Apple iPod Video 30GB Review

Overall Rating

Compact size
Fantastic quality resolution on the screen
Sexy looking ;-)
Really easy to use

Casing prone to marking, front and rear
The lock button can be tricky, especially for me with fat fingers...

I bought the 30G Video iPod last August to take with me to France on a family holiday. And I can honestly say this is the best purchase I have made in a long time.

I had owned a first generation iPod Shuffle prior to owning this Video iPod, so I was used to the iTunes software that came with it, and getting used to the 'click wheel' to operate the iPod was really easy. Just 'spin' it left or right to choose the item you want. It's that simple.

Loading the iPod with the tunes was also fairly straight forward. I had all my CD's on my hard-drive before I bought this unit, so the boring part of uploading was done (do you know how long it take to upload 800 cd's???) so all I had to do was register the new iPod (automatically done online) and then tell it to download the songs. As there was quite a few songs (800 albums worth, funnily enough...) this also took some time. But just start it going, and then leave it for a few hours.

Putting new tracks onto the iPod is also child's play. Just download them to your hard-drive, and when the iPod is connected it will automatically find them and upload them. Marvelous.

And the new version of the operating system for iTunes automatically finds the album art online, so you can show off the album cover when playing the songs from it. If you so desire.

All aspects of this MP3 player are customisable. You can choose to manually update songs from iTunes, you can choose to show album art on the screen. You can choose to use the hard-drive as a portable storage system for pictures, videos, software, in fact anything you can put on your computer can be stored on the Video iPod. Even certain games and your contacts from Outlook!

Charging the Video iPod is also a doodle. Just plug the supplied cable into a spare USB socket on your computer and the other end into the iPod. The charging will start automatically (as long as the drivers have been loaded onto the computer).

If you want to delete EVERYTHING on your iPod (not recommended unless you are REALLY SURE) just click the button on iTunes when the iPod is connected. There is the secondary 'are you sure' button to stop accidental deletion, but it's good to know that the option is there.

If your iPod freezes up on you (mine did once and it took me forever to work out how to unfreeze it) just push the menu button and the centre button and it is good as new. The whole O/S is so easy to use. Microsoft should take a page out of Apple's book and make Windows more like this!

On a personal note, my Video iPod has been dropped, kicked and generally abused (mainly when at the gym...) and even been through a full cycle in the washing machine, and it still works.

Now, I would not recommend these actions at all or for any delicate piece of equipment such as an MP3 player, but bloody hell, it still works! And with no visible problems!

All listed above, the good points are VERY good, the machine is very easy to use, very sleek, and very reliable (especially in my case...). And the bad points are difficult to locate! As I have only two things to moan about, I think that means this is a great machine. And a case/cover would remove the first 'bad' point in one foul swoop!

I can understand why this is the UK's best selling style MP3 player.

So all in all, yes this is a great MP3 player, but keep it clear of washing machines. Just in case...