An iPod Nano for Christmas

What's an iPod when its at home?

The iPod is a portable music player that lets you listen to digital MP3 files on the go. MP3 is a digital recording format that I'm reliably informed by my male friends is the bees knees. The official sales blurb from Apple describes the iPod thus:

The super-slim iPod once again redefines what a digital music player should be. At 158 grams it's lighter than two CDs, can hold up to 5,000 songs, and downloads music at blazing speeds. Now you can take your entire music collection with you wherever you go. Smaller than ever (just 0.62 inches thick), this iPod fits comfortably in the palm of your hand and slips easily into your pocket. And yet the iPod gives you a huge 20 GB hard drive—that's space enough to store two weeks of music played continuously, 24/7--or one new song a day for well over 13 years.
Once again, Apple turns the portable digital music player market on its ear with hassle-free functionality and stunning, well-considered design that place iPod far ahead of the curve and the competition. The new iPod has been re-engineered with an all-touch interface for enhanced durability and sensitivity. With an LCD screen and buttons that feature a backlight for clear visibility in low-light conditions, iPod is designed for easy one-handed operation. So the best way to take an entire music collection anywhere is now even better.

The 20 GB iPod model comes with a dock that makes charging and syncing easier than ever--no more reaching around, looking for the right port. An elegant, convenient home base for iPod on a desk or connected to a home stereo system, the dock provides syncing via FireWire or USB 2.0 (Syncing with USB 2.0 (Windows-only) requires optional USB 2.0 + FireWire), charging via FireWire and audio line out for connecting to powered speakers or a stereo system.

Designed to give you the best portable digital music experience ever, the iPod delivers the highest sound quality from input to output. iPod supports the most popular audio formats, including MP3 (up to 320 kbps), MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR) and WAV, giving you access to a wide range of audio file types. And iPod is the only portable digital music player that supports the AAC format (Mac-only), which features CD-quality audio in smaller file sizes than MP3, so that even more songs fit on your iPod.

The iPod now lets you do a whole lot more in addition to maintaining your contacts, calendar and to-do lists. iPod now includes Solitaire, Brick and Parachute, three great games you can play anywhere (a feature you're sure to appreciate the next time you're standing in a queue or waiting for someone). You can even use your own music as the soundtrack to a game.

iPod also includes a notes reader that lets you download text-based information and read it on the screen. This way you can have the information you need, on everything from restaurant reviews to nightlife guides, and from news articles to exercise routines, at your fingertips.

The iPod features a sleep timer, so you can fall asleep to your music. And with the iPod's new alarm clock, you can choose either an alarm tone or your favourite music to wake you up.

The 20 GB model comes with a wired remote control that lets you fast-forward or rewind a track, play, pause and adjust volume, using just one hand. Additionally, it includes an elegant carrying case with belt clip that protects your iPod from the elements. Clip it to your belt, purse or backpack for hands-free operation.

The iPod's earbud-style headphones offer a strong 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz frequency response range for high-quality sound with minimal distortion. Thanks to their Neodymium drivers, these headphones are five times more powerful than digital music player headphones that use aluminium, cobalt or ceramic drivers.


If like me this doesn't mean a great deal to you it's been enough to bring a male friend of mine to a frenzy of desire. You can almost see the Bond like fantasies playing out inside his head :-) What's more there is an even cooler version of the iPod out at the moment called the Nano.

What's the iPod Nano?

I'm none the wiser with gadgets so over to my husband Bruce for this review of the Nano.

Hi everyone, iPods have been around long enough that many of us take them for granted. Yes, they’re small. Yes, they hold a lot of music. And yes, they’re cool. That’s pretty much the baseline for any iPod. It takes something special to break through our now-jaded iPod sensibilities. The iPod nano, with its tiny size, sleek look, colorful display, and responsive controls is that special something.

