Apple iPod shuffle 512 MB

...it does not support AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP1, MP2, WMA or audible.com format 1 (what?!)

The lack of a screen may annoy you if you're listening to new music because you'll never know which track you were listening to without playing it again on the computer to identify the sound in order to find out the name. However, this is not a problem for me as I use it to listen to music I already know and like. Another thing worth mentioning ...
...settings).

The Apple headphones included in the package are a decent enough quality and go relatively loud for when you're in noisy places eg. walking down a busy road. The only thing I did notice was that when I used my boyfriend's more expensive Sony in-ear buds there was a lot more bass than with the regular Apple earphones; but I guess that was to be expected because his earphones cost a lot more and sit inside your actual ear ... more

This year I was thrilled to receive an iPod Shuffle from my dad for my birthday. Thankfully, as my sister already had one he knew to buy the 1GB one so that's what I'll be reviewing (although the only difference between the 512MB and the 1GB is the memory size so this review will be useful to anyone on the hunt for a Shuffle).

Chewing Gum, anyone?

The iPod Shuffle is a revolutionary little piece of technology. To look at it and hold it you'd think it was a plasticy kid's toy or something, certainly not a music player able to store up to 240 songs at one time. It comes in a box the same size as a double CD album and is less than an inch longer than my Wrigley's Extra chewing gum packet, but thinner in depth (height 8.4cm, width 2.5cm, depth 0.8cm to be exact) and only 22g in weight. Perfectly glossy white plastic with only one main feature per side, to describe it as minimal is not even close. To some it'll look cheap and nasty but to others it'll be ultra modern and funky.

There is a small circular control panel on the front comprising a thumb-pad sized separate white circle in the middle which allows you to play/pause (via the same button) and a narrow pale grey ring around it, turning the volume up if you press up, down if you press down, skipping back a tune with left (hold down to rewind) or forward a tune with right (hold to fast forward). On the back is a clicky slider switch with three settings. The top one, 'Off' (funnily enough) means that the iPod is switched off, the middle one has a logo meaning 'Play in order' and the bottom one has a logo meaning 'Shuffle'. As you slide the switch down you reveal some lime green background behind the slider which sort of makes it easier to see which position you have it switched it to (perhaps if you had trouble seeing the mini logos by the side). Below the slider switch is a tiny little slim switch with a picture of a battery next to it and a small LED on it. This is the battery indicator (and not Power On as you could be forgiven for thinking) which works regardless of whether the iPod is 'on' or not. When you press it in it tells you the amount of charge left via a simple traffic light system: Green is Good, Orange is Low, Red is v.Low, no light is no charge. The bottom section of the iPod is a removable USB cap (although looks almost seamless when connected). Taking it off reveals a metal USB connector with the memory size (1GB in my case) printed on it.

SETUP

This is relatively easy if you're computer literate as the CD guides you most of the way. That said, it's just a bit of a pain if you encounter minor problems as there are minimal instructions in the manual so you need to use your initiative and know your way around a computer.

You put the included CD ROM into your computer and it starts the setup wizard. You are guided through a few pages then asked to plug your iPod in (to a USB port - either 1.0 or 2.0 but if you have a 2.0 port then use that as it's much faster). If you have speakers on your computer you should hear a little 'bong bing' noise to confirm that the iPod has connected with the USB port (and a 'bing bong' when you disconnect it later). It then takes a few moments for your computer to bring up a message to say that it recognises the iPod as a new piece of hardware then the installation wizard continues.

Be patient if nothing is happening as it can take a few moments for each thing to process itself. Once my iPod was installed I thought that was the hardest part done but then for no apparent reason the computer starting bringing up error messages saying that it couldn't communicate with it. The iPod was making connecting and disconnecting noises so I looked at it in the USB connector and I think that perhaps some screws next to the port were not allowing it to be 100% connected so I changed to another port and went through the setup wizard again. This worked perfectly so the port must have been the problem. One notably stupid instruction given on the setup wizard was to look for the serial number on the back of your iPod. This is very hard when it's plugged into the back of the computer (you can cause damage to it if you disconnect while it's busy) so get the number from the box instead.

