apple ipod nano review

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Picture courtesy of Dilwat.

Average Ratings

Sound Quality	8.4/10
Battery Life	7/10
Features	8/10
Value for Money	6.5/10
Reviewer Rating	7.2/10
Overall Rating	7.2/10

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72% Recommended49 out of 68 Reviews

100% Recommended1 out of 1 Reviews

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By vocrobot on 11th Oct 2006

vocrobot's Ratings

Time MP3 Player Owned	Between 1 - 4 Weeks
Sound Quality	9/10
Battery Life	10/10
Features	9/10
Memory	8Gb
Value for money	9/10
Overall value	9/10
vocrobot's recommendation

Good Points

Very small
Very easy to use
Album art
Great sound

Bad Points

No radio

General Comments

I have owned a couple of MP3 players before, but I always steered clear of the iPod for some reason. I got the impression Apple were a very faceless company who cared more about looks than performance.

A friend of mine let me try out his 30Gb iPod and I was very impressed with the sound quality. And a few weeks later I had a look on the Apple website and saw a new Nano had been released which had a bigger memory and a much more impressive battery life than any other model had had before. I therefore went out and bought an Apple Ipod Nano 2nd Generation 8Gb MP3 player.

The thought of using iTunes had also put me off using an iPod before, because I had always just wanted to drag and drop. The thing is though, you do the same with iTunes, and it's no different to loading up WMP and doing the same thing. I found iTunes very easy to use without having to read any instructions, just import the CD to the iTunes library and then drag and drop it to your player. I also find being able to make your own playlists using iTunes is invaluable.

As for the actual player itself - it looks and feels lovely. Whereas the original Nano has come in for a lot of criticism because it was so fragile and scratched very easily, this model feels very solid and sturdy. Although, like all my gadgets, I treat it very carefully and I bought a silicone case and screen protector. The display is very clear and bright, and the text is very nice. Most of the MP3 players I have seen, the display text looks like "computer text", but the iPod has a very natural font which I like a lot.

The battery life is what impresses me the most with this iPod. Up until now iPod batteries have been very disappointing, which is one of the reasons why I haven't chosen one up until now. The shuffle will only give you 12 hours max, and even the 20Gb and 30Gb models would give 14 hours, and that is in optimum conditions, leaving it playing without skipping tracks and switching the backlight on. Also, with this model the unit looks like you cannot get into it to do a DIY battery change like you can do with most of the other models. I did a battery test, and from full charge I got just under 25 hours in total, and that was with playing around with the player quite a bit during the day. A very impressive result and a battery specification living up to it's advertised life. Also, the battery used is lithium ion rather than lithium-polymer, which has been the standard in the iPod almost since day one. The li-polys are renowned for not having a particularly good shelf life, many people finding that just after a year they lose their ability to hold a charge considerably, whether you have used the player a lot or not. The Apple website states that the battery in the Nano should still hold up to 80% of its charge after 400 FULL charges, which is very impressive, and after the performance I have had so far I can believe that.

One thing that really amazed me about this model is the fact that the player uses flash memory rather than a hard disc. A hard disc spinning up every 25 minutes or so can be a real drain on the battery, which is probably why the bigger iPod's can't give a long battery life

I am also very impressed with the sound quality, which I think is the most important factor with any music player. I would not consider myself an audiophile, but there is a certain combination of treble and bass which suits me perfectly, and this iPod hits that point very well for me. I don't like using equalizer settings anyway, so having the right sound as standard is great.

Syncing the player with your photo albums on your PC also gives excellent results. Even on such a small screen, the photo's look very bright and clear - great for showing off photo's to your friends when you are out and about.

For a change with standard MP3 players, the supplied earphones are very impressive (shame they are white when the player is black though). I read somewhere that these earphones are new, in that the earphone part is slightly smaller so that they fit in your ears better and don't fall out so much. This has always been a problem that I have had, hence the reason I bought some earphones that go right inside the ear canal, but I am starting to use the supplied ones now, because the frequencies produced through them are very good.

I feel I have made an excellent choice in buying this player. A combination of all the things I have mentioned in this review have really impressed me, and with 8Gb being a perfect size memory for me, combined with the sound quality and impressive design for the price of the old 4Gb MP3 players, this player is sure to be a hit with both die-hard ipod lovers and newcomers to the range like myself.

Total Respect: +2