iPod Reviews

Apple’s iPod shuffle 1GB is more of eye catchy designs and will live up to the expectations that the consumers will be having of an Apple product. As anticipated, it is a flash-based player. It is designed to be as simple as possible.

Design:

Apple’s shuffle can be said as a visual master piece though lacking LCD. You can wear this product anywhere around you. It is so light that you will even forget that it is there. iPod Shuffle 1GB weighs as low as 15.6 grams. It measures just 41 x 27 x 10mm, smaller than probably your mobile phone screens. Ipod shuffle 1GB comes in colorful lines of anodised aluminium finish. It has the “play/pause” button in the middle followed by the volume and the skip track controls around its sides. The edges are also thin, just 0.84cm. One of the edges contains a small on/off switch, a LED and a button to switch between random shuffle and looping in the order they appear in the player. The other edge you have the 3.5mm headphone jack. In this iPod shuffle, the syncing is carried out by the docking cradle that is provided that fits into the headphone jack easily and hence there is not any separate ipod connector. It includes a built-in USB. The battery indicator lights up green, red and orange depending on the status of the battery. It lights up green if good, orange is moderate and red is you are very near to the null mark.

Usage:

When you plug-in it on your computer and click a button, the itunes uploads a random selection of songs. You can also have a selection of the highly rated tunes or even manually pick them up. You can experience a surprisingly pleasing quality of audio. The given headphone also does justice to the music. But it has to be accepted that certain depth in the details of the music is not reached. Finally it is limited to playing only MP3, AAC and AIF files. Though there is no dedicated hold switch, when you pull the headphones out of the socket, the player pauses automatically. Apple iPod shuffle 1 GB capacity can hold up to 250 songs.

Lack of LCD - Disadvantage?

Well, the lack of LCD display just cannot be put in to the category of disadvantages because it does not require one. You can listen to it just as a walkman. You can pin-point the song or just play it in random.

Battery, warranty and box contents:

The battery life is around 12hrs. This can be said as a welcome feature for such a budget. As the other Apple ipods, Apple shuffle 1GB also comes with one year warranty. The box content includes the ipod shuffle, earphones, dock and a quick starter guide.

It is the easiest digital player in the market at use. The design is tiny, compact yet stylish. Apple ipod shuffle 1GB can not be said as just the right kind of ipod to everybody. It suites the one-day travellers and those who would like to listen to music while exercising.

Apple iPod Shuffle 1gb Technical specification table

Apple’s classic 160GB created a lot of rumours and speculations after its previous generation release and has lived up to the expectations of the ipod lovers. This ipod offers increased memory capacity, a full metal enclosure, thinner body, more visually rich GUI but has incompatibility with some of the accessories of the older versions.

Design:

Apple iPod Classic 160gb is only slightly thicker than the 80GB version. The display screen is a 2.5inch LCD color screen, with an LED backlight. This display is the best ipod display screen you must have ever experienced. It has a very good resolution of about 320 x 240 and equally brilliant brightness. It is having a matte finish metallic body making it look at its best. But its back is annoying by easily taking the smudges and scratches. It has the headphone jack and hold button on its top and the bottom edge for the proprietary connector as in the previous generations.

Setup:

iPod Classic 160GB is nice and simple. There are no demo music, pictures, videos or any other PMP bloat-ware installed. The software CD is not included hence; either you must be having the itunes preinstalled or at least, internet access in order to download it. Connecting the ipod to the PC is easy.

Usage:

The top-level menus have been divided in to two, one containing the menu options and the other containing the icons or background images. This change is a very impressive one. The cover flow system for browsing through has made its debut in classic range. But there is some noticeable amount of lag while using the cover flow, so if you have a large number of albums, you may prefer to use the search function.

Video performance:

Apple iPod Classic’s support for music playback, video, pod casts, photos and games remains unchanged. It supports H.264 or MPEG-4 video in MOV, MP4 or M4V file formats at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 at around 30 frames per second. The video playback capability of classic is very impressive. Videos can be bought from itunes. But Apple ipod classic 160 gb requires itunes7.4 or higher versions in order to be compatible with your PC. It also has the capacity to automatically resume video playback from the point at which you last left off. The sub titles can also be switched on and off by option for the videos that support them. Apple has integrated in classic, three interesting video games. The recently released Apple ipods incompatibility with a number of 5G video accessories is disappointing.

Audio performance:

The audio quality can be said to be as unchanged. But the better quality head-phones made a difference making classic 160GB a little classier. This product allows for manual addition and deletion of music and video files without the hassles of the play list syncing.

Battery:

With the increased storage capacity and improved interface, the performance of the battery has also been upgraded. It has about 40hrs of audio and 7hrs of video playback where as the Apple iPod Classic 80GB version had 30hrs of audio and 5hrs of video. This is a very good upgrade attempted and achieved by Apple.

Box contents:

Apple gives their consumers the best out-of-the-box experience. The box itself gives you an idea about the richness of the product. It contains a quick starter, warranty, disclaimer notice and accessories that include ear bud head phones, USB sync, wall adaptor and a docking station adaptor.

Warranty:

Apple’s ipod classic 160GB comes with 1 year warranty.

In short, ipod classic 160GB can be said as one of the rich looking, high-capacity MP3 player in the market. Ipod classic is the one to own if your prime concern is on capacity.

Specification Details of Apple iPod Classic 160gb