|
By Richard Menta 3/22/06 The risks of listening too much to MP3 portables continues to circulate the news. The culprit seems to be the close proximity of earphones and earbuds combined with the relatively loud noise one can pump through these small devices. I am sure this has made quite a few parents uneasy as many tweens and teens tend to ignore such warnings. And what about the player manufacturers? Are they doing anything to make their product safer? Well Maxfield says they are. "Now parents don’t need to worry about their children damaging & opening expensive players or damaging their own ears & ear-drums with this practical and stylish range". says Maxfield in their introduction of the Max-Joy. Aiming for the kid market for MP3 portables the company designed a unit that was both rugged and easy on the ears. |
The Max-Joy (a name that sounds just a tad creepy to me) is encased in a rubberized shell to keep out dirt and moisture with rounded edges to better absorb the inevitable drops, the latter feature a compelling one to us fumble-fingered adults. As for sound the company has put an audio limiter on the Max-Joy, restricting the volume to 60DB. That is significantly less than the near-100 db sound pushed out by most MP3 players. The unit also comes with Koss headphones, which they claim are designed to reduce potential damage.
The Max-Joy comes with only 256MB of memory, but has an SD card slot to expand it. Maxfield claims the Max-Joy can get 19 hours on a single AAA battery, a plus as we have learned from our experience with older Li-ion batteries.
The Maxfield Max-Joy is presently available at Amazon's UK site for £61 pounds sterling (about $99 US). With the "iPod-can-make-you-deaf" story still running through the US press, expect the Maxfield to hit US shores by summer.
Other MP3 stories:
Acer MP-500
Announced
Samsung YP-Z5
iPod nano Competitor
NEC VoTol
Great Indy Bands
Struggle to be Heard
The 30GB iPod Video is available on Amazon
