Review Friday: Let’s party like it’s 2001
Another week has come and gone, and now I sit here thinking of something to top last weeks review of soft mints.
A couple of weeks back I bought a new iPod Classic. My old 3G iPod wasn’t holding much charge (only a couple of hours of playback) and doesn’t do videos.
A photo of my iPod Classic (shoddy photo due to lack of light at eleven o’clock at night)
Okay, the first thing you see when you buy an iPod is the packaging. And how much effort is put into cramming your device into the smallest neatest space possible. The iPod itself sits in a plastic tray on top of the headphones and USB cable. After quickly removing the iPod and discarding the packaging I did what any self respecting gadgetphile does.. plug it in.
After inserting the USB cable, iTunes fired up and asked if I’d like to create an Apple account. I had a £25 iTunes gift card, so I thought what the hey. I also registered while I was there. It then took about 10 minutes to copy my 20Gbyte music library across. I also used iSquint to convert some videos on my Mac (Windows users look at Videora iPod Converter).
So my iPod now has 20Gbyte of music and 16Gbyte of videos.
Music Playback
By selecting ‘Music’ option on the iPod main menu, you can browse all your music by cover art, artist, album, song or genre. Of course any playlists you have put together on iTunes are also available. You can create ‘On-The-Go’ playlists while you are away from your computer.
After you navigate down through the menus to a song you want to play, just hit the middle button. Simple.
Audio quality is quite good (dependent on your source obviously), but a little.. I don’t know.. lifeless I guess. It’s good audio, but there is something missing.
Video Playback
Videos are accessed by selecting ‘Videos’ on the main menu.
Video playback is also good, although it can be difficult to navigate if you have a lot of videos. The screen is a little small for videos, although it is still of a good enough resolution that you can read subtitles on anime and such. I have mainly watched American Dad and Family Guy, both of which looked fantastic.
Photos
I had a little play around displaying photos on the iPod and they looked okay, apart from the lack of resolution. Also the Classic doesn’t do the cool things like zooming with finger movements (obviously because it doesn’t have a touch screen).
Anything wrong?
The iPod Classic is a strong device, the only thing that annoys me is the lag. Whenever it loads a new menu or needs to grab some cover art, the hard disk needs to spin up, which takes a couple of seconds.
Battery life seems to be pretty good, I’ve charged it twice in two weeks, using it on a couple of bus journeys and sometimes on lunch break call it 2 hours a day, 14 hour battery life, with standby time. Also I didn’t let the battery drain right down, probably only to 30%.
Other notes
The iPod has a few other extras on it such as a clock, calendar, contacts and even a few games. Your contacts and calendars are syncronized from iCal and Address Book on the Mac (not sure about Windows) and you can download more games, like pacman and sonic for the iPod.
Pros
- iTunes integration
- Semi-convergent device (music, photos, contacts, calendar, videos).
Cons
- Screen a little small for videos
- Cost. This thing cost nearly as much as my EEE PC, a fully functional UMPC!
- Annoying menu lag
In summary the iPod Classic (and the rest of the range) is an attractive media device, especialy if you already use iTunes to manage your music.
Have a good weekend,
Jason
(In case you didn’t know the first iPod was released in 2001, the title referencing that fact. In six years Apple have sold more than 119 Million. That’s an average of 50,000 a DAY.)