This now-affordable underwater MP3 player gets a resounding thumbs up from Charles Hood and the DIVE team 
H2O Man Swim MP3 player, £59.95Back in December 2004, several of the DIVE team tested Intova’s H2O Man underwater MP3 player and gave it a resounding thumbs up. Our only reservation was its price. Although it was a cool gizmo, nearly £300 was simply too much to pay.
Times have changed. Today, you can get the latest H2O Man for a mere 20 per cent of the original price. What’s more, it is about 20 per cent the size of the previous model. The only drawback is that it confined to snorkelling use only. This is for two reasons: first, it is waterproof to only 3m; and second, unlike the earlier model, the earphones would be forced into your ears if you used them at depth. That said, if – like me – you spend off-gassing time pootling around the shallows and want to listen to music at the same time, then this toy fits the bill.
The self-contained unit, which attaches to your mask strap, offers 13 hours of playing time and only takes two hours to recharge the battery when connected to a computer via a USB cable. Tunes can simply be dragged and dropped into its folder from a provider such as iTunes. The player’s capacity is dependent on the size of Micro SD card used – we could easily fit five CDs onto the 512MB card supplied. It will take up to an 8GB card, which would give a capacity of around 80 CDs. There are controls for volume, track selection, pause/play and random play, although when the H2O Man is clipped to your mask strap, you have to adjust it blind. While the sound is a bit tinny, it’s perfectly acceptable. After snorkelling, the waterproof earphones module can be exchanged for a ‘dry’ one, enabling standard headphones to be used with improved sound quality. DIVE says...
Sounds good!
Value 9 Performance 7
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