This is not your average MP3 watch. The nTren MP3 watch means to stop the trend of ugly MP3 wrist players and throw some fashion and style into the mix. It infact does quite well and could make a geek proud!

nTren sound MP3 Watch Review

Item Provided By: nTren sound
Retail Price: $179.00 - $299.00 depending on model
Review Date: 2/24/05
Review Author: Rusty Newton

Review Sponsored By: nTren sound

nTren sound's new MP3 wrist watch is made for the
Geek with style. We have all seen the ugly plastic MP3 watches
that look almost like toys on first glance, well nTren's new watch
is trying to change that trend and "one up" the competition.
Let's see how it does! 

IN THE BOX

 Expecting a typical blister pack or cardboard box. I was very surprised when I opened the shipping box to find a really good looking leather container! My first thought was that this would make an awesome gift, just because of the style its presented with.

 Opening the fancy leather container I saw that they packed quite a bit inside this little box!

 In the picture above you will see that the package includes:

What comes with your nTren MP3 watch?
• 1 x Retractable Earphones
• 1 x Retractable USB Connector
• 1 x Adapter for after-market headphones or car stereo
• 1 x A/C Adapter for charging
• 1 x Software Driver CD for Win 98 SE operating system
• 1 x Users Manual
• 1 x One-Year Warranty Registration Card

 Everything included is packaged in nice little separate baggies for protection. As you can see the nTren MP3 watch itself comes mounted on a display stand like you would see in the stores.

 Now that we know what we have, lets see how it looks and what it can do.

DESIGN & FEATURES

Technical Features:
• MP3 player
• USB Data Storage
• Analog Watch
• 3-10 ATM Water-Resistant
• Red/Green light indicator
• 10 hours playing when fully charged
• Hi Li-ion rechargeable battery
• Solid Stainless Steel Case and Band or Interchangeable Leather Band

 MP3 Watch:

 The nTren MP3 watch is a far cry from the other MP3 wrist wear I have seen. Rather than looking like a plastic toy, its appearance is that of a expensive business man's watch( or shall I say business Geek? ). In the picture above you can see that this particular model has a stainless steel body with a black leather band. nTren does make other styles that have full stainless steel bands along with multiple colors of leather.

 To any typical person who sees the watch it will look like an analog watch with four function buttons similar to a digital watch. Going clockwise the buttons are labeled "FF/Vol+", "REW/Vol-", "Play" and "EQ" . It has a very elegant appearance, a good balance between futuristic, contemporary, geeky and business. (Yes geeky is a style, ask any geek). The glow in the dark watch hands are nice also but they don't glow bright enough for practical use.

 The only odd thing about the appearance, is that the main body of the timepiece is a bit thicker than on a normal watch. This is of course because you have a Hi Li-ion battery stuffed in there for the MP3 player, plus the mp3 player circuitry. I have to say though, they did a good job in making it a compact unit.

 Looking at the watch you might wonder where you plug in your Charger, USB cable or Earphones. On the left side of the watch there seems to be three buttons, but there is only two. The middle button shaped object is actually a Capped port, a tiny metal cork-like cap secured to the main body by a tiny double linked chain. You just pop off the little cap and you will see a 3.5mm stereo plug port, nTren's instructions call it a "4 pin USB Round port". During testing we will see if this is a convenient location for the jack or not.

 Accessories:

 Though this watch may be on the expensive side of the mp3 watch universe, they have included several accessories to make it a sweeter package.

 In the picture above from left to right: USB to 3.5mm , Adapter for after-market headphones, retractable earbuds and then the A/C Adapter for charging.

 It's good that they thought ahead and included the retractable USB cable and Earbuds. It completes the whole concept of having a compact, mobile music player on your wrist since you don't have to carry around several wadded up threefoot cables with twisty ties on them.

 Whats interesting to note about the USB technology employed and what also makes me love USB so much is that you  use the SAME port to plug your Earphones in, USB transfer cable and Charge the battery through. Makes it so much nicer to have it all through one port rather than three! 

Alright now lets get to the functionality.

