O ROKR: when Bluetooth and sunglasses meet

Friday, July 28, 2006

This past week appeared on the shelves the eagerly awaited O ROKR, the result of the combination between the Oakley and the Motorola expertise. As usual the first delivers a top notch product thanks to its HDO technology while the latter adds Bluetooth capabilities to these sunglasses.

The O ROKR is equipped with two adjustable in ear speakers that paired with compatible players or phone lets you listen to your favourite music or make and receive calls. Using these features is really easy because you only have to press the respective buttons on the sunglasses so there is no time wasted to reach the phone or the player.

Oakley provides six buttons (three for each side) to do things like volume control, play/pause the song or change the song to play. That’s three more buttons compared to the RAZRWIRE (previous Oakley/Motorola product) and they now have a stereo quality sound instead of the mono earpieces of his predecessor.

Coming to Bluetooth the most significant difference is the fact that the O ROKR sunglasses are compatible with the 2.0 version of the wireless specification. This means that apart from supporting the previous versions it also benefits from the introduction of Enhanced Data Rate: faster transmission speed with lower power consumption plus improved quality of reception.

Speaking of power consumption the O ROKR has 4 hours of listen/talk autonomy (100 hours in standby). Charging the battery requires 3 hours but if you really are in a hurry according to Oakley after 1.5 hours the battery will be charged at 80% of its capacity. A useful functionality of these sunglasses is that they come with a USB port so after you buy a USB cable you can charge the battery by plugging the O ROKR into a computer.

Bluetooth permits to receive stream music or phone calls up to 30 feet from the transmitting device so there is a lot of freedom of movement. The only drawback is that you still have to dial the number on the cell phone but if you primarily use the sunglasses to receive phone calls it’s a minor annoyance.

All things considered is a good buy if you like these kind of gadgets and now that their look is becoming a lot less robotics I definitively recommend them.