By WALTER S. MOSSBERG and KATHERINE BOEHRET
Despite their huge popularity, iPods and other portable music players force people to walk around with wires coming out of their ears. That's an anachronism in an age when everything is going wireless. While there are some attachments for the iPod that allow the use of wireless headphones, both the attachments and the cordless headphones are bulky and ungainly.
But there's another approach to getting rid of the wires: make the music player wearable. This week, we tested just such a product -- the Thump 2 from Oakley Inc., the same company known for its stylish and expensive sunglasses with the signature "O" imprinted near your temple. The Thump 2 is a pair of Oakley sunglasses with an MP3 player and earbuds built into its foldable arms, eliminating the messiness of dangling cords.
After trying out the Thump 2, we agree that the sunglasses/earbuds combination works pretty well, is comfortable to wear and operates rather easily -- using a series of buttons on the top side of each sunglass arm. But it's very expensive and rather impractical.
The Thump 2 is an improved version of the original Thump that came out about a year ago. That first version was built on the thinner frames that you might conjure up when you picture a pair of Oakleys. This Thump uses shades that have a boxier look.