I grew up in Florida and learned to swim at a young age. It’s one of my favorite activities, and though I’ve never done it competitively, I’m a decent swimmer. I’ve been working my way up to 1-mile swims every day, but the biggest problem I have is that it gets extremely dull and monotonous. So I decided to survey my options for waterproof mp3 players that I could use for swimming. The first one that caught my eye was the GSI AquaCube, which Amazon had for about $55, which isn’t too bad, so I ordered it.
I arrived at the gym excited to listen to some of the Mixergy interviews I had loaded on the device. After a few minutes of getting the headphones, player, goggles, and swim cap all arranged, I jumped into the water. The device didn’t short out or anything, and things were great at first. Until I started swimming. Unfortunately, as soon as any water gets into the headphones, the volume drops about 80%. Add to that the splashing sounds of swimming and I couldn’t hear the podcast well enough to understand what was being said. I tried turning up the volume all the way, but to no avail. I ended up tossing the player on the deck and finishing my workout in silence.
Conclusion: Not recommended; 2 stars out of 5. The MP3 player itself is fine, but the headphones are just not loud enough to be heard at all underwater. Next up, I’m going to try the SwiMP3 player, which uses bone conduction technology, so hopefully it’ll be louder. If you have any experience with waterproof music players, please post in the comments.