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Ever try jogging or biking with your iPod or MP3 player? Inevitably, assuming the earbuds don’t fall out from the activity, you’ll end up with a wire tangled around your neck or some other body part. Wireless headphones, powered by Bluetooth, have come along to address this problem, but that still leaves you with an MP3 player wedged in your pocket somewhere—another inconvenience when exercising.
This Otto headset combines the MP3 player and headphones into one device, essentially making it wireless, not because there’s no wire between your player and headphone, but because the player is the headphone. Oakley tried a similar concept by putting an MP3 player into a set of really ugly sunglasses hoping to catch the interest of snowboarders and Battlestar Galactica fans. Otto’s product isn’t nearly as conspicuous looking, though it is bigger than a set of earbuds.
The headset includes 512 KB of memory for storing MP3 or WMA files. For me that came to about 60 tracks at various sizes, though the amount will vary depending on the track and compression. That’s not a lot these days, but more then enough for a couple of good bike rides or trips to the gym. The Otto doesn’t come with any downloading software, but it works with Windows Media and Napster. I used Napster because I already had a number of play lists set up in the application. The unit connects via USB, which acts as the battery charging cable and transfer cable. The transfer was pretty quick, though charging a completely dead battery takes about 5 hours.
The controls are very basic. You get play, pause, forward, reverse and volume. Since there’s no screen you can’t really search for a specific track other than just skipping forward until you find it, but since this was designed to use during physical activities, the screen isn’t very important either. Red and green LED lights display the player’s status. Unfortunately, there isn’t a shuffle feature. The tracks play in the order you loaded them. A shuffle button would be a welcome addition.
When I was ready to go, I put the headset on and headed out the door for a bike ride—luckily my bike helmet straps and sunglasses didn’t interfere with the headset at all. The headset was fairly comfortable on my hairless head, though the ridged plastic can get uncomfortable after long periods. Non- skinheads won’t have that problem.
Otto told me that the company’s background was in developing audio systems for commercial grade communications such as firefighters and the like. I’m not sure what kind of sound quality commercial applications call for, but this headset sounded quite good. You don’t get some of the crispness and bass found in the best in-ear models and there’s no noise canceling, but you don’t necessarily want that code-of-silence effect when you’re jogging or biking on a road. You wouldn’t be able to hear that truck coming up behind you. The unit gets plenty loud if you want it to. On another day I had no trouble listening while running my lawn mower.
The Otto is a good MP3 alternative especially designed for active users. I love that I don’t have to carry anything else in my pocket or have wires tangling in branches when I’m riding single-track trails. Battery life was good—I got about five hours worth of bike rides and it still had juice. It’s not as trendy as the iPhone, but it’s also not as big and the wires won’t get stuck in your spokes. yy
Grant Clauser
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