Oakley MP3 Player Sunglasses

Oakley MP3 Player Sunglasses
No headphone cables to untangle as with most portable players. Music actually riding on your ears. Zero retinal damage from ultraviolet radiation.

And if Oakley's new breed of eyewear, dubbed Thump, retailed for about $100, it might be a tempting alternative to some of the rudimentary flash memory card music players on the market.

But these supershades cost $395 for a pair with 128 megabytes of memory and $495 for the 256-megabyte version, which sports polarized lenses. With typical audio compression rates, that means the larger version holds roughly 64 four-minute songs.

By comparison, the smallest of Apple's stylish iPod music players has 4 gigabytes of memory and retails for about $249. And flash-memory players of comparable memory size, such as the Creative Nomad or the Rio Cali, come with loads of features to arrange playlists and tweak sound settings, and typically go for less than $150.

Still, for music fans looking be rid of tangled earphone cables and arm or waist-riding players, Thump at least delivers a solid playback — as long as you can keep the earbuds in place.

Oakley mounted the digital player's hardware on the frame's temples, including a sliding and pivoting feature to help adjust the speakers to the wearer's ears.

But slight head or neck movements often result in the speaker buds separ