Not Your Father's MP3 Player, The Sleek New Ipod Nano!

Author's Rating:

Pros: It's sleek and sophisticated.

Cons: It was a bit hard to set up at first.

The Bottom Line: 
This iPod is very slick and sophisticated!

Author's Review
One disadvantage to the sleek small iPod is that they are so small that they can be easily stolen. Thus was the fate of my sons uber cool Black 1 GB iPod. Thanks to some Christmas money, a Best Buy Gift Card and a kick in from Dad (that's me!) he was able to replace it recently with this slick new second generation iPod, and double his Gigabytes of storage to boot. I chipped in money on the condition that he lend it to me long enough to review it.

Cache, how does it Look?

Ah yes, it used to be, you just wore the right clothes to look cool, but now you need the latest in electronics as well, especially in that area that is so fashion sensitive, the SIXTH GRADE. No self respecting 11 year old would be caught dead with a Samsung MP3 player (though I'm perfectly happy with mine), no Creative Zens, nope they all want the latest slickest smallest iPods! The second generation Nano is indeed small and sleek. It makes my tiny Samsung camera phone seem huge. The iPod Nano is literally only a quarter inch thick, less than 2 inches wide and about 5 inches long. Yet, the small color screen easily displays the menu, photos, and song info, including the album cover. The recessed wheel is easy to operate and the USB port and headphones plug right into the bottom. His Nano is a sleek silver design made of brushed aluminum. Although Best Buy only had this in silver, I'm sure it will be out in a variety of colors like other iPod models. I'm hoping for Milano Ferrari Red myself, or perhaps British Racing Green. Future Electronics meet Classic Rock! (read on, to see my sons taste in old school rock 'n' roll!). In short, this 2nd Generation iPod Nano is one of the newest and sleekest, and the other ones are all so twenty minutes ago.

SET UP

Alright, I admit that I was less than thrilled trying to get this set up. My music files, all 40 Gigabytes, yes thats about 1000 plus CDs I have ripped onto my hard drive, are organized with Music Jukebox. Of course APPLE wouldn't use music jukebox, no, FIRST you have to download their program ITUNES before you can even begin. No, Itunes version 7, which you will need, must be downloaded, it is NOT included in the purchase. The download is free from Apple's website. Then you have to import your library to the ITUNES library. Fortunately it doesn't actually copy it, it just sort of points to the original file. The good news is that it only takes half an hour or so to set up 9000 songs in ITUNES. Clearly a serious music lover like me was not in mind when they designed ITUNES. Finally, after accomplishing this, I tried to load some songs onto the new IPOD. For some reason, a button I pressed at the beginning of the install, BEFORE I knew what it meant, and without explaining that you don't get to choose it later, I hit a button called sync music. Well even my son knows that 40 gigabytes don't sync onto a 2 GB Ipod. The Ipod decