Do you like nude school? Quite wild? Do you know your Heelflip 360 from your No Comply? If these words don’t make sense to you, chances are you won’t need the Belkin SportCommand. You see, this is really geared towards outdoor, extreme sports enthusiasts who are likely to break iPods left to right and center due to a combination of total bail rejection and/or alcohol-related tomfoolery. If you’re just listening to your iPod on the train, this is not for you. Get back to your boring life, sucker.
If, however, the average weekend for you consists of a lot of trails and even more, you should seriously consider looking at this. What is SportCommand? Well, it’s a remote control for your iPod. A small white key attaches to the bottom of your iPod (any device with a 4th generation dock connector or higher) and you can hide it in your backpack or pocket to avoid harm. The main cushion of the SportCommand is a soft fabric lining that can be fastened with Velcro to the arm or thigh. You can use its large control buttons to easily change tracks and volume on your iPod, knowing that any painful accidents caused by your extreme skills won’t result in a painful credit card bill.
There are five buttons on the main panel – next/previous track, volume up/down and a central play/pause button. You can’t do any complex iPod navigation here, so don’t expect to filter songs by genre with this thing. However, you can happily navigate through playlists and albums, skipping the ones you don’t like and turning the volume down when you want to hear someone trying to yell at you from the other side of the hill.
Soft, flexible and fabric-like, the SportCommand has matching chunky buttons that can be pressed with gloved hands. We found that with our winter gloves, the operation went as expected. It is water resistant but not waterproof. However, if you do not like to exercise underwater, you will be fine in the snow and in the rain. The white segment on the front is the battery/receiver unit and is claimed to be more waterproof. We immersed it in water and didn’t find any side effects, so it’s safe to assume that this is the case. Unlike Apple’s own product, you can unscrew the front and get to the battery, replacing it as needed. Belkin doesn’t list an expiration date on the product, but we expect it to last a year or so before you need to consider replacing the battery.
In the box you will find a pair of Velcro loops – a small one that will attach it to smaller arms, and a second loop that attaches to the first so you can attach it to coated arms or legs. They attach to metal loops on the back of the SportCommand and have a super-secure velcro that once you attach it, this thing won’t go anywhere. You also get a carabiner to attach to a belt, loop or some description. It looks a bit flimsy, but the job will get done.
In practice, SportCommand works exactly as you would expect. However, on some level, his point of view must be questioned. You can’t do complex navigation with it, which means you’ll need to set up some sort of playlist to get started. Couldn’t you just turn up the volume on the iPod before putting it away and not add the tracks you don’t like to the playlist so you don’t have to skip? Because the iPod is a thing with a headphone jack, you need to make sure you have headphones with a cable long enough to run it to your backpack or wherever you decide to stow your iPod, which can be inconvenient.
Then we come to meaning. £46 is simply too much for this product – hell, it’s not that far off the cost of an iPod Shuffle that can be attached to your clothes and gives you the same level of control over your music, and borders on disposable given the price differential. We all know that extreme sports equipment is expensive, and I suspect Belkin thinks this should be no exception. But, competing with products that just mount your iPod on your arm, or even the ability to just hit the play button and toss your iPod into your backpack, it’s really hard to justify the SportCommand’s price tag.
“Sentence”
All in all, the SportCommand is clearly a product that does what it says on the box. If you immediately look at it and think – “Yes, finally!” Then you won’t be disappointed. That said, it’s hard not to assume that anyone riding the slopes won’t save a few pounds by cutting back on a couple of beers and spending the extra on an iPod Shuffle instead.