Last week, I posted a review of the FINIS SwiMP3 waterproof MP3 player
First, a minor annoyance: I can’t seem to get the “skip to prev track” functionality to work. It just keeps restarting the same song over and over. Very annoying, but perhaps my unit is defective in some way? I generally just put the thing on shuffle and let it play, so it’s hardly a deal-breaker. Still, would be nice to have.
The bigger issue is that I think I underestimated the degree to which the unit interferes with my goggles. Because the little speaker things are really loud, you don’t want them near your ears, so you have to slide them as far forward on your goggle straps as possible. But that means that they tend to break the seal around your eyes and your goggles leak. Additionally, having them hanging off your goggles is really cumbersome and unwieldy, and I ended up spending a lot of time just trying to fiddle them into position.
However, I discovered a useful trick. These are bone conduction headphones, and though the pictures and instructions depict a user wearing them against the cheekbones, they should theoretically work when placed against any part of the skull. So I decided to give another position a try. I tucked both of the units up under the back of my swim cap, against my skull, and swam a few laps. Victory! I can hear the music perfectly, the elastic swim cap keeps the speakers securely in place, they don’t interfere with my goggles, and I think it’s probably quite a bit less goofy-looking.
The ideal would be a swim cap or goggles with a built in MP3 player that was super slim so you couldn’t even tell it was there. Until someone creates that, though, I think just shoving your SwiMP3 up under your swim cap works quite nicely.
You can purchase the SwiMP3 player from Amazon by clicking here.