I have wanted to buy myself a good MP3 player for a while but with so much choice on the market it was difficult to decide which one to buy. My family have owned several versions of the i-Pod nano over the years and we have always been happy with the performance. I was seduced by all of the additional features on the i-Pod touch, as well as being a music player you have video playback and many of the features of a PC in your pocket. I own the 3rd generation of i-Pod touch which was released in September 2009 and offers increased browsing speed and more features than previous models.

You navigate around the features of the i-Pod touch by using the touch screen. The screen is 3.5 inches in size, as well as being able to use the screen orientated in a portrait way you can turn the i-Pod touch on it’s side and it will automatically sense this and allow you to use the screen horizontally. The small screen size is just big enough to allow you to play games and watch video playback comfortably without being too bulky in your bag or pocket. The display is brilliant quality giving nice crisp high quality images. The internal battery charges either via a USB port on your computer or via a docking station, the battery life is generally good but I find the claims that you can use it for 30 hours between charges is not true, normally it needs charged every evening after using it for video and the internet during the day. I have also found that using Wi-Fi connection means that the battery drains far more quickly.

You download music and other content to your iPod touch via iTunes. As well as buying content from the iTunes store you can add any music from your CD collection or computer onto the player easily. It is easy to sort your music into playlists once it has been loaded and the i-Pod touch lists all of your music alphabetically either by title or artist and you scroll through your collection from the touch screen picking what you want to play. It also stores the artwork from albums which is downloaded automatically from i-Tunes which is a nice touch. It makes sorting large music collections a piece of cake, the only downside is that when you are scrolling it can be easy to click on the wrong thing accidently. Music is backed up automatically on your computer iTunes library so that if for some reason you needed to reinstall everything then it would be easy to do.

I connect at home via my wireless connection and there are many Wi-Fi hotspots within major towns and cities these days which allow you to connect for free, for example I have connected to the internet in McDonalds, in a shopping centre and even when out and about in my village no doubt by piggybacking on someone’s unsecured connection. There are also various connections which you pay to use, it was one called cloud that popped up the other day and it was charging £4.99 for 30 minutes but I have not needed to pay for connection yet.

As well as having a range of features which are fun to play with you can also use it to work or stay connected on the move by sending emails, storing contacts, writing notes and keeping a track of your appointments on the go. I have found that these work based applications are easily synchronised with Microsoft Outlook meaning that you will not have to waste time duplicating information between two machines.

One of the best known features of the i-Pod touch is the ability to download applications via the iTunes store. When they say that there is an ap for everything they are serious as there is even an application to time the contractions of a woman in labour! Many applications are free from the iTunes store but for others there is a charge of up to £5, you do need to exercise caution when downloading aps as not all of them are licensed by reputable software companies.

Technical Support

The 8GB I-Pod touch has the smallest memory within the range but I chose it because of the lower price of around £139, I was not prepared to pay over £200 for a 16GB model. This allows you to store up to 1750 songs or 10 hours of video. I have a mixture of music, photos and video stored and still have room to spare on the memory, I realise having a smaller memory will mean I will have to delete content, especially video, to enable me to add new stuff over time but I am happy with this option. It would be very easy to fill 8GB within a short space of time so beaware of that when you decide which size of memory to go for.