Entered CNET Catalog: 08/27/2004
SKU: SV i700
Manufacturer: H20 Audio
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Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 08/31/2004
Upside: Not only is the H2O Audio SV i700 about half the size of the Oceanic DV-X, its accompanying headphones are less bulky and feature the behind-the-ear styling popular with many sports-oriented 'phones. The SV i700 is a great solution for anyone who wants to take their tunes surfing, swimming, or along on any other wet ride; it'll also give your player extra protection on the slopes. H2O Audio specializes in producing underwater audio equipment, so we're betting the SV i700 produces great sound both in and out of the drink (in our preliminary tests, the Oceanic sounded fabulous).
Downside: The SV i700's $99 price tag is steep for an accessory--especially since you'll most likely want to buy the optional $29 armband to keep your hands free for your sport--but we imagine water babies will easily shell out the dough for such a unique toy. For most water activities, it's a good idea to be very aware of your surroundings; the SV i700 screams distraction.
Outlook: The market for underwater audio systems may be small, but H2O Audio certainly has it cornered. Anyone who's ever wanted to rock out in the wet should take heed and check back later for our full review.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 2 user reviews
It's what you want it to be
Pros: Great for swimming the Australian crawl
Cons: Not available for iPod Nano yet, nor any mp3 players at all except irivers and iPods. Earplugs can be very frustrating at first.
Review: I really wanted this product to work. If you want it to work bad enough and don't give up on it, you'll love it in the end. I swim an hour 5 times a week and man, is that boring! The SV i700 changed all of that. Now I listen to audio book after audio book and hardly notice the time passing. Where once I was unable to keep up an exercise regimen, now I'm the most regular guy at the pool.
The trick is "getting used to the earplugs". They actually work if you can limit your head movement a little and remove the neckband. I swim with a mask and snorkel and at first the earplugs constantly leaked and drove me crazy. What I hadn't realized is that my snorkel kept nudging the earplugs out of my ears. When I fixed the snorkel onto my mask to where it didn't hit the earplugs, my problems were solved. Now, in an hour swim 5 times a week, doing the crawl, maybe one side will leak once a week and all I have to do is stand up and reinsert the earplug and I'm on my way again. I've noticed that H2OAudio has recently added a link to slicsound.com whose earplugs might prove useful for some.
I prefer the armband holder to the waistband because it allows me access to my mp3 player, though the waistband probably would help keep the earplugs in place even better.
Support is fantastic. They even sent me a free T-shirt for my initial frustration-even though it turned out to be my own misdoings causing the problems. You actually get to a human pretty quick and they don't live in India. They are just regular people who really seem to want to help.
Hint: For listening to audio books, you need to be able to move around in the book easily. That's tough with iriver mp3 players, unless you don't mind holding down the fast-forward for 15 minutes trying to get to the spot where you left off. I'm a big iriver fan, but I'm told that the iPods do allow you to move around quickly in a book and iPods do support the .aa file format that you get from audible.com. I emailed iriver about the problem, but they never responded. For music only though, I prefer iriver flash players, like the 799 which is what fits into the SV i700. Note that H2OAudio do make the housings for quite a few iPods and I suspect that it is only a matter of time before they have something that an iPod Nano will fit into as well. That, to me, would be the ideal set up.
A suggestion to H2OAudio would be to allow users to purchase headphones separately. After a little less than a year of heavy use, like all portable headphones, one side became intermittent. To their credit, H2OAudio replaced mine very quickly, at no charge, after I sent mine in. But I would gladly have paid for some back up headphones if they sold them.
I highly recommend this product not because it's easy to use, but because it can work well if YOU want it to. For me, it's the difference between continuing an exercise program and giving up again, like I have my entire life. I've lost a lot of weight, look better, feel better, and am a lot wiser for listening to all the books. Those are pretty good reasons to highly value this product that I personally love.
The trick is "getting used to the earplugs". They actually work if you can limit your head movement a little and remove the neckband. I swim with a mask and snorkel and at first the earplugs constantly leaked and drove me crazy. What I hadn't realized is that my snorkel kept nudging the earplugs out of my ears. When I fixed the snorkel onto my mask to where it didn't hit the earplugs, my problems were solved. Now, in an hour swim 5 times a week, doing the crawl, maybe one side will leak once a week and all I have to do is stand up and reinsert the earplug and I'm on my way again. I've noticed that H2OAudio has recently added a link to slicsound.com whose earplugs might prove useful for some.
I prefer the armband holder to the waistband because it allows me access to my mp3 player, though the waistband probably would help keep the earplugs in place even better.
Support is fantastic. They even sent me a free T-shirt for my initial frustration-even though it turned out to be my own misdoings causing the problems. You actually get to a human pretty quick and they don't live in India. They are just regular people who really seem to want to help.
Hint: For listening to audio books, you need to be able to move around in the book easily. That's tough with iriver mp3 players, unless you don't mind holding down the fast-forward for 15 minutes trying to get to the spot where you left off. I'm a big iriver fan, but I'm told that the iPods do allow you to move around quickly in a book and iPods do support the .aa file format that you get from audible.com. I emailed iriver about the problem, but they never responded. For music only though, I prefer iriver flash players, like the 799 which is what fits into the SV i700. Note that H2OAudio do make the housings for quite a few iPods and I suspect that it is only a matter of time before they have something that an iPod Nano will fit into as well. That, to me, would be the ideal set up.
A suggestion to H2OAudio would be to allow users to purchase headphones separately. After a little less than a year of heavy use, like all portable headphones, one side became intermittent. To their credit, H2OAudio replaced mine very quickly, at no charge, after I sent mine in. But I would gladly have paid for some back up headphones if they sold them.
I highly recommend this product not because it's easy to use, but because it can work well if YOU want it to. For me, it's the difference between continuing an exercise program and giving up again, like I have my entire life. I've lost a lot of weight, look better, feel better, and am a lot wiser for listening to all the books. Those are pretty good reasons to highly value this product that I personally love.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 2 user reviews
big disappointment
Pros: mp3 player and case work great
Cons: earphones are unusable underwater
Review: This was an expensive mistake. It's a good mp3 player and the case works fine... But the earphones don't work underwater. They are cones made of hard plastic with a short flange, too narrow to form a seal within the ear. As soon as water comes in, the sound is not audible.
