April 23, 2009 OK it’s not on the Inspector Gadget scale of ingenuity, but five cool functions in one pair of sunnnies from the Xonix Watch Company still gets the gadget gene in us twitching. When you’re not simply wearing them to shield your eyes from the sun – which is one of its functions – the sports-designed sunglasses also serve as a video recorder, camera, music player and memory storage.
The glasses can shoot up to eight hours of footage (or hold 16GB) in AVI format – more than enough to record a day out at the beach or a holiday. The camera can hold up to 160,000 images, depending on the resolution. Three resolutions – at 0.3, 1.3 and 2.0 megapixels – are available.
The camera has a focus range of 0.3m–infinity and can be operated by remote control. The glasses also offer a “real time clock” function to track the time videos and photos are captured. A macromolecule polymer li-ion rechargeable battery provides up to 1.5 hours for video recording, four hours for shooting photos and three hours for listening to music.
It has a standard mini USB port for upload, download and recharge, built-in USB memory storage –1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes are available – and a USB 2.0 interface.
Of course if you want to just use them as sunglasses, they offer UV400 anti-scratch Polarized flip-up lenses, which can be replaced.
The other thing the Xonix sunglasses offer is freedom from juggling your camera, video recorder and MP3 player, which is ideal if you’re on a break and don’t fancy keeping track of all your digital accessories. By the same token, if you lose your sunglasses, you also lose five items, plus your memories – and let’s face it, losing sunnies has been known to happen.
The company also produces camera sunglasses, MP3 watches and USB watches.
Paul Best