Etymotic's ety8 Bluetooth earbuds may be a bit pricey at $299, but look at all the stuff you get - and, no, they don't supply the iPod nano; that's up to you.

The ety8 is a slick set of fine-sounding earbuds from a long-time maker of fine-sounding in-ear technology, from earbuds to hearing aids, Etymotic Research. (Etymotic, by the way, is pronounced "et-im-OH-tik" and is Greek for "true to the ear.")

One nice feature of the ety8 is that there are controls for the iPod right on the right earbud, so you can control play and pause, adjust volume, and skip tracks forwards and backwards. The ety8's batteries are rechargeable over USB, the antenna is internal, and the unit has a pro-quality sampling rate of 44.1 kHz in 16-bit resolution.

According to Etymotic spokesman Ron Scicluna, the ety8 has a frequency range of 20Hz to 16kHz, and since it speaks the 2.0 ADP Bluetooth protocol, you'll not only be able to use the ety8 with the included iPod nano dongle, but also with your Mac once it's running Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. In fact, you can buy the ety8 without the iPod dongle for $199 if you only want to use it with other supported Bluetooth devices. Scicluna said that although the standard Bluetooth distance is 10 meters, "normally you get quite a bit more than that."

Style being a subjective thing, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the rectangular ety8 earbuds look fashionable or dorky. To my eyes they're strikingly off-beat.