| Nu Tech Dark Shadow 256MB MP3 Sunglasses
|
The MP3 Player (continued):
During the initial battery charging cycle I turned on the Dark Shadow MP3 player and my Windows XP computer immediately recognized the Dark Shadows and assigned them a drive letter and CF drive designation in My Computer. At this point I copied and pasted 50 random MP3 files off of my hard drive and used up approximately 75% of the available space of the 256MB available on the glasses.
Now that we have the Dark Shadows all charged up and loaded with some MP3 files, it is time to see how the MP3 player functions and performs. All of the controls are on the right hand side of the Dark Shadow glasses, and consist of three buttons across the top and two on the bottom, along with three LEDs across the middle of the unit.
All of the five control buttons perform a dual purpose. For instance, the two buttons on the bottom of the MP3 player function as next song/ volume up or previous song/ volume down. A quick push of one of the bottom buttons will either skip to next song or back to previous song. Holding one of the bottom buttons down continually will result in the volume going up or down depending on which button you are holding.
Across the top we have the Random/Delete button. A momentary push of this button toggles between random play mode and sequence mode, holding this button down for 2 seconds will delete the song that is playing at the time. Next is the mode button that toggles between MP3 playback and Voice Recording, and doubles as the pause and record button when in Voice Record mode. Last but not least is the Power button, which also doubles as the pause button when in MP3 playback mode and as the select button when toggling between Voice Record and MP3 Playback. To power down the Dark Shadows you hold the Power button for 3 seconds and the unit powers down. Although this may all sound a little confusing when you first read it, once you get the Dark Shadow glasses in your hands, or on your head, the button usage becomes very easy to understand and it almost becomes instinctive they are so easy to use.
The Ear Buds:
The ear buds on the Dark Shadow glasses hang from small wires which have a coil spring shape wrapped into them. Presumably this will help prevent the wires from breaking or losing contact where they actually enter into the MP3 player by stretching at the spring rather than the connection point when pulled on or dangling. The ear buds come with a small foam cover which I was never able to make stay on the ear buds. After they had fallen off for the hundredth time, I just gave up on them, and to be frank, I could not physically feel the difference when I had one ear bud with the foam cover and one without, so I ended up just using the ear buds without the foam cover.
 
Playback Performance:
While there is no way the Dark Shadow's MP3 player is going to take the place of a good home stereo or computer with a decent sound card, let's face it, we cant pick up the home stereo or computer, put them on our head, and go for a bike ride. With the Dark Shadow glasses we can. I was very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the sound they produced. Sound quality was crisp and clear and had very little if any distortion, even when cranked up to the highest volume settings. Like I said, they do not compare to a home stereo mostly due to the lack of bass, but they should not be expected to. In my opinion the MP3 playback quality of the Dark Shadow glasses can hold their own with any similar portable MP3 player that uses small ear buds to produce their sounds.
The manual claims you can get up to eight hours of battery life during MP3 playback on a fully charged battery. On my first test I got almost 9 hours before the player shut down due to a dead battery. To my thinking, the battery life out runs the capacity of the MP3 player to hold music, as I was able to listen to all the songs several times over before I needed to recharge the battery.
Voice Recording:
Once again, voice recording with the Dark Shadow glasses was a very pleasant surprise. When using the voice recording feature, the Dark Shadow glasses saves files in the WMA format at a bit rate of 32kpbs. Now obviously 32kpbs is not great for recording music or something that requires lots of detail, but for recording a conversation between two people the Dark Shadows did amazingly well, and from a larger distance than I thought they would. They picked up voices from across the room and played them back clearly without any more effort than pushing a couple of buttons.
|
|
|
|
