I loved the look of the old Nano's but their susceptibility to scratches left me a little wary about buying one. When Apple released this new, shiny, aluminium version… well. What was I supposed to do? Ignore its shiny good looks? I am male, after all.
i-what? -------------
Well, for those that have been asleep for the past 10 years an iPod is a personal music player. Kinda like those walkmans you used to get in the 80's, only smaller and much cooler. These days the choice of iPods is somewhat bewildering, with the Shuffle, Nano, Video and U2 Special edition all available in a variety of sizes and colours. The one thing they all have in common is the fact they play music in the form of MP3 files, or AAC (Apples version of MP3, I think).
Nano-what? ------------------
Since this review is specifically about the Nano, I won't go into too much detail about the other ipods available. Suffice to say there are major differences in terms of size and design (and even the technology used).
Now, the Nano is not the smallest in the Ipod range (that dubious honour goes to the shuffle), but in my opinion is certainly the prettiest. It's available in a range of colours and sizes, with different colours reflecting different sizes. The 2gb one is silver only, whilst the 4gb is silver, blue, green and pink. The ultra-exclusive 8gb version is in black only. All versions are made of anodised aluminium which both looks good and is very durable. If you remember the short lived iPod mini, it is made of the same stuff that was.
GB (or gigabytes) reflects the capacity of the iPod. More gigs means you can fit more songs on it. Apparently you can store around 2000 songs on an 8GB model. Quite a lot, really. Obviously that depends on how long the song is, the quality, and so on. Longer songs at a higher quality will take up more space.
Enough technical gibberish. I want to go back to how gorgeous this thing is. Seriously. D, I hope you're not reading this, cos I'd probably trade you for one ;)
I splashed out and own the 8gb black version, which in my opinion is the most stylish. It's the only one where the clickwheel is the same colour as the body of the device. The other models have a white clickwheel, no matter what the colour of the body is.
The screen, whilst small at only around 1.5'', is perfectly formed. It is bright, clear, and displays colour very well.
The ipod is finished off with those iconic (and ever-so-tacky) white earphones, something I'll go into more detail a little later on.
Ok ok I get it. It looks good. What do you get in the box? --------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------
I was a tad disappointed after handing so much money of my hard earned cash to find the in pack accessories somewhat lacking. The packaging itself is fairly cool, made up of a Perspex box that displays the ipod pretty well, but it's tiny size hints at the lack of goodies inside.
Opening it up, you have the ipod, the headphones, a USB cable and a funny bit of plastic. That's it. No dock, proper manual, CD of software, case, strap, charger or anything else. Considering when I bought my old ipod all of these things were standard, I was a little peeved to find this out.
That said, the device is perfectly usable without all the added stuff. A dock is a luxury, and you can charge it using the USB cable. The anodised aluminium exterior means a case isn't really necessary. But still, this was a little thrifty of Apple. The lack of software is probably the biggest annoyance, since you have to go and download it from Apple's website. Grrr. I'm sure they could have just made like a mini CD or something.
Greaaat But what, exactly, does it DO? ------------------------------------------------------
Well, we've already established that it's a music player. And a well thought out one at that. The menu system makes it very easy to choose music and there is now a search function in case you really do have 2000 songs on it. Playlists are easy to set up, or you can simply set the thing to 'random' and let it decide. Sound quality is awesome, but not with the supplied headphones.
There. I said it. The white headphones that you see everyone and their mother walking around with are s***. That sentence will probably get me battered by any Apple fanboys, but it's the truth.
.It is absolutely 110% advisable to invest in a pair of quality earphones. The money is well spent, since you can see just how good the reproduction on the device is. Also nice black headphones go really well with the black exterior. I am a bit vain, yes, thanks for asking!
Aside from it's raison d'etre, the ipod has a whole variety of other functions. It is able to display photos on that lush screen, and you can play some simplistic games on it. My favourite has to be the "music quiz" whereupon the ipod plays 30 seconds of a song and you have to guess the name. A great way to test your music knowledge.
Additional functions include a contacts list, calendar, clock, notes function and a stopwatch. Groovy huh?
A new function on this generation is the security lock.
This basically means you can set a 4 diget pin that locks the screen when your not using the ipod, meaning unauthorised users (i.e. nasty horrible muggers) can't use it without going through massive amounts of technical jiggery pokkery.
One thing you can't do is play videos. I'm unsure if you'd want to given it's small screen size, but the missing functionality is a bit odd.
iTunes -----------
iTunes is the software that is used by the ipod to manage your music, both on your pc and the device itself. You have to download it from Apple's website, but it is free, even if you don't have an iPOd.
iTunes also functions as a music store, but going into this is beyond the remit of this review. Suffice to say the selection of music is wide ranging, although the price is a rip off at 79p a song. Our American chums get songs at 99c, or somewhere in the region of 60p. Over 2000 songs, that 19p difference soon adds up.
The software itself isn't that bad. It has had a bad press, and it is resource hungry, but it makes it very easy to sync music to your ipod, and even easier to set up playlists. You can also use the software to rip your existing CD's onto the computer, but I'd suggest using other software to do this, since iTunes isn't very flexible.
Talking of flexibility, whilst you can transfer songs TO your iPod, you can't transfer FROM your iPod. Only delete them. And don't plug your iPOd into a friend's PC, otherwise their version of iTunes will wipe all your precious music.
Actually is probably best to avoid iTunes and use something like foobar.
Great! So average software, poor headphones, no goodies in the box... and you love it????? WHY? --------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------
Well, I can't tell you exactly. You have to hold it in your hand to understand. It's soooo desirable its not even funny. And it IS a great MP3 player. And I guess that's all I ask of it. This new incarnation has fixed any issues I had with ipods previously (for example battery life is often quoted as being poor on ipods - the Nano is quoted at 24hours officially and in my experience its more like 26, 27 hours. I haven't had to charge it properly yet). Basically, my opinion is this. The Nano is functionally great, and looks awesome, but probably not the best value out there.
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