I was out with some friends the other day when one of them uttered - “Nice Jacket.. is that new?”. I answered back - “Yup! It’s new alright.. notice anything unique about it?”. My friend looked around, up and down, and just couldn’t figure out what was different about this jacket until he glanced at my left arm sleeve.

“Wait a sec.. What’s that?” he asked…

“Oh that? those are just the controls for my iPod”, I responded in kind..

“Oh ok.. waaaait a minute…. controls for your iPod???”

And so, that’s how some of my friends got introduced to the Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket for the Apple iPod.

Ok enough storytelling now - I’m going to start things off by saying - this is one of the coolest items that I’ve ever reviewed in my short (but fun) blogging career. Forget about 40 inch LCD TVs, or Xbox 360 games or the portable media players. This jacket has it all folks:

• It’s got a great design (no, you won’t look like a geek contestant on “Beauty and the Geek” simply by wearing it)
• It’ll keep you nice and warm on a cool chilly day
• AND, it lets you control your iPod without you taking it out of your inside jacket pocket. How cool is that?

We actually received two jackets for review from Kenpo - today we’ll be taking a look at the first one - the Keno Bonded Fleece Jacket. Join us as we walk into the world of wearable technology.

A look at the jacket

Let’s spend a bit of time taking a tour of the jacket. Here’s a snapshot of the front of the jacket.

Here’s a look at the backside of the jacket.

At first glance, it looks like any other fleece jacket - until you see the left hand arm sleeve pictured here:

The arm sleeve has a built in key pad designed specifically to control the Apple iPod remotely. I’ll go into the actual button operations later on in the review. The key to the magic is the use of Eleksen’s ElekTex Smart Fabric technology. Underneath the keypad is a sensor strip that’s super thin and wash proof. Here are a couple of pictures of the sensor striped (pictures courtesy of Kenpo)

The inner and outer shell of the jacket is made out of 100 percent Polyester. On the inside there’s a very comfortable fleece lining that’ll keep you nice and warm on those cool chilly days and comfortable on warmer temperate days.

If you’re a fan of pockets, don’t worry, the Kenpo jacket surely will not disappoint. There are a total of three pockets on the outside of the jacket and two pockets on the inside of the jacket. Here’s a look at the front of the jacket. The left side of the jacket (assuming you’re wearing it) has two of the outer pockets while the right hand side has one exterior pocket.

On the inside, you have two more pockets - one on each side of the jacket.

The left hand side inner pocket is where you’ll store your Apple iPod as well as make the dock connection to the jacket. There’s also a flap which folds down to cover the inner left pocket. Velcro is used to keep the flap closed - securing the iPod in place.

The right hand side of the flap has a small hole which you’ll feed the headphone jack through to connect to the iPod. The headphone cable is normally routed through the inside of your jacket and up to your ears. You can guide the earphone cable through an additional loop on the inner left side of the jacket.

Connecting the iPod

Honestly - it’s a bit weird to talk about “Setting up” a jacket.. but that’s what you’ll need to do with the Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket. Granted, there’s not a whole lot to the setup here.

As I mentioned in the previous section, the inside left pocket is where you’ll store the Apple iPod. This is also where the ribbon cable and the controller cable resides. The ribbon cable connects the key pad on the left arm sleeve with the controller cable component. The controller cable then connects to the Apple iPod via the dock connector.

When you get the jacket for the first time, the controller cable is placed inside a small plastic bag which is housed within the inner left pocket.

To set things up, you take out the controller cable, and connect it to the ribbon cable which comes out of the inner pocket.

The pocket actually comprises of two smaller pockets - one for the cables and one for the iPod. I tried both the regular iPod video and the iPod nano and they both fit perfectly fine inside the pocket.

Once the ribbon and controller cables are connected, simply connect the controller cable to your iPod. Lock the iPod by pushing the hold button into place, and then place the iPod in the smaller right pocket.

As mentioned earlier, you can route your headphones down through the side of the jacket and into the flap opening.

That’s it! pretty easy right? Oh yes - close the flap to make sure the iPod doesn’t come falling out of your jacket.

One more thing about this jacket - it’s completely washable! There’s no need to worry about damaging the key pad. The only thing you need to do before sending it to the wash is to make sure you remove the controller cable from the jacket (and of course the iPod too).

The only minor concern I have here is with the ribbon cable interface connector. It’s made of plastic and I wonder how hard it would be to break this thing.

Wearing the jacket

It’s at this point in time where I’d like to remind everyone that this is still a jacket first and an iPod accessory second. Having said that, let’s spend a little bit of time on the jacket itself.

This is a great jacket to carry around on a cool chilly day. The Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket for the iPod was both warm and comfortable to wear. The fleece lining really helps insulate you from the cold and the polyester shell does a great job at blocking out moderate wind conditions. If you layer up in clothing, you can even wear this jacket under colder conditions (although I probably wouldn’t wear this in a snowstorm) - though I wonder if it’s because I’m used to colder temperatures in the east coast than here in LA.

The jacket is light enough to wear on a cool spring or fall day and there’s plenty of ventilation to keep the air flowing. Each arm pit has two vent holes to help bring air inside the jacket.

From a design perspective, the Kenpo jacket looks quite fashionable and doesn’t scream “geek” at all. In fact, if no one notices the key pad on your arm sleeve, then they won’t even realize this jacket’s unique capabilities.

Using the keypad

Since I mentioned the key pad, let’s spend a bit of time discussing the key pad and its’ operations. As I mentioned earlier, the key pad is integrated right on the left arm sleeve and is comprised of five buttons. The buttons are as follows:

• Volume Up
• Volume Down
• Track Back
• Play/Pause On/Off
• Track Forward/Unlock

To prevent accidental button presses, the key pad needs to be unlocked before use. You press and hold the Track Forward button for three seconds to unlock the key pad. Once unlocked, you can press any of the buttons on the key pad to enable specific operations on the iPod. The key pad will relock itself after 7 seconds of non-use to prevent any accidental key presses.

The key pad worked fairly well in practice. I walked around Santa Monica’s 3rd street promenade one day with the jacket on and found using the key pad extremely easy to use.

If there’s any complain that I would have with the key pad interface, it would be the lack of a visual or audible notification that the key pad is unlocked. There were times where I thought I had held the “Track Forward” button long enough to unlock the key pad only to discover I did not press it long or hard enough.

Despite that small annoyance, the joy of being able to control the iPod without actually digging into the jacket is just utterly great!

The joy of wearing and using the Kenpo Bonded Fleece jacket is the ability to remotely control the iPod without actually taking the device out of your pocket. I do have one advice for you though. Go ahead and make yourself a playlists of songs to listen to. The key pad is designed for you to move between tracks on the iPod - not for you to navigate through the menu system on the iPod. If you want to switch albums or artists, you’ll still need to interact directly with the iPod. Make life easier for yourself, and create a large playlist of songs.

Summary

The Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket for the Apple iPod is a great item to have if you’re looking for a sports or light winter jacket AND you’re a fan of the Apple iPod.

The jacket is warm and comfortable to wear and you can even wash the jacket without worrying about damaging the key pad (though you’ll need to remove the controller cable and of course the iPod!). The key pad controls are easy to work with although we wish there was a better way to inform wearers that the key pad is unlocked.

Again, if you’re in the market for a light winter jacket and you own (or are thinking about owning) an Apple iPod, then definitely consider the Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket. Wearable technology is upon us now and the Kenpo Bonded Fleece Jacket for the Apple iPod is a great example of that.

I’d like to thank Kenpo for sending us the evaluation samples to review.

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