them.
Beside the inability to play other formats, the only other thing we would have liked was a button to change equalization settings (or perhaps a way to set them when hooked up to the computer). The default setting is good and won’t take away from the music, but it’s always nice to play with the bass/treble/tone to tweak your songs to sound their best.
Overall we are extremely impressed with the Fusion. It’s functional, tough, has incredible battery life, and can go anywhere. There are currently three models available: 128, 256 and 512 MB of memory, with retail prices of $130, $200, and $250 respectively. (Hooked readers interested in buying the Fusion can click here for a special 20% discounted price). Whether surfing or snowboarding, running or swimming, the Fusion is ready to go! Let the city folk have their fragile, fangled players--when you’re ready for the speed and motion (above and below the surface) of action sports, the Fusion is the only way to go. © Copyright 1999-2006 by Hooked on the Outdoors www.ruhooked.com |
