Swimming to music
I mentioned that I've been swimming lately, which reminded me that I posted this review to the J-Geek list under the assumption that it was archived... but it no longer is. This review is just here in the hope that's it's useful to people searching for waterproof MP3 players.
I own an Oregon Scientific MP121.
The only reason I selected it over an alternative is because there was an Oregon Scientific store at a mall I was at when I was there and looking around for something like this as a little present to myself.
On the whole I'd say it's plenty good enough for what I want. And what I want is something simple that plays music or podcasts while I'm swimming. The audio quality is reasonably good while swimming, although I expect it's not shit-hot-hifi-quality. It comes with a pair of headphones that create a sort of seal in your ears and stop most of the water getting in. They're OK, but I wouldn't want to wear them for more than an hour as they're not brilliantly comfortable.
You can use normal headphones in the dry.
It comes with some sort of Windows software which I've not tried, but it mounts as a USB flash drive on my Mac.
It also comes with a big manual in a bunch of languages. As a general rule, I think that consumer devices that require manuals have not been designed properly. I didn't read the manual, I just copied MP3 files to the flash drive and hit play. It worked.
It has a pedometer, timers, a clock and so on. I've not tried them, but I assume they work, too.
I've also seem the SwimP3 (bone conduction, not headphones) highly recommended for what it does, although I've seen suggestions that it's unreliable. I've not tried it myself, but the pricing is similar.
