Apple iPod Nano video 8GB Third Generation

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Ease of Use	Simple
Look & Design	Excellent
Range of Features	Diverse
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	It's tiny, Apple sexiness, easy to use, clear screen and interface .
Disadvantages:	Relies on net access too much, can work out expensive for Apple accessories

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

For the past year I've had a dilemma. It's all revolved around the iPod. Basically my mobile phone doubles as an MP3 player and a video player as well as the standard mobile phone functions.

The dilemma I had was whether I could actually justify an iPod video. Why fix something that wasn't broken? Anyway, for Xmas, Buggy bought me an iPod Nano (mainly to stop me hanging around the tech department of Asda for 30 mins everytime we went debating the pros and cons of such a purchase). Well that\'s my dilemma solved, but are they any good.

As usual, the nano looks very sexy. Decked out with a matte black fascia the back is shiny silver/metal, but what makes it even sexier is the fact the nano is absolutely tiny. I mean the thing is totally dinky. It's 7cm high and about 5cm wide but the depth of it is the part that blows you away. It's only 6mm thick! It also weighs in at around 2oz as well. It's that tiny it looks fragile and you're scared you're going to break the thing. The screen is 2" though and very well lit (at 50% it's still quite bright) so viewing things isn't going to give you serious eye strain unless you're watching a subtitled film (which would be near impossible) or you have poor eyesight. Underneath the screen you have what\'s known as the clickwheel. Despite it's name the wheel doesn't actually rotate, but more on that later. As I said it looks tiny, but very sexy and in to the small space apple have managed to fit 8Gb of memory for storing your favourite tunes, videos and piccies on.

The one bug bear I had with the nano is that Apple have seen fit not to include an installation disk or decent manual. Before you can do anything with it you need to download the iTunes software from Apple. Now don't get me wrong, for most people this isn't an issue, but if you don't actually have an internet connection at home (hey, these people do exist!) then you're going to have a problem. iTunes needs to be able to connect to the internet to register your iPod and stuff so if you're sans internet connection you need to either get online, find someone happy to register your iPod for you (not recommended) or take it back to the shop and exchange it for an MP3 player that doesn't rely on the net so much.

Once the software is downloaded then it's a simple case of plugging the nano into the USB port (which doubles as a charger), installing the software and following the prompts and answering the questions it asks. One thing I will say, is when you get to the credit card registration section you can just click 'cancel'. You don't have to register your credit card unless you're going to buy tunes from the iStore (why not simply rip an album from CD - it's easier and cheaper). I won't be bundling an iStore review in here either as I don't use it because I've got more music than I'd ever fit on 50 nanos. Once everything is done you can either have the iTunes software go off looking for your MP3/AAC/WMA (which it converts to AAC - Apples audio format) files or simply drag them into the corresponding sections of iTunes for whizzyfication across to the nano.

Once the tunes are across it's a simple case of clicking the eject button on iTunes (don't just unplug it) and then disconnecting the nano from the USB, plugging the headphones in, selecting music on the menu and then songs and playing whatever you like. A neat function the nano has is that songs can be group by genre, playlists etc. This means that say half of your nano has jazz and half of it is techno then you simply specify their genres before you send them across (if it hasn't already been done) and you can play the chosen genre. You can also search for tunes on the nano. You simply select search, and then as you enter the letters it comes up with any tunes matching the text. It saves you having to trawl through your entire library just to find one tune.

You can get iTunes to subscribe to the latest podcasts. For those who don't know what podcasts are I'll explain. Basically some radio stations or hobby groups do a podcast which may be a whole show, or a selection of the best bits of the show. They release these onto the net and then you download them to your iPod. If you get iTunes to subscribe to them then at least you know you'll never miss another podcast again.

Sound quality isn't bad either. I've had MP3 players in the past that have been so low when they're up full blast that I could hear the person next to me breathing. Thankfully this isn't the case with the nano. The sound is fairly loud and the earphones will quite happily annoy the person next to you on the bus or train, for those of you into that. Of course sound quality is all down to the encoding rate that which you've ripped your MP3s so a word of advice to anyone is not to rip your MP3s at anything less that 128kbps (preferably 192kbps) otherwise sound will suffer.

I've noticed a few reviews have slated the earphones. I don't personally have a problem with them and they seem clear and loud enough. Maybe they've revamped them recently, but I don't have a problem with them at any rate.

