Burton and Motorola announce Audex 2nd generation

Monday, August 07, 2006

Motorola and Burton Snowboards are at it again. Building on the success of the first round of products the two companies decided to further develop their collaboration.

They announced that the Audex wearable electronics line of products will expand further (with Bluetooth support being one of the biggest innovations) and that the new offering will be already available this month.

The most recent version supported of Bluetooth is 1.2 and there is no word about a possible support for Bluetooth 2.0 so we will just have to wait the next releases.

Burton paired with Motorola to provide to the users of its products the possibility to listen to their favorite music and to easily make phone calls while wearing jackets or helmets.

As usual the main target of the Audex products will be the snowboarders but some items (especially the jacket) are perfectly suited also for a more general audience.

Speaking of the jacket the new one (just like the two helmets and the beanie) adds the A2DP support. This means that the jacket can be paired with any device that is able to communicate using this Bluetooth profile to provide superior audio quality.

Besides according to early reports the headphones audio quality is also enhanced by an advanced echo and noise reduction technology that is available for the integrated microphone too.

Previously there was only the possibility to control an iPod (via hidden wires) but the Bluetooth introduction will expand a lot the range of supported audio players.

Simply using the control panel on the sleeve (for the jacket product) it will be possible to do all the music and phone operations without having to open the jacket and reaching for the player or the cell phone. The helmets and the beanie instead have the control panel on the rotary wheel located on the side of the product.

There is no need to say that Burton guarantees high quality products and this coupled with the great features added by Motorola really makes this a good product to have in the winter.

Let’s hope that it replicates the success of the first line of products so Burton will partner again with Motorola and maybe add the Bluetooth 2.0 support.