It’s been long-awaited amongst Nike+ runners, but Nike’s Amp+ also deserves a mention amongst the design-savvy (or obsessed) ranks as well. While the general public will have to wait another couple of months to get their hands on the Amp+, there have been 13 of them out in the wild since Friday. At its most basic, the Amp+ is just a watch; link it to a Nike+ equipped iPod Nano, and it becomes a full-on control station for your wrist. Integrated into the Amp+ are all the normal iPod controls that you’d find on your Nano. Press a button, and information scrolls visually across a series of otherwise hidden LED’s embedded just beneath the surface plastic above the controls.

The design of the unit is slick and clean; constructed of a single, tapering strip of flexible rubber it has a watch-like clasp on the underside. On the wrist, it appears more as a bracelet than a watch, mostly black with a hint of red creeping up around the edges. The buttons are well-integrated and virtually disappear into the surface of the unit. The only bit that stands out from the flat black finish is the silver Nike swoosh above the LED’s which, to Nike’s credit, is pretty unobtrusive.
–Danny Nathan