Thanks to their no-skip music playback (because of no moving parts), flash memory-based MP3 players are a great choice for joggers and gym rats. And the Now Evolution Neckphone may be the perfect player for active music lovers. That's because the MP3 player hardware is contained within the Neckphone itself--eliminating any cables.

The Neckphone is actually divided into two sound devices--an MP3 player in the left earphone (powered by a single AAA battery) and an FM radio in the right (powered by a lithium cell battery). Frankly, we were underwhelmed with the radio reception and by being limited to only searching forward in the radio spectrum (no back search button). But we were focusing more on the MP3 capabilities of the Neckphone.

Instead of storing music files on an internal flash memory chip, you transfer tunes to a MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory card using the included "MMC toaster" (a small card reader that connects to a USB port). The Neckphone comes with just a 32 MB card--pretty small these days and only enough for 30-45 minutes of audio (depending on the encoding rate of your MP3 files). However, flash memory has gotten cheaper over the last year, and you can often find 64 MB MMCs for under $50.

The controls are minimal, limited to play/stop, forward, and volume; also, there's no support for adding/creating a playlist. But the Neckphone will automatically return to the beginning of your files once it plays through them all. The volume was also quite robust, but tended to be a bit flat sonically (owing to no EQ settings). Still, for our gym workouts, we felt the sound was just fine.

When we first put the Neckphone on, we thought it might be a bit too heavy. But after wearing for a few workout sessions, we became more comfortable with it and didn't notice it as much. It's probably best for activities that don't require a lot of head movement as it can feel a bit unstable, and heavy jogging seemed to jostle it a bit much.

We couldn't perform our typical MP3 player air-drumming test for skipping, so we had to rely on a bit of headbanging (to some old-school Skid Row and Judas Priest). As expected with this flash memory-based player, there were no skips to the beat (just a sore neck, and a lot of strange looks while on the stair climber).

The Now Evolution Neckphone isn't a perfect MP3 player, but it's very worthwhile if you like to rock out while you work out. --Agen G.N. Schmitz

Pros:

• MP3 player housed in earphone--no cables
• Lightweight
• Expand memory with increasingly affordable MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory cards
• Great for working out

Cons:

• Includes only 32 MB memory card
• Minimal controls--no reverse
• FM radio reception wasn't great