Customer Reviews

Freestyle Audio 2gb Waterproof MP3 Player w/ Screen

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I purchased this item a week ago thinking that it would make me want to swim laps longer - and it did. The sound quality was great and I even overlooked the confusing interface because - hey - its allowing me to listen to my music while I swim laps.

It worked great for a week - or 4 days of swimming laps, and then I went to turn it on and I got "loading..." and thats as far as the screen would go. Now the screen is blue and orange and there's condensation inside the display. Now - I know what you're thinking "Hey - are you deep sea diving with this thing or swimming laps 50 ft. below the surface of your pool?" No. No I am not. I'm fairly close to the surface while I'm swimming and keep the player in its own zip compartment in my gym bag which is free from water.

So now I'm looking for another mp3 player while I try to get my money back on this piece of crap. I'm sure its great if you're going canoeing and not touching water much, but for lap swimming, it failed me.

This product is a total rip off. Be carefull, on the selling screen it doesn't show how little waranty they have. You must try it within the first month since purchased and when I did (I day after a month after receiving it) I was on vacations in Brazil, and it short circuited on me on my goggles in the swimming pool. So they proposed to refund it but I should send it immediately and it'd cost me about $40 to have it sent and I'd have to have the invoice with it. So guess what: GOT RIPPED OFF, wasted dollars and time on it. Yet in Brazil I bought one (MORMAII)that cost me less and it's got 2 year waranty and PLUSSSS : it works IN the water!!!
FREESTYLE told me simply: your equipment is likely to have had a WATER FAILLURE"... ow, really, what the #$%.. wasn't it supposed to be waterproof???

I bought this after researching all of the other waterproof mp3's. I decided on this one after the price dropped once Target started selling it. I like it very much. Volume control button is a little difficult, but you get the hang of it afer a little practice. I don't change the volume once I get it where I want it anyway. You do lose much of the sound when your ears go under water, that's why it's best for swimming laps. It makes swimming laps fun. The time flies by when you have music in your ears. It's easy to transfer songs onto and it's very small. It's hard to tell the size online. It can clip on your swim goggles. For 2 GB of storage I think it's a great buy.

I do water aerobics as well as swim laps, and LOVE THIS!!! I load it with my favorite tunes and it makes my work out so enjoyable. This is coming from a person who HATES to work out. It's so easy to load your music and to charge it. Think of how much time you spend on your computer, just by plugging it into your USB port during that time its charged and your ready to go. I did run into the headphone issue that was addressed in previous reviews, but it was easily solved by going to a smaller size of the ear buds provided. I put them in like ear plugs and every once in a while the water gets in, but for the most part once they're in, and I'm good to go. I do think the sound is better under water, but comparable to your average mp3 players. I also use it outside the water for lawn work and other chores and like the clip on feature and sturdy casing. I have absolutely no regrets about buying and am recommending it to everyone at my pool and work.

I bought this about a month ago, and have used is maybe five or six times in the pool. Swimming is great exercise, but I find it tedious; so I was looking for a way to listen to the radio and MP3s while swimming, as I do while running. Since using the Freestyle, I can say that swimming to music is addictive, especially swimming to Widespread Panic ("Light Fuse - Get Away").

The pluses:

- The MP3 player works well. The sound is good. EQ, dynamics etc. seemed optimized for underwater listening.

- Volume is all you can want without damaging your hearing.

- Battery life is great (I'm still on my first charge, after maybe 6 or 7 hours).

- It is truly waterproof, so far.

- Drag and drop of music files (MP3 ripped in iTunes) and folders, through the USB hookup, works fine.

- Customer service has been way above and beyond my expectations: after using it about five times, one earbud stopped playing. I emailed Freestyle Customer Support, and they promptly sent me replacements (!) They even sent them Priority Mail, which probably wasn't necessary, as they are only a two hour drive away. It's pretty clear to me that they want to earn customer loyalty; and they have earned mine.

The negatives:

- The user interface is counterintuitive, with a steep learning curve, and buttons with many different functions depending on length of press. I mistakenly deleted a song (easily replaced) in a way that should not have occurred. There are some menu items, like "License Info", "Delete Song", "Delete All", and others, that probably shouldn't be on the menu at all. This could have been done much more simply. A menu-tree flowchart in the manual (or on the website) would have been extremely helpful. Luckily the Freestyle powers up right where you left off in the music, so if you are just listening to music while swimming, you don't have to navigate the menu system very often.

