Customer Reviews

H20 Audio Waterproof Case with Armband for iPod classic 6G (Clear)

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Background:
I absolutely love the H2O case for the classic iPod. It opened a new world of exercising fitness that I'd never been able to achieve. Kickboarding is great exercise, but it's boring. But with the H20 case, I was able to listen to BBC podcasts while kicking. End result is that I can easily kickboard for the duration of a 45 minute program without getting bored.

What happened:
I was kickboarding and the sound from my iPod abruptly stopped. Got to the side of the pool, expecting to see that the miniplug for the headphones was out. It wasn't. To my horror, I found about a half inch of water inside. I immediately opened up the casing and took the ipod out and dried it with my towel. The case was completely shut and I saw no possibility of a failed seam.

However, I found the round item with a screw in it loose inside the casing.
I also saw that the "play/pause" button was missing from the outside. Where the button used to be, there was a hole, with a black o-ring. This is where the water came in. I put on my goggles and swam back down the pool and found two pieces on the bottom which were the "play/pause" button and another piece.


I waited overnight for the iPod to dry out, but the next day it was still dead.

I called H20 to tell them what happened. I didn't really have high expectations, but at the very least I thought I should let them know what happened. They told me that I was just within the warranty period, and asked me a lot of questions about the circumstance of the failure. They asked me to send the case and the iPod in for their engineers to look at with the aim I imagined to study it both to figure out whether or not it was my fault that it broke and more generally what design changes need to be made in the next model.

I wondered rather ruefully, what happens next? Let's say they do decide that something went wrong, and they offer to replace the case. Normally this would be great, but in this instance, I'd be no better off than if they didn't replace the case, as I'd still be out of an iPod. I was thinking that the best case scenario would be that as the iPod continues to dry, maybe they could revive it somehow.

What H20 did:
They called me with the engineers report. As it happened the seal never did fail. It seems that the plastic shaft which connects the inner round part which touches the play button of the ipod to the outer button on the waterproof casing broke. This caused the play pause button to fall off, and the water to come in. I don't know, maybe I have superhuman strength, and most people don't push the button as hard as I did. They had not seen this kind of failure before, and were already working to see if this was a one off, or if there was something they needed to change.

And what did they do to compensate me? Something remarkable. Two days later a box from them showed up at my house. In it was a brand new updated waterproof case, a new holder for it, a set of their top-of-the-line waterproof headphones, and A CHECK TO BUY A NEW IPOD. I was blown away. Throughout their customer service was so prompt, professional, courteous and in the end determined to make things right. They stood behind their product completely. You could only afford to do this kind of thing if it is a true rarity, which speaks to the soundness of the design.


Before this happened, I didn't fully appreciate how much trust is involved in putting your $250.00 iPod in their waterproof case. It had worked so well and so easily that I really didn't think about it. There was never even a drop of water in the case before that day. Now I understand that there is an element of trust involved. But I also know that my trust was and is fully justified. If in the incredibly unlikely event that a case fails, they've got your back. So there is absolutely no reason to hesitate about going into the water with this case, as I have been happily doing for quite some time now with the new case.

Thank you H20 for being such a top-notch company.

It does make a 160 Gb ipod classic waterproof as advertised. It also makes it rather large. Won't fit in my pants pocket or inside coat pocket anymore. I guess it really is designed to use with the armband, because you essentially upgrade it's size to a slightly taller and narrower paperback book. If this doesn't seem like a problem with how you would practically use your iPod, buy one, but I think in the future something smaller and possibly cheaper may emerge, and I will buy that.