Thanko ButterFly3 MP3 earphones

By Liam McNulty

Our buddies at Thanko are at it again in their
"RARE MONO SHOP" (protip: in this case, "mono" is Japanese for "stuff"), this time bringing out the "ButterFly3 MP3 Player" earphones. ButterFly1 and ButterFly2 offered a similar form factor, but featured a solid neckband — the ButterFly3 moves to a soft neck cord, so you could theoretically fall asleep with them on. Thanko also gets bonus points for finally offering a 1GB model in addition to the standard 512MB version, and for a decent price as well:
¥13,980 (roughly $125 USD). The ButterFly3 supports MP3, WMA, and even WMV playback (that's what we said), but for unknown reasons MP3 files with bitrates greater than 192kbps aren't supported. Guess you can't have it all.

[Original at
japanese.engadget.com]

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