Motorola Audex Jacket

Wearable tech is not a new idea. We've seen many consumer electronic companies flirt with concepts including the likes of Bluetooth earrings and connected jackets. While these crazy trinkets and outerwear are still a work in progress, very few have hit the mark. And we're pretty sure that Motorola is the only company to manufacture a working garment that delivers a wirelessly connected experience.

Its second-generation Audex jacket series has just hit the racks, allowing you to stream music from your phone via Bluetooth and receive and make phone calls without handling the handset. This all sounds mighty fine but does it translate into practice?

Motorola has teamed up with Burton to help with the coat design, and is offering a Cargo series in True Black and Roasted Brown for the men. Meanwhile, the women can choose from Petal Pink and True Black styles in the Dutchess Insulated range. The coats are definitely aimed at the snowboarders and skiers who follow an outdoor active lifestyle.

It's up to you to kit out the jacket with the hood speakers, chest module (this includes the battery pack), microphone and control panel. These electronic components are connected by a network of wires threaded through the lining of the coat and hooking up the various parts initially proved tricky. Once all the elements were in place, the jacket is quite bulky and heavy on the limbs and is not the most flexible of garments. And you also live in fear of damaging the modules or disconnecting yourself, should you get a little frisky.  

The next step is to pair the coat with your phone. Turn on the jacket via the sleeve control panel and it automatically goes into pairing mode and the procedure is exactly the same as hooking up a Bluetooth headset.

But this is the point where the jacket starts to come apart at the seams (arf!). Firstly, the quality of the embedded speakers is atrocious. The call performance may be quite clear through the crackling at our end but the caller complained of muffled, indiscernible audio coupled with occasional signal loss. If this wasn't bad enough, music via Bluetooth streaming was grating to the lugholes, so we hooked up an iPod to check this dirge wasn't exclusive to streaming music. It wasn't. The speakers are also so exposed; passers-by can clearly hear what you're grooving too.

The sleeve control hub is quite nifty, letting you skip tracks, see who is ringing via caller ID and initiate voice commands. This voice feature is also a bit hit and miss and we continually got frustrated as it called the wrong person.

It's good to see companies take risks and show us how the future may pan out and for this Motorola gets a pat on the back. But when the execution is as ropy as the Audex jacket we wonder if it's worth it.