The nano is, in many ways, a hybrid of the iPod shuffle, the now-discontinued iPod mini, and today’s full-sized color iPods. Like the iPod shuffle, the nano uses flash memory (available in 2GB and 4GB configurations, priced at £139 and £179 respectively) rather than a hard drive. The higher-capacity nano holds the same 1,000 tracks as the original iPod mini. And like the mini, the nano dispenses with such higher-end capabilities as audio recording, downloading pictures from a camera attachment, and projecting slideshows to an attached television or projector.

Unlike with full-sized iPods, you can’t install Mac OS X on the nano and boot from it—the Mac OS Installer recognizes the nano but refuses to install to it. (The iPod mini shared this same limitation.) Yet, like a full-sized iPod, the nano includes a crisp color display and lets you view album art as well as pictures downloaded from a computer. And just to show that it’s not a complete “me too” iPod, it sports new Stopwatch, Screen Lock, and Clock features. It’s also the first iPod that includes an unplayed podcasts indicator (a small blue dot that appears next to podcasts you haven’t yet listened to) and a Lyrics screen where you can view any lyrics added to a track within iTunes’ song information window.

And, as you might expect, it sounds as good as any other iPod you’ve owned.

Thin is In
At 0.27 inches from back to front, the nano is about as deep as six stacked credit cards. Bearing dimensions of 3.5 by 1.6 inches, you can hide it beneath a business card (it will, in fact, fit neatly inside a business card wallet). Yet, even with its small size and scant weight of 1.5 ounces, the nano doesn’t feel flimsy or delicate. The stainless steel back and polymer front don’t flex. And while a person whose glove size runs to Large could play a convincing game of “Which hand?” with a nano, the iPod isn’t so small that it’s difficult to use its click wheel or view text or pictures on its 1.5 inch display.


In Control
Given its small size, the nano’s click wheel is responsive in normal use. You feel (and hear, in a quiet environment) a definite click when you press the wheel and the center Select button. As with other iPods, the nano scrolls smoothly as you twirl your thumb around the wheel. Like the iPod mini, this iPod can be a little finicky about accepting commands when you press the Select button and the click wheel at the same time (as you must when you reset the iPod by pressing Select and Menu). In my tests it sometimes took three or four tries to force the nano to reset.

Owners of other iPods may initially be thrown off by the responsiveness of the controls. At least one person who tried my nano thought it scrolled a little too quickly, making it difficult to exactly select the item he was after. When I first used the nano I had a similar experience but quickly adjusted to the feel of the iPod and my scrolling became more accurate over time.

Fast as a Flash
While some may complain about the speed of the controls, no one will be upset by how quickly the iPod nano moves from screen to screen. This is particularly noticeable when you’re viewing pictures. When looking at pictures on my 60GB iPod photo there’s a noticeable delay between the time I select a thumbnail image and finally see the “large” view of that image. The larger iPod must spin up the hard drive before it can display the image. Because the nano is flash memory-based, there’s no hard drive delay and images pop to the fore in no time. Similarly, tracks begin playing in short order.

The nano is also quicker to sync than other iPods. I synced the same 903-track playlist on a 4GB nano and a 4GB iPod mini. It took 9 minutes and 15 seconds to sync the nano. The mini took nearly 7 minutes longer to sync, finally finishing the job in 16 minutes and 13 seconds.

Regrettably, battery life isn’t nearly as good with the nano as it is with the 2G iPod mini. In tests where I’d fully charged a 6GB mini, selected the first song in the mini’s Songs screen, and pressed Play, the mini was able to squeeze out over 26 hours of play time even though Apple rated the mini’s battery charge at 18 hours. Apple suggests that the nano can play uninterrupted for up to 14 hours. My first audio play test fell short by just over an hour, with the nano giving up the ghost after 12 hours and 52 minutes. A subsequent audio test hit the 14 hour mark almost exactly. The nano’s battery performed a little better than advertised with slideshows. Apple claims the nano can show slideshows for up to 4 hours. In my test of a looping slideshow of 1,786 photos, the battery lasted for 4 hours and 36 minutes.

