By Evan Ackerman
The Yamaha BodiBeat (it’s actually BODiBEAT, but I’m not going to do that) is an MP3 player designed to make exercise a little bit more palatable by automatically playing music that matches the pace of your movement. You can load it with 512mb of music, and using an internal accelerometer, the BodiBeat will pick a song that has a tempo as close to your bouncing up and down speed as possible. When you change your pace, the BodiBeat will change the music. You can also set it to play music at your optimum running or walking speed, which it figures out with a pulse monitor that clips onto your ear. If you get really ambitious, the included software allows you to design entire music-based fitness routines. It has some other neat features like tracking distance, keeping exercise records, and learning what types of music you like. The 9hr battery life isn’t bad, but the half gig of memory makes it almost useless, since the whole point of this thing is to have enough music at different tempos to take advantage of the adaptive hardware. Oh, and it won’t play anything with any sort of DRM on it, including iTunes music. Concept: good. Execution: horrible.
BTW, if you click through to the BodiBeat website, you can get a flash tour from either hunky Brad or svelte Stacy. Brad is 6’0″, 185 lbs, and 28 years old. He’s a scorpio, and his favorite foods include seafood, steak, and taffy. Stacy is 5’9″, 120 lbs, and 26 years old. She’s a pisces, and her favorite foods include pasta, fruit, and licorice. Both Brad and Stacy are single, too! Thanks Yamaha!!!
The BodiBeat should be available this spring or winter (depending on what part of the website you believe) for about $300.
[ Yamaha BodiBeat ] VIA [ Shiny Shiny ]