After the iPod setup came iTunes which was 100% problem free and just involved selecting a few options (including giving your iPod a name - whatever you like!) then it was all complete. You then create a new folder for your music in iTunes and drag and drop whatever you'd like on your Shuffle into there. Once they're in there drag and drop them onto the iPod Shuffle directory in the left side of iTunes and wait for them to transfer. It takes quite a while to transfer files if you're using iTunes (between 5-10 minutes if filling the whole 1GB). I was listening to my first tunes within 40 minutes of starting setup and was relatively satisfied. The problems occurred later…

USING THE iPOD

Before your first major playing session, plug your Shuffle into the USB you used for loading songs and leave it there for 4 hours to charge up fully. As with mobile phones, I believe this initial full charge is pretty important to achieve the full potential of the battery in the future, so (after messing around with the shuffle for a bit) don't skip it! It might be worth mentioning that you can't listen to the iPod Shuffle while it's charging via the USB - but for most people I doubt that will be a problem because it's something you'll probably plan to charge up and use when you're out the house.

There are a few funky little shortcuts listed in the instruction manual:
SKIP TO BEGINNING OF PLAYLIST: When playing in order, press the play/pause button three times in quick succession and it'll skip you back to the first song in your playlist.
HOLD ON: Whilst playing, hold down play/pause for a few seconds. The orange LED light will blink rapidly three times. If you press any button while hold is on there will be one orange blink to indicate that hold is on.
HOLD OFF: Hold play/pause down again and the green light will blink to confirm hold is off. If you've got hold off then any time you press a button (eg. Volume up) there will be one green blink)

And a few sequences of indicator lights that you should be aware of:
Green on for 2 secs - means that you've just pressed play
Green blinking for a minute - it's paused
When plugged into USB, Orange = battery charging
When plugged into USB, Green = fully charged
When plugged into USB, blinking Orange = do NOT disconnect
Green & Orange blinking = error

Once the songs are loaded and the initial charge is complete it really couldn't be easier. Plug your funky little white headphones (included in the box) into the jack at the top of the iPod and choose between the plain USB cap (to carry the Shuffle in a bag or pocket) or the Lanyard cap (a lanyard is basically just a piece of shoelace type stuff to hang it round your neck). Slide to either Sequential play or Shuffle, press Play and off you go. If you need to stop the music for whatever reason, just slide the switch to 'Off' and when you resume play it will pick up from the exact point you left off (just like a good old tape Walkman!)

Aside from the music playing aspect there's not a whole lot to say about the iPod Shuffle because it really is a pure music player with few other features. Although saying that, there is one notably decent feature which I didn't expect: it can also work as a flash memory device. Computer geeky speak translated that means you can use it as storage for any kind of file. For example, if you typed something at home but didn't have a printer you could drag and drop the file onto the shuffle in the computer's F drive and take it to someone else's computer to print it out. To do this you will need to change the Data Files : Music ratio in iTunes but this is very easy to do. With regards to playing music, it supports AAC, MP3, MP3 (VBR), WAV and AA so that pretty much covered it for me as I only use MP3s. The manual also tells me that it does not support AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP1, MP2, WMA or audible.com format 1 (what?!)

The lack of a screen may annoy you if you're listening to new music because you'll never know which track you were listening to without playing it again on the computer to identify the sound in order to find out the name. However, this is not a problem for me as I use it to listen to music I already know and like. Another thing worth mentioning is that you can't see the LED on the front in full sunlight when outside, but it's not really a problem as you don't really need to see then when you're using the player (and can shade it with your hand if necessary).

The player is a joy to carry around, whether you choose to use the lanyard around your neck or place it in a bag or a pocket. Unlike tape players and CD Walkmans in the past it's not heavy large or bulky - you will actually not even feel it's there. I can even put it in the pocket of a tight pair of jeans without feeling restricted or uncomfortable. I couldn't be happier with this aspect of it because the size and weight of music players in the past has always deterred me from using them when walking around. I now keep my Shuffle in my bag 24/7 because it takes up so little space and could be useful any time I had to wait somewhere.

The only problem you could possibly encounter with this aspect of the Shuffle could be superficial damage to the its glossy white plastic exterior. I read on a few websites that it will suffer a few light grazes if you put it in places like your bag or your pocket without protection; so with this in mind I invested in a decent silicone sleeve for mine to make it splash proof and scratch proof before it got damaged. I would strongly advise investing in something like this.