On Display
The blue-white LED backlight display is worth closer examination. Although it’s smaller by .17 inches (measured diagonally) than the display on the now-defunct iPod mini, it has greater resolution—offering a resolution of 176 x 132 pixels versus the mini’s 138 x 110 resolution. It also has a slightly smaller dot pitch—the measurement between pixels (a smaller value is better)—than today’s color iPod, providing a dot pitch of .168 mm versus the larger iPod’s dot pitch of .18 mm. These numbers translate into a sharp display, when lit, and one, unlike the mini, that includes Title, Artist, and Album information on the Now Playing screen (the mini offers Title and Artist information only). Regrettably, when the screen isn’t lit, it’s not easy to see what’s on it unless it’s under a direct light (either an indoor lamp or daylight).

Apple makes some accommodations for the smaller display. To begin with, a photo album’s screen, where you view thumbnails of your images, offers a 4 x 3 grid of thumbnails versus the 5 x 5 grid you find on the larger color iPods. This is a wise choice as a smaller grid would make it all but impossible to discern one image from another. Although similar images were difficult to tell apart (multiple portraits of the same subject, for example), I could clearly pick out discrete images.

And because the screen is so small, text can get cut off. Thankfully, the iPod nano takes a hint from the color iPod and, unlike the mini, scrolls selected text in a ticker-tape fashion in a music menu (Artists, Albums, Songs, and Podcasts screens, for example) as well as scrolls track titles in the Now Playing screen.

About the Extras
The nano includes a few extras not found on other iPods, specifically the Stopwatch, Screen Lock, and a new clock that allows you to create multiple analog/digital clocks in the nano’s Clock screen. I’ve covered the functionality of these features in my first look at the nano so I won’t repeat myself.

I will say, however, that the Stopwatch seems a perfect addition to this iPod given its no-skipping-while-exercising nature. And although the Screen Lock feature isn’t bulletproof—a bad ‘un could extract the nano’s music and data by plugging it into his or her computer—it does lock out the functionality of the nano when it’s unattached to a computer. The multiple clock feature, however, feels a little gimmicky.

I’m particularly pleased that the nano adds a Lyrics screen to the iPod’s Now Playing area. In this screen you can view any lyrics that you’ve added to the Lyrics tab of a Song Information window within iTunes 5. Currently the only way to add those lyrics is by hand—songs sold by the iTunes Music Store don’t (yet) have embedded lyrics.

One unexpected extra worth mentioning is not found in the nano’s interface but rather in its box. Included with each nano is Apple’s iPod dock Adapter. This adapter looks similar to the dock cradle adapters include with some iPod accessories. However, it’s not designed for today’s accessories. To assist iPod accessory manufacturers who are forced to come up with a new cradle design every time Apple issues a new iPod, Apple has created a single one-size-fits-all-with-the-right-Apple-adapter specification for companies that participate in the Made for iPod program. This is the first of these adapters and will fit future accessories. (For more information about how the nano gets along with today’s accessories, see The iPod nano: Accessories Addressed.)

The Lowdown
A clear color screen, responsive and manageable controls, photo viewing, fast syncing, and impossibly thin. In my view the iPod nano is a nearly perfect fit for the middle of the iPod lineup, sounding great and mixing the best features of the shuffle, mini, and color iPod. While some may be disappointed by the lack of FireWire sync and consider the price of admission high given what you can have for £30 more than the 4GB model, your decision to purchase this slick little iPod may simply boil down to this: What are you willing to cough up for cool?

Because there just isn’t a cooler iPod on the planet.

How much does an iPod Nano cost?

Prices for the iPod vary depending on the retailer you go to.

John Lewis are currently selling a 2Gb iPod Nano for £139 and a 4Gb iPod Nano for £179.

Amazon meanwhile sell the same 2Gb iPod Nano for just £135 and the 4Gb version for £174.98.

Hopefully you will have gained something from this review despite my technophobic luddite'ness, it will undoubtably keep your man suitably entertained for months and ensure you remain in his good books (as if you'd be anywhere else ;-)

Good Gift Guide Recommendation : 4/5