Listening to Yellow Submarine...in the Pool

Several years ago I reviewed a product from FINIS called the SwiMP3, an underwater MP3 player that didn't use headphones. Instead, it relied on what is called bone conduction. The "speakers" sit against your cheeks and pump sound through your skull to your inner ear. The sound quality was remarkably good – quite a bit less muddy sounding than waterproof headphones – and having music to listen to made endless laps in the pool a lot more enjoyable.

But the SwiMP3 had its issues. There was no graphic interface to speak of, so if you wanted to find a certain song, you had to run through your whole playlist using the less than responsive controls on one of the speakers. Granted, my early version of the SwiMP3 had only a 256 MB capacity, so it didn't take long to survey the whole list. The other problem was that the clips that held the speakers onto my goggles were hingeless, so I kept waiting for them to break each time I attached them. (To their credit, they never did break.) In short, I liked the SwiMP3 because it was the best waterproof music player I could find, but it had some limitations.

Until...

A few weeks ago, FINIS sent me a sample of the Neptune MP3 Player, which blew the SwiMP3 out of the water – ha ha, move on. But I was sworn to secrecy until the official launch, which happened a little over a week ago.

So, here it is...the Neptune:

Literally all of the minor qualms I had with the SwiMP3 are addressed in the Neptune, to the 20,000th league. It has 4 GB of storage, so there's plenty of room for your collected works of Bach and Beethoven with enough space left over for the Beastie Boys. The interface is simple, and high-contrast, and you can play and pause from both the storage/interface itself and from one of the speaker bodies. Hard plastic clips have been replaced by hinged clips on both speakers and the storage body, making the Neptune a snap – yeah, yeah – to attach and remove from goggle straps. 

While Neptune may not be the god of audio, the sound quality of the new Neptune MP3 is even better than that of the SwiMP3. Granted, these are not audiophile grade speakers, but you don't listen to MP3 on audiophile grade speakers, especially underwater. Bone conduction actually works best underwater, which is why dolphins and whales use it. But seriously, the Neptune is probably the best thing on the market for underwater listening, especially because it allows you to still wear your choice of earplugs, which do not negatively impact the sound quality.

At $160, the Neptune is not exactly cheap, but if you are a lap swimmer, you'll recoup the investment by sucking some of the boredom of staring at a black-tiled line from your workout. And with your favorite tunes on, you'll probably find your self spending more time in the pool.