If you've bought the nano purely to play movies on, then unless you have a fair amount of technical savvy you're in for a shock. Say you've got a DVD you fancy popping on your nano, it's not a simple case of just copying the DVD to the nano. First of all you need a program to rip the DVD and convert it into the MP4 format that the nano uses, or if you have an AVI or MPG file you need to convert that into MP4. This is where it becomes a bit of a nightmare. I'm used to converting between various formats (it's part of what I do for a living), but when it came down to converting my AVIs across to my nano, after conversion iTunes was telling me that they weren't valid files. Now granted, I was doing this at 8am this morning so I assumed that I was missing something and left it until I'd woken up properly. A few hours later and I'm getting the same stuff thrown up. I checked the files both pre and post conversion and they checked out. I tried different settings on the converters I was using - still the same problem. In the end I decided to try WinFF (http://biggmatt.com/winff/) which is free. After a few minutes of messing with that I selected the XVid for iPod option down at the bottom of the encoding options and voila. Did the trick. I converted a few clips just to check it wasn't fluke and they've all worked so I've found the setting.

So why is it so hard to get videos on your nano? Simply because Apple can make vast amounts of money by making it so difficult. Your average person is more likely to pay for a film to watch on their nano rather than go through all the hassle of ripping and converting. The irony of it is, that after you've spent ages downloading the film it can actually work out quicker to do the rip/encode method (not to mention it's also cheaper). I admit that for the technophobes then it's probably a better idea to download them, but for anyone thinking of getting a nano assuming they can simply whizz their DVD collection across, think again.

With the right encoding sequence, you can get around 10 films on the nano, but that gives you almost next to no room for anything else. It\'s probably an idea to split the space down the middle and use half for music and half for films and anything left over, for photos if you want them.

One thing that is nice about the nano is it's interface. The menus are pretty clear, uncluttered and do what they say on the tin. They are accessed by using the click wheel. Now as I said earlier, it doesn't rotate. It's a touch sensitive pad and you move your thumb left or right around it from the top. Moving left moves the menu selection up and moving it right moves it down. As the menu selection moves the unit makes a little click noise - hence the name. It takes next to no time to get used to this although it can be a little sensitive so if you're clumsy with things like this then it may take some practice. Also, I'd recommend using the locking switch at the base of the unit. The locking switch stops things from brushing against the pad and doing
various things when it should be just playing music etc.

When you're in plain music mode, after a short period of time a sort of screensaver kicks in and powers down the screen. As it powers down the screen it displays a little clock with a little icon next to it to let you know it\'s playing music etc. While we're on screens - you can also set how bright the screen is. Ideal for those times that you need to set the brightness up or down depending on your lighting.

Now for a little surprise. The nano has games. In the extras menu there is a section called games where there are 3 games (you can buy more in the Apple store). The three games are iPod Quiz (a movie and music trivia game which has a seriously American slant), Klondike (a solitaire-type card game), and Vortex (a breakout game with a twist). The graphics aren't bad on them and they seem pretty playable, although at times the click-wheel is too sensitive and can mean you make mistakes.

Also in the extras menu is an alarm, stopwatch, notes, contacts (not sure what this is because I've never managed to get the nano to do anything with this, although in theory it should allow you to synchronize contacts from a PC address book) and a few other things. Most of these are just extras thrown in there for convenience as opposed to anything mega useful. I was quite surprised not to see the usual calculator and converters in there that almost every device with 'extras' has.

Battery life isn't bad and it's estimated at around 10 hours or so, but then again that depends on what you do with it. If you're watching films expect that to decrease due to the screen lighting requirements and the increase in processing power needed.

One thing I have to comment on is the fact that nano (and all iPod accessories for that matter) are so over-priced it's unbelievable. Nanos need a case. They are so tiny that a case is a must, even if it\'s just to bulk it up a bit more to make you notice it. Apple are charging around £60 for a leather case at the moment, so shop around for compatible cases from a 3rd party manufacturer. I managed to get one for £6 at Asda, but there are plenty of cheaper and just-as-snazzy looking ones around. I noticed Halfords have metal cases for around £20 notes which do look quite sexy.

So, would I recommend a nano. That varies. If you want one of the iconic symbols of the 21st century or you're just a label whore then yes. I'll be honest I was a little against getting one, mainly because I have dislike for Apple products (even though we also own a new iMac), but I'll be honest that the nano has surprised me with what it can actually do and how good it is. If you just want something to play tunes or maybe the odd video you may be better off getting something else. Don't get me wrong, I do love my nano, but they can work out expensive (especially if you want all the Apple merchandise to go with it). My personal recommendation though is a resounding yes.