Snowboard Reviews, Articles, News & More
Electronics
05-06 Highgear TrailAudio 512 Review
06 years ago
by Chris
in Music Players
In the age of the iPod Nano, all mp3 players are judged by their size, and the TrailAudio defintely comes in on the large size – however, there are several features that hold some sway for the action-sport enthusiast.
Highgear has a solid mp3 player with the TrailAudio 512. With 512 megs of memory, the player can hold plenty of music for a few day’s worth of riding, but is little small for longer trips. The shell is durable, and everything has rubber weather-seals to keep moisture out.
Unlike Apple’s famous mp3 players, the TrailAudio runs on a AAA battery, meaning that all you need is a convenience store that sells batteries to get your player playing. The display is acceptable, but shows only the most basic of information. Riders accustomed to, or expecting a color display like a modern iPod will be severely disappointed. The flip side is that a small display requires much less power, helping the TrailAudio to survive on the same battery for long periods of time.
I like the caribiner clip, and the unit seems pretty water resistant, but wearing it on a belt-loop while snowboarding makes me a little nervous- like putting a hundred dollar bill on a table in the breeze and hoping it doesn’t fly away. The benefit is obvious though, unlike a md-player designed to be kept in your pocket, you can see the display and change tracks without any unzipping.
All in all, the TrailAudio is a promising unit, and I hope that Highgear continues to develop their action-sports mp3 players. We certainly need more rubberized, water-resistant electronics, and with a little bit of tweaking, and bit of catch-up work, the TrailAudio could be a real contender.
03-04 Suunto S6 Review
0Hopefully Suunto will eventually bring the prices down, but nonetheless, I definitely recommend it as is.
Suunto has been making watches for a long time, and the S6 is specifically made for the snow sports market. There are several cool features in the watch, but the one that sets the S6 apart from ordinary watches is a ski/board altimeter, which can track the altitude of your descents, and graph them on your computer. In addition to the altimeter, the watch has a built in compass, multiple alarms, and can use the altimeter to calculate weather changes instead of altitude. It is also depth rated to 330 feet.
The Suunto S6 is a masterpiece of a watch. After months of use it shows absolutely no wear on the plastic body, the rubber bands, or the bezel surface. The watch bands are a high-quality soft rubber that is smooth and soft to the touch, but still strong. The buttons have a firm push that means they rarely get bumped in on their own, but Suunto was also nice enough to include a “lock” feature that prevents unwanted button presses.
The altimeter is the feature I want to focus on, because it is the one I’ve used the most, and it’s the reason to buy the watch. First you need to calibrate the altimeter. You can do this from either a known barometric pressure, or a known altitude. Most resorts post their altitude somewhere, so it’s pretty easy to set that way. Otherwise go to a weather website and find out the current pressure. Once you have the altimeter calibrated, simply start the log book when you start riding, and stop it at the end of the day. Underneath all of your layers, the S6 will use changes in air pressure to calculate your ascents and descents, and when you get home at night you can transfer the logs to your computer. The default settings have the watch take samples every 10 seconds, which gives you a pretty good idea of your descent. However, if you really want to see the detail, you can bump it up to a sample every second; this setting is detailed enough to show you the altitude changes resulting from airing off kickers.
From the computer you can view them in graph format, compare runs, and print them. It is so cool to see a chart of your days’ runs. The software is easy to use and get used to, and although it was a bit finicky, they released a software patch that cleared up all the issues I had. The only other thing I could add here is that to connect to the computer it uses a serial connection instead of USB; not a big deal, but USB would significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to download your logs.
The price tag is definitely prohibitive, but this is a watch that will last for several years, and it has some pretty cool features.
01-02 Freestyle Zone Review
0Freestyle makes great watches, if you are in the market, check them out.
I like this watch. It is small enough to not be bulky, but big enough to be useful. The temperature feature is pretty cool, once you set it to the current temperature it is super accurate for all other temps. I wore this watch on the beach in the sand, in water, in my garage while working on my car, and of course, snowboarding. Even after all this abuse, it is showing no signs of fading or scratching, and still appears to be in new condition.
01-02 Freestyle Zone Review
0While the watch isn’t excessive in its features, the ones it does have come in handy.
What a watch! It is the kind of watch that you forget you are wearing, except when you need it. It works great for a guy or a girl. I was just at the ocean both in Seward and Homer, Alaska (not 330 ft. deep) and the watch, after being in salt water, looks and works as good as new.
With this watch you can pick what you want on the display: time, date, day, year or temperature, time, date, day. You may also choose if you want the time or the temp to be the biggest characters on the face. The temperature has been my favorite feature. In comparison to a local temperature sign, my watch’s temperature reading was 2 degrees off. That kind of accuracy is nifty. And it comes in many different color combos.
UPDATE 2004: This is still my daily-use watch. All that has changed in two years is that it looks a lot dirtier. It still works well.
01-02 Freestyle Velzy Analog Review
0This is a professional-looking watch, and well below the price many companies would charge for this watch.
The Velzy is an amazingly clean looking analog watch. The stainless steel body and band have a great visual appearance, but also provide excellent durability. The watch’s face is easy to read, and the arms glow in the dark, so you can find out what time it is, whatever the time is. The Velzy also shows the date just above 6 ‘o clock, a cool feature for those of us who can’t remember what day it is. The only downside of this feature is that it doesn’t know the difference between the months, thus if there are only 28 days in a month, you will have to manually turn the timing bezel forwards on the 1st of the month.
The safety clasp on the watch band is ingenious. I have never liked metal watch bands because they undo themselves and fall off so easily. It is a big pain to pull your mitten off to check the time, and discover that your watch is in your mitten. The clasp is actually a button on the side of the latch. The watch band will not open unless that button is pressed open.
01-02 Freestyle Viper Review
0The Viper is best for those who like large sports watches.
The Viper screams style and draws attention. It is black and aluminum and its face has a fish-eye appearance that stretches the numbers out into cool shapes without making it hard to read. It is a very good looking, but still very rugged watch. Like all Freestyle watches, the Viper won’t let you down in its hardiness. Water is not a problem with it’s depth rated to 500 feet; it is nice to not have to worry about if it gets dirty because you can wash it off. It is a good, basic sporty watch without many bells and whistles and with simple appeal.