Use your iPod in weather, water with H2O Audio’s iPod housings
Patented control lets you click through the casing
by Daniel P. Dern (dern@pair.com)
Vendor: H2O Audio Product Name: Advanced Waterproof Housing for 80GB iPod (video), MSRP $89.95;
available now
Outdoor for nano, MSRP $39.95; available early December 2006 Product URL: http://www.h2oaudio.com/
Want to take your iPod into the shower, tub or pool — and be able to keep listening to those tunes or audio podcasts? How about taking your new
80GB iPod and also watch those videos? Or listen to your iPod nano while skiing,
jogging, biking, or exercising — without worrying about rain, sand, dust, snow,
or some degree of impacts?
H2O’s Audio’s advanced Waterproof Housings offer iPod owners serious elemental protection while in use — if you’ve also got the company’s Waterproof Headphones, you can listen to your tunes up to ten feet underwater. (You can use other headphones out of water, although a company spokesperson suggests their Waterproof ones may be better, or safer, in wet above-air conditions.)
At the ShowStoppers evening press-only event during Ziff-Davis’s October 2006 Digital Life Expo (ehttp://digitallife.com) held in New York City, H2O Audio introduced its waterproof housing for Apple’s 80GB iPod player, available now, joining the waterproof housings already available for the 5GB and up iPods.
Because the housings are clear, you have a clear view of the screen, so you can even
watch videos in the rain or underwater.
For less water-prone users, H2O Audio is also introducing its Outdoor line — less expensive, lighter, and non-waterproof but “water, dust, sand and snow safe. These are intended for hikers, bicyclists, climbers, people doing aerobics or snow
sports, etc. The first Outdoor model available will be for the iPod nano,
scheduled to be available early December, MSRP $39.95.
H2O Audio’s patented Command Scroll Wheel passes the signals from fingers
(or gloves) to the iPod’s Click Wheel, so you don’t have to surface and
pop the case open to work the controls.
At forty or eighty bucks (and another forty for headphones, these aren’t non-trivial add-ons, but they’re’ probably worth it to protect your iPod — and let you use it in more rugged and/or wet circumstances. (You could keep your iPod dry in an Otterbox, but wouldn’t be able to use it.)