SOUND QUALITY

I have compared several tracks (encoded at 192kbps - CD quality audio) listening to the same track on the iPod and then through the same headphones via our mixer. There is not a great loss in quality apart from it sounding ever so slightly muffled on the Shuffle (but probably not noticeable if you were not comparing as closely as I was). In general I think that the iPod reproduces sound quite clearly and there is enough balance between the bass, mid range and treble to be enjoyable (which is good as there is no option to alter these settings).

The Apple headphones included in the package are a decent enough quality and go relatively loud for when you're in noisy places eg. walking down a busy road. The only thing I did notice was that when I used my boyfriend's more expensive Sony in-ear buds there was a lot more bass than with the regular Apple earphones; but I guess that was to be expected because his earphones cost a lot more and sit inside your actual ear which already makes them more intense.

However, this is not the major problem.

PROBLEMS

My first problem occurred when I tried to load more songs onto the Shuffle via iTunes. It's simple to delete existing songs from the iPod - just select your iPod in the left hand iTunes menu and delete all tracks or just selected ones. I chose to delete all of them and add a whole new playlist.

When I tried to transfer lots of songs I found that it would load a few and then make the Bing Bong noise as if it had been disconnected from the USB port. If I left it connected to see if it would carry on working it would just make connecting and disconnecting noises every few seconds. I tried numerous times (about 10) and iTunes would transfer to different levels, sometimes two tunes, other times almost 80% of what I was transferring, but every time it failed and hadn't written any tunes onto the Shuffle. To this day I still do not know what the problem is because I left it a few hours, tried again and it worked!

However, that problem was never solved as it happens infrequently for no apparent reason. I do not know whether it's an iTunes problem, an iPod Shuffle problem or a problem with my computer but it wound me up because the Shuffle doesn't allow you to bypass iTunes by dragging and dropping files directly onto the iPod in the 'F' drive. Apparently this is an attempt by Apple to stop music piracy (from people dragging and dropping stuff from their friends' computers), which is also the reason why the files have weird coded names in the iTunes folder if you look at them in the computer's F drive.

Anyway, that's beside the point - I searched for a solution on t'internet and found a way of not using iTunes by downloading something called a 'Database Rebuilder'. This now works perfectly so I can drag and drop files onto the Shuffle in the F drive without iTunes. I have no real criticisms of iTunes as it seemed like a very useful program if you've got masses of music to categorise (or randomise!) but something about it just didn't work for me and I didn't find its features essential for my relatively small collection of music.

In any case, this problem didn't really bother me once I had downloaded the 'database rebuilder' because it meant that I could have the Data Files : Music ratio set to 100% data and no music without swapping it around when I wanted to save files onto it. This is possible because the rebuilder allows you to have the music you're listening to on the Shuffle stored as normal files. It also allows for quicker transfer than if you were using iTunes.

ACCESSORIES

There are less accessories available for the Shuffle than for other iPods at the moment because they were only launched in March2005. Nevertheless if you don't mind not having official Apple products then you have the option of buying such niceties as an array of skins/covers; different USB caps; in ear headphones; in-car chargers; speaker systems; headphone splitters (for two people to listen at once); an armband for carrying the Shuffle whilst working out; and items such as converters which plug into car tape players and FM transmitters (uses your car's radio frequency) for you to use your Shuffle via your car's soundsystem.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

The RRP for the 1GB iPod Shuffle is £99 and you won't find it massively discounted. Amazon.co.uk is the cheapest I've found and it's currently at £85.98 with free UK delivery. If you want to look at it before buying it's sold in most electronics shops and larger department stores.

VERDICT

This is the perfect little player for me because I love my music but I generally only listen to things that I already know and like so the lack of a screen is no great loss to me - it just means there is less to break and less to weight me down.

If you are not particularly bothered about having a player which is a bit thicker and bulkier in size then you might be able to get more for your money; but for me the fashionable look, small size and super light weight were the major selling points of the Shuffle.

I would recommend this to anyone who perhaps likes to listen to music when walking around places or maybe has a boring walk to and from work or regularly has to travel on public transport on their own. I wouldn't recommend this if you can foresee yourself being bugged by the possibility of not knowing what you're listening to, but other than that; it's great!

It gets 4 stars because if I hadn't used my initiative to sort out the file transfer problem by downloading the database rebuilder then I would probably still be having those problems when using iTunes.

carly_pussycat - Ciao UK ©
 

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