Apple iPod nano 8 GB

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Look & Design	Excellent
Range of Features	Diverse
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	It's gorgeous, great quality, easy to use
Disadvantages:	Screen is a little small for video playback

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I am one of those people that never seems to upgrade anything unless I have a really good reason to. The old product works fine, so why should I buy the newer shinier one? Well, the gorgeous pink ipod nano has finally persuaded me to give up my five year old classic. And I'm already completely in love with it.

This is a gorgeous piece of electronics. All of the colours are really nice, they're bright choices but not obnoxiously bright like some of the previous ones have been. In particular the pink of this one is truly gorgeous. The back is back to the days of the ancient classic, very shiny and therefore very easy to scratch! Overall the Nano is roughly the size of your palm and with the width of around two 10p coins. When you see it in person, it's a lot tinier than pictures of it would lead you to believe, and it truly is an attractive looking pod. I find myself continually picking it up just to look at it! To be honest, the appearance of this ipod was the main reason I began to consider upgrading to a new one, so if you like your electronics to also serve a purpose as a good fashion accessory, this is definitley one for you to consider. Your new ipod will arrive in a tiny little box only slightly bigger than the ipod itself - this is actually pretty good quality, and if like me you're too cheap to buy an actual case for it, it's the perfect thing to store it in when you're not using it, as due to the size of the pod it really is incredibly easy to misplace it!

The ipod is controlled through the use of the wheel. For anyone who has used any ipod from the past five years or so, you'll be able to adapt to this immediatley as it's exactly the same. For those who have never before had an ipod, it doesn't take long to figure it out at all, it's very well designed and simple to use. The buttons are clearly laid out to tell you what they do, and when scrolling through songs you simply move your finger over it as if you were turning a wheel. It's very sensitive and responds to touch excellently without any delay.

The screen is 2 inches, and I would consider it to be of a perfect size. The screen is very bright and well coloured, everything is easy to read and uses very attractive colour combinations. When you scroll through menus pictures come up on the right hand side of the screen - for example, album artwork scrolls past. This doesn't really hold any purpose, but it is attractive and I enjoy looking at it.

The screen whilst playing songs is very attractive and stylish, yet simple at the same time. On the left hand side the album artwork is displayed, whilst on the right are the details of the song, such as the artist and the rating that you gave it. This looks really fantastic, and I love how well organised it is. You are able to choose either specific songs, specific albums or specific artists, and all are really well done. It's easy to find the song you're looking for, and if all else fails there's even a search option! If you prefer, you can simply slide through the album artwork to find the one you want. This isn't really a feature I use because I tend to just keep it on random play, but I enjoy using it every now and then just because of how pretty it is to watch! Scrolling through your photos is just as easy, as they are presented to you in gallery format and you simply select the one you want to look at. Video playback isn't quite as good as the dimensions of the screen are a little unusual, but to be honest, if you're looking for something to watch movies on whilst on the go, you probably wouldn't be going with something with a 2 inch screen. The nano is 8gb, and it is said that it can save up to 2000 songs. I have just over 1000 on mine and it says it still has over 4GB left, so I believe this to be accurate but I haven't filled it up completely yet in order to comment.

I have heard complaints about the sound quality of the ipod, but to be honest I didn't find anything wrong with it at all. It sounded perfect to me with the earphones it came with, so I'm not sure what the other complaints are about! If for some reason you take issue with it, new earphones are very cheap and it's the ipod not the accessories I'm reviewing.

The nano comes with 3 games, and there are plenty at the istore for you to download including classics like Tetris and Pac Man. The first game is iQuiz. If you've ever owned an ipod you'll be familiar with this, but it's been upgraded a little. The iQuiz basically tests your knowledge of the songs on your ipod - for example, showing you an album cover and asking you mulitple choice questions about who it's by, or playing you a bit of a song and asking you to identify it. This is a fun idea and something to do to pass the time, but I find it a little pointless as you probably wouldn't have the music on your ipod if you didn't already know it, and the album artwork generally has the name of the album in giant letters on it anyway so it's not exactly hard to work it out! There is also a card like game called Klondike, and a game that I really enjoy called Vortex, which is sort of like the old fashioned game of Pong but with a completely new design. I really like the graphics on the games, they are much better than I was expecting.

There are lots of little extras for those of you that use your ipod as a personal organiser. There's a calendar, a clock (And you can check the time in different timezones too, which is especially useful if you're like me and often travel between two different countries), an alarm, a note pad, a contact book, etc etc. Aside from the calendar and the clocks I don't really use these, but they are great little addons to have and I have no doubt they're useful.

The battery quality on this little nano is perfect. Apple recommends 24 hours of audio playback. I have tested this by charging it and then leaving it on shuffle to sing to itself until it wears itself out, and it actually managed to top that. As the main reason I bought this little nano was to listen to on long distance flights, this is absolutely perfect for me.

Overall, I am in love with this little machine. The nano is gorgeous to look at, it's really easy to use, and it's definitley my new favourite plane buddy! If you've been thinking of getting a new mp3 player, I would absolutely recommend you get this. I wasn't expecting to like it very much as I've had trouble with ipods in the past, but this is absolutely perfect in my opinion.