TESTING

Charging:

 First off I decided to charge the watch up to make sure it was at full battery capacity. When reading the instructions I saw that the battery can be charged by A/C transformer or USB connection, thats a pretty cool feature.

 When charging a tiny red LED illuminates on the face of the watch letting you know it is properly connected. When done charging the red LED goes off and a green LED illuminates.

 Charging will take a few hours or less depending on the status of your battery.

File Transfer & Storage:

 After charging the battery up I tested the file transfer and storage capabilities. I plugged up the included USB transfer cable to a front USB port on the test computer. Windows XP detected the Flash Drive of the nTren MP3 watch successfully and displayed the removeable disk in My Computer.

 Before benchmarking the Flash Drive I removed the MP3 files that came pre-loaded on it. Utilizing SiSoftware Sandra I benchmarked the Flash Drive and it showed nothing special. File transfer speed is just as rated, USB 1.1 but with a max of 5Mbps. The drive will store a maximum of 124MB data which is correct, being that the FAT filesystem takes up the other 4MB.

 The 5Mbps does seem slow compared to Hi-Speed USB 2.0(480Mbps) but all of the other watches run at the same or slower. I do not know of any at the moment that have a transfer rate any higher than USB 1.1.

MP3 Player Operation & Sound Quality:

 All charged up and done testing the filesystem I proceeded to load the nTren watch with a bunch of MP3's.

 To test it properly I wore the watch on my wrist. I am assuming that anyone who buys a MP3 playing watch will be listening to the music while wearing the watch, seeing as how that is the purpose of the device =D .  

 While wearing the nTren sound MP3 watch the function buttons are still easy to press. The lack of a LCD screen to tell what track or song you are on is kind of confusing. It seems it would be even more so if you had more than ten or twenty songs, though you can see below that the watch does look very nice, and that is the tradeoff you are making. No LCD screen, but you get the style of an analog watch with the ability to play MP3's.

 The included Earphones plug in fine, I found that the cord is a little short but the length is fine as long as you are not doing jumping jacks or flailing your arms.

 Audio quality is definitely a strong point with this watch. The connection is solid, there is no static or noise. Every song I played sounded great. Of course there is not much bass on a unit like this and you would not expect that, but actually if you plug up some decent after-market headphones you will hear some depth to the music you wouldn't expect with a lot of MP3 players.

 The built-in EQ seemed to alter the sound levels a little bit, but not making a whole lot of difference. Most all the songs sounded fine on the default setting. The general overall quality of the sound was very good.

 When fully charged, you should be able to play music to your heart's delight for about 9 or so hours.

Note on USB cable:

 The retractable USB cable that comes with the nTren MP3 watch is very fragile. There is a clip located on one side of the cable for routing it along your shirt, so as to reduce slack. If you attempt to remove this clip(which looks like it can very easily come off) you will very likely destroy the cable or tear off a chunk of the insulation. I am not sure if most of the retractable USB cables are like this or not, I have never tried to remove the little clip before. The clip is similar to whats on cellphone headsets, just in case you don't know what I am talking about =D If you so much as even slightly put a fingernail to the cable it will dent in.

CONCLUSION

 The nTren sound MP3 watch is a comfortable, good looking, easy to use device. I would say it is unique in that even upon close examination it still looks like a really nice executive style timepiece. Most of the other MP3 watches do not hold up to this standard of appearance. The quality of the nTren watch is almost up to par with its aesthetic appeal. I will give nTren props too for making the watch water resistant even with all this gadgetry stuff in it. To sum it up, the nTren MP3 watch is awesome in most aspects, but the included accessory cables seem a little cheaply made.

PROS
• Stainless steel, water resistant. Watch and Band are high quality.
• Looks excellent. Digital-Analog hybrid style.
• Plays MP3s
• Holds 128 or 256MB of MP3s or any other Data
• Sound quality is as good as any other MP3 player. Great! 

CONS
• Included Retractable Cables can tear up easily if your not careful.

I would like to thank nTren sound for providing us with their very unique
and stylish MP3 watch for review! Go check out their site at http://www.ntrensound.com
for more of their products!

FINAL RATINGS