Portable audio players have been taking over the market in full swing. There seems to be a recent boom in the amount of MP3 players you see on the market nowadays. Everyone from Dell and Creative to Sony and Olympus has jumped the bandwagon to become part of the latest trend in the music industry. In an attempt to compete against Apple’s iPod, many of them have forgotten the word "innovation". For one reason or another, they all believe the idea of success in the market is to copy Apple. While this technique has worked for some, namely Creative and iRiver, it sure has failed others. While we are complaining about the lack of innovation, there are companies who have taken innovation to the next level. They have revived the word innovation back to consumer electronics. The company we are talking about today is nTren Technologies. Now, they are not going after the whole hard drive based MP3 player idea, and they are by no means a name that rings a bell to many, but they have come up with something that may attract a lot of attention. If nothing else, the nTren MP3 watch could be an eye-opener to world’s leading consumer electronics firms.

nTren Technologies has taken the idea of wristwatches and MP3 player to new heights. nTren MP3 watches come in two styles: leather and stainless steel. The only difference between the two products is the aforementioned choice of wristbands. Other than that, both styles carry the same faceplate and support the exact same features. Physically, the wristwatch looks quite attractive with its refined finishing and its elegant style. The left side of the wristwatch supports a headphones jack along with two buttons for play functionality and equalizer adjustments. The right side, however, supports the fast-forward/rewind and volume increase/decrease options. As you can see, nTren has done quite an impressive workmanship throughout the faceplate to really bring that stylistic feeling to the product.

If stainless steel isn’t exactly to your liking, you can always go with the leather wristband option.

The nTren MP3 watch features an MP3 player support, direct USB data storage option, a standard analog watch selection, red/green light indicator, 10 hours of battery life, and a rechargeable ion battery. nTren has even equipped the watch with water-protection, which is a must especially if it’s also going to act as a MP3 player.

The watch is available in either 128MB or 256MB sizes with support in Windows 98SE or higher. It also features a round 4-pin USB 1.1 for hassle-free transfers. It would’ve been better if nTren had picked the latest in USB standards for faster transfer speeds – USB 2.0 – but that may have increased the cost of the watch. Besides, maybe it’s not such a drawback when you consider the fact that you will be listening to music via your watch that only weighs in between 50g to 80g. The watch can support bit rates between 32kbps to 256kbps and frequency between 20Hz to 20KHz. The support should allow you to listen to your favorite music in a wide variety of encoding methods.

The watch is available in black, silver or white colors. The colors obviously remain exclusive to the faceplate and not the general body of the watch. With the leather version of the watch, nTren also gives you the choice to pick between brown, black and blue for the preferred wristband.

The nTren MP3 watch comes with a full one-year warranty and costs $199.00 (128MB) and $299 (256MB) for the stainless steel style. The leather edition comes at a little more affordable price at $179 (128MB) and $279 (256MB), respectively.

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