Last year I reviewed the original set of Oakley Thump MP3 shades and thought they were pretty cool. Sure, they could have been better looking, but overall they were OK. Oakley has announced an upgraded set of shades called the Split Thump.

The cool part about this latest version is that when you don’t want to get your groove on or answer questions from the technologically challenged about your shades, you can remove the ear buds and they look like normal shades.

Another nice touch I really like is the move for the controls behind the “O” on the side rather than always showing buttons to mar the overall look of the shades. The Split Thump will retail for $399 for the 2GB, $299 for the 1GB, and $259 for the 512MB. Colors available will include black, white, crystal black, and brown with storage capacities of 512MB to 2GB.

Via Oakley