Apple iPod nano 2 GB

On a whim, a few months back, I bought an iPod nano. I had been promising myself for months that I would. And I wasn't disappointed.

The nano is the member of the iPod family which lets you in on the 'game' without having to drop serious cash, costing around 139 UKP for the 2Gb model. And for that, you get a very sweet little machine. Basically, an MP3 player that's the length of a credit card, four fifths of the width, and the depth of a small packet of matches. It has a colour screen about the size of two postage stamps, and a touch-sensitive click wheel. On the bottom of the device, there are ports for both headphones and a USB data cable. On the top there is a hold button.

The interface is comparable to all of the previous iPods, which is to say that it's spectacularly easy. In fact, for a small electronic device, it has possibly the most easy to use interface available (which makes the fact that Selfridges are charging people sixty five pounds an hour to teach them to use their iPods just slightly ridiculous).

It comes with four games built in: Brick, Music Quiz, Parachute and Solitaire. Other features include contacts, calendars, notes, a stopwatch. The backlight is strong, and the typography clear - I've had no difficulty in reading track names or accompanying material, in spite of the small size of the screen.

The storage inside is flash memory. This accounts for the small size. It also means that the unit is virtually noiseless in operation, and that there are few mechanical things to go wrong. The downside of this is that it's quite likely that the flash memory will wear out quicker than the hard drive.

Getting music on to the nano is simple. You plug in, set up, and your tunes sync on automatically. If you only want a subset of songs on your nano, set up a playlist called something like "iPod Music" and get iTunes to just sync that. You can then drag on the music you want to listen to.

Podcasts are especially good on here, as you can see the images which are delivered in the RSS in pretty decent quality. I primarily use my nano to listen to podcasts, and it does it's job perfectly. Most MP3 players are designed not to cope with things longer than a few minutes, but the iPod supports bookmarkable files and even syncs the point at which you pause back to iTunes, so that you can continue listening on your computer. This is very useful if you've experienced the alternative - carrying scraps of paper around so that you can write down where you got to in the show.

The contacts functionality is also very useful, and has served to get me out of a few scrapes when my mobile wasn't working. The calendar doesn't show all-day events, which is quite annoying, but otherwise is a useful sync with iCal.

Should you buy a nano? Yes, on one condition - you get yourself a case or cover as soon as you can. I would recommend the covers made by The Invisible Shield (Google for them - they're a Utah-based company who make super-strong plastic covers for all sorts of electronic devices). Since getting my cover, I've dropped my nano a couple of times in ways which, without the cover, would have scratched it up enormously. It is extremely prone to scratching.

Despite this, Apple make the only MP3 players which I've found which do everything I need. It doesn't have an inconvenient drag-and-drop interface (computers are supposed to automate, right, not force you to do the filing!). It supports podcasting better than any other player. And, if you install Linux, you can do some rather neat things with it. Buy one, get a cover, and you won't be disappointed.