O'Neill's H-Division gears up for winter
Outdoor brand O'Neill is preparing to make a big impression on winter sports enthusiasts in Europe in the coming season with specialist products that combine performance textiles with electronic capability.
O'Neill has a division dedicated to this technology-enabled apparel, H-Division, which is now in its fifth year.
The brand's European headquarters in the Netherlands says this season's highlights will include the H-Division NavJacket, which it claims provides "never seen before navigation on the mountains integrated into a high performance Gore-Tex jacket". The idea is that wearers will be able to forget the days of standing on the slopes attempting to read wind-torn maps. The NavJacket will allow them find their way through the mountains much easily by virtue of integrated navigation technology and a display screen on the sleeve.
The jacket will also record your speed and distance covered and even help you track down friends on the slopes.
An additional innovative feature of the NavJacket is a friend finder function, which will allow you to either track down friends, or choose to follow their path through the slopes.
The H-Division has also sought to break new ground in building audio technology into its clothing range and is claiming an industry first with a hooded sweat top, which has integrated audio capability. Small lightweight speakers have been tucked into the hood of the sweat (removable for washing) and the wearer's iPod connects through the pocket and into a dedicated iPod storage compartment.
The same speakers are available in a range of beanie hats, which come in five different styles.
iPod styles have been developed not only in the technical Explore series snow jackets for exploration into the backcountry, but also, for the first season ever, in a casual jacket as well.
The H-Division has also developed an audio-enable backpack for the coming winter. The keypad is positioned on the strap of the backpack to make it easy to listen to music while walking, snowboarding, skiing and so on. And still on the subject of backpacks, the company is aiming to building on the success of the first two seasons of its Campback product. The fully functional snowboard backpack features an integrated portable media player as well as a helmet mounted camera lens with, this year, a better camera than ever before.
The wearer is able to start and stop recording almost effortlessly by pressing a large button positioned on the left shoulder strap, making it easy to film freestyle and freeride snowboarding action before sharing the footage over the internet with friends and fellow web surfers.
The portable media player, meanwhile, is positioned in the backpack’s top pocket. Serving to record all footage captured by the camera, the portable media player writes the files directly to an SD card, which can then be inserted easily into any PC for instant reviewing. On the mountain, the user is able to review footage as and when desired by opening the top pocket and operating controls positioned behind the zipper.
As the portable media player is stored safely between protective padding in the backpack’s top pocket, the user has an empty main compartment in which to store any essentials, as well as a dedicated shovel pocket and avalanche probe pocket. The user is also able to attach a snowboard horizontally to the backpack using the external snowboard-carrying straps, and the backpack has also been designed to accommodate a hydrating camelback system, ideal for all-day backcountry hiking expeditions.