- I wish I could say the radio works well, as this was something important to me, but it is extremely subject to RF interference, more than any radio I have ever heard. I daily use several different types of Walkman radios, and a Philips MP3/FM radio, and they sound fine in my locale. The Freestyle picks up so much interference noise that I find it useless, unfortunately. Your locale may have less interference than mine, so it may work better for you.

This problem seems to be caused by both the earbud-cord antennae and the radio itself, as combining the earbuds with a Walkman degrades the Walkman's reception, but combining Sony headphones with the Freestyle still doesn't bring reception to the quality of a Walkman or Philips.

Conclusion:

On the whole, I love swimming to music so much that the Freestyle works great for me. It's much more fun than swimming without the Freestyle. It seems to be truly waterproof, it sounds good, battery life seems good, and customer service has been great.

Also, the earbuds, because they are made to keep water out of your ears, have an extremely high noise-isolation capability. I am going to try them on my next airline flight, so I can lower the music volume in my ears by not having to boost the earbuds above the aircraft noise. That would be an unexpected bonus value.

Too much fun! I did not want to get out of the water. It was so much fun having my music with me in the water. I do water aerobics. I am very vigorous/intense and I splash a lot. The music sounded better on the MP3 player than on my computer. The only complaint is the earplugs. You have to get a good fit. This unit comes with 3 sizes to choose from for the earplugs. So the challenge is getting a tight fit to where the plugs don't loosen up. I understand that if you swim and wear goggles, then the wrap around earpeice will stay in place better under the goggles strap.

If I could give it negative stars, I would give it 50 of them.

Pros:
- It's blue?


Cons:
Where to start??

- Arm band is a joke. In the garbage after 4 days of chlorine pool use.

- Buttons are VERY stiff and unintuitive. I don't consider myself a wimp, but as others have stated, they were extremely hard to push. I had Nintendo Thumb [read: sore] after 10 minutes.

- Have to be looking at screen to be sure that you pushed the correct combo of buttons for things like volume up/down. Kinda like video game codes just for simple operations.

- Very strange feedback for a few seconds when switching songs and after startup.

- After a week, it started locking up, and would not boot. Not a water entry issue as others have had, but buggy firmware I think.

- 'Tinny' sound while underwater, unless inserted very deep into ear canals. See next point for more on this.

- Earphones fell out VERY easily when swimming fast or doing breaststroke or butterfly.

- Earphones were extremely uncomfortable when inserted deep enough not to fall out. The 'soft' rubber baffles felt like metal blades in my ear. I know this is subjective, as I evidently have smallish ear canals. But it's something to consider.

- Contacted customer service MONTHS ago, and they're completely ignoring me.

Amazingly bad product. Go with a company that 1) makes a good product, and 2) makes it right if it fails.

I received this MP3 player 3 weeks ago and have taken it to Thailand and swam in the pools with it and used it in my hot tub multiple times with no problems. I had the older version (the 1 gb model) for 2 years and used it at least 40 hours a week before it finally broke from dropping it 1 too many times. I have been impressed with the new model and the additional features that the older model did not have. I am able to load 6+ audio books onto the player and charge it every couple of days without losing my spot in the book. I really like this player and hope that it gives me the same faithful service as the older model did!

,rip off . used a total of 11 wks,5hrs a wk,for water arthritis exercise ..then product stopped working altogether, called company,said warranty was for 90 days only, nothing they could do.

I bought this in October to listen to music while doing laps in a pool plus while kayaking. It was ok once you got used to it. Battery life is great and capacity is plenty for quite a few sports sessions without getting bored. Problems however outweigh these. The earphones don't stay in and seal, I've tried many things in the end I took off the hook-behind the ear things and rigged them to my goggles but even this only worked for about 15 laps before I had to stop. The earphones aren't the most comfortable either. The buttons are VERY small and stiff and the interface is difficult to get used to frequently pressing the wrong button. My unit also turned itself off after a couple of songs which is really annoying mid training set. Then to cap it off 5 months after I bought it, I probably used it about once a week for the last 3 months, no more then 12 times and its dead, won't turn on nothing and Freestyle Audio don't seem interested in helping at all. For the price I'ld try another brand.