Technology and eyewear have not made good bedfellows in the past; in fact they're almost guaranteed to produce reasonably functional but ultimately unattractive products that you wouldn't be seen dead wearing outside the home.

Oakley would be a good bet for a brand that can make the combination work, and its new Split Thump glasses combine an MP3 player with a typically styled set of wraparound shades.

Usually the headphones are wired into the arms of these sorts of devices, dangling around when not in use and slipping rather awkwardly into the ear when listening to tunes. The Split Thump adopts no such design, and out of the box they appear to be a standard pair of pretty stylish sunglasses.

On closer inspection you'll notice that the front part of each arm is slightly thicker than it might usually be, being the location of the built-in battery and internal storage. The glasses are available in 1GB and 2GB capacities and you can copy your tunes over with simple drag-and-drop through the mini-USB interface. They're also charged in this way, and you can expect up to 7 hours of playback from a full battery.

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When you want to listen to music you'll need to connect two double-jointed headphone pieces that slot into the underneath of the arms. These are pretty small and unassuming, but because of the flexibility offered by the hinges they're comfortable to wear and won't fall out if you're jumping or running about, so they might be suitable if you want some music to accompany your jog or run.

Perhaps the most innovative features of these glasses are the play, pause and volume controls, which are cleverly concealed in the Oakley logo on either side. For this reason it's all but impossible to tell that this isn't a regular pair of sunglasses until you plug the headphones in.

Oakley hasn't scrimped on format support and functionality either; you can play MP3, AAC (M4A), WAV, Audible and even DRM-encoded WMA files. You can also use various combinations of button-presses on parts of the logos to change a graphics equalizer, shuffle playback, skip back or forward by 10 songs at a time and, if you have playlists loaded, skip forward or back through these.

Sound quality is actually pretty good, though we found it became slightly more immersive after fitting a pair of foam earpiece covers, though none are supplied in the box.

The Oakley Split Thump is an excellent solution for listening to music in this way. They're stylish in their own right and the MP3 player functionality performs really well. This is the first pair of tech-glasses we'd be happy wandering around the street in, and although you might still attract the odd questionable glance, it's likely to be more one of intrigue than pity, which is a big step forwards.

There's no doubt that the Split Thumps are in a bit of a niche market, and in general this sort of technology won't be for everyone. But we were really impressed by the effort and, although they're not cheap, if you are in the market for MP3 player eyewear this is by far the best solution we've seen yet.