Yamaha's BODiBEAT reviewed: 'part DJ, part heart monitor, and part trainer'

Like DAPs with oodles of cheap storage, luscious screens, non-proprietary headphone jacks, and "so skinny I keep losing the damn thing" form-factors? Yamaha's BODiBEAT is not for you -- unless you're willing to look past all that in order to be the hippest sprinter on the trails. It's a chunky, blocky, $299 thing with a monochrome display and a measly 512MB of (non-expandable) memory, existing to serve only one purpose: amping up runners. According to a review at Yanko Design, it delivers on that at least, dynamically selecting from your tracks so beats suit your heart rate and pace, filling in with "built-in circa 1990 techno songs" when your collection fails to match your tempo. Its jogging-friendly "pinch" buttons got high marks, as did the accuracy in picking tracks to tweak workouts, but the overall value here seems awfully limited for all but the hardest of hardcore marathoners.

[Mike @ Oct 14th 2008 8:41AM]

This must be a joke.

[Mike @ Oct 14th 2008 8:47AM]

I'm guessing you get a pretty good workout just picking this thing up.

[iEye @ Oct 14th 2008 8:42AM]

Nike+ iPod + Genius function...

[Muhammad-Oli @ Oct 14th 2008 9:01AM]

...+ idiot = iEye!

[Zomgrotfl @ Oct 14th 2008 8:43AM]

My life is complete now

[nxp3 @ Oct 14th 2008 9:16AM]

Too bad the earphone/heart monitor connection is not standard connection. I hate that type of earphones...I like the "in your ear" kind. There's only two kinds I like, the one completely covers your ear or the in ear kind. The rest, no matter how good they are just aren't good enough. With that connection, you can't even use your own earphones.

[nolos @ Oct 14th 2008 9:54AM]

it just a mini USB connection. Any phones that will work with, say, a Motorola Phone will work with it. You were not planning on buying it anyway.....none of us were.

[Wwhat @ Oct 14th 2008 10:37AM]

Bit of a failure of the article to say this at least has none of the annoying things like proprietary headphone jacks when in fact it has such.

[telepheedian @ Oct 14th 2008 10:46AM]

No, the connection seems to be hard-wired to the heart-rate monitor as well, one of the only reasons to use the product. Also, if i'm correct, each manufacturer has its own audio standard for mini-usb headphones.

[dbell @ Oct 14th 2008 10:54AM]

bit of a failure of your reading skills to not notice the article's sarcasm relating to the proprietary headphone jacks when in fact the article states "Like DAPs with...non-proprietary headphone jacks...? Yamaha's BODiBEAT is not for you"

[dbell @ Oct 14th 2008 10:53AM]

bit of a failure of your reading skills to not notice the article's sarcasm relating to the proprietary headphone jacks when in fact the article states "Like DAPs with...non-proprietary headphone jacks...? Yamaha's BODiBEAT is not for you"

[james @ Oct 14th 2008 11:45AM]

E for effort, FAIL for implementation.

[chi @ Oct 14th 2008 1:23PM]

Philips invented something like this in 2005. I was the guest editor for the IEEE journal article for the system:

Gertjan Wijnalda, Steffen Pauws, Fabio Vignoli, Heiner Stuckenschmidt, "A Personalized Music System for Motivation in Sport Performance," IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 26-32, Jul-Sept, 2005

http://yamashita2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/mags/pc/&toc=comp/mags/pc/2005/03/b3toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/MPRV.2005.47

[Brit @ Oct 15th 2008 3:40PM]

The best part is that the butterfly clip-looking thing just north of the earbuds in the photo is the heartrate monitor -- you clip it to one ear lobe like your grandma's earrings. Go go irritating and uncomfortable placement!

The only cool aspect of this thing is that it measures your heartrate for a few strides and then alters the beat of the techno midis to match your heartrate.