Description of Burton Audex iPod Field Jacket - Men's:
Building a massive booter can be seriously boring work, so Burton hooked up the Men's Audex iPod Field Jacket with an exterior iPod controller to help you switch songs quickly and keep your stoke. The very last thing you want is for the shuffle feature to go from Rage Against the Machine to Enya just when you need a little boost of energy to get the lip perfect. When the time comes to throw down on your sculpted masterpiece, you'll really appreciate the fully seam-taped 20K-rated fabric which keeps you dry on those deep powder landings. The Audex iPod Field Jacket's crossflow venting helps you stay cool as you hike for another lap. Burton also made the iPod controller removable, so you can use it to pilot the tunes from the back seat during the car ride home. *iPod not included. *Only Available for Shipment to North America. - Fall 2007.
Bottom Line: The Burton Audex iPod Field Jacket gives you total control over your tunes while it protects you from the weather.
I like the jacket, it looks good, and it's got mad pockets. It's a little thin with the insulation, but if I wear a thick sweatshirt under it I'm still warm on cold days. so I would rank the jacket without the ipod remote a 4.5 to 5. but the ipod remote doesn't work in freezing weather, so it's useless in a snowboarding jacket... so don't waste your money on the ipod version
I'm becoming convinced that putting together a decent piece of electronics is too big of a task for Burton R&D. Having tried all their Audex jackets (starting with MD in 2002), I can definitively say that they all fail in the simple task of controlling IPod on the slopes. Mind you, a $3 IPod remote does it splendidly (vs $100 premium they charge for their 'solution').
This particular one suffers from the following defects:
- Any kind of of bending on the slopes will trigger buttons on remote. Strapping in/out, landing a jump, laying a tight carve. It'd seem this was not tested by anything close to a real snowboarder.
- At random intervals this remote will mess with IPod "repeat" settings putting it into "Repeat one song" mode requiring disconnecting it and fixing the problem basically manually.
As a standalone jacket it's not fantastic either - the fabric inside the pockets seems to suffer from over-abundance of material resulting in zipper getting stuck on a constant basis. Gets 2 for warmth.
The Audex feature does suck. Every time you strap in, the remote goes crazy. Volume up, down, pause, skip forward, etc. As for the jacket itself, awesome. Pockets 'o plenty, waterproof, and warm with adequate base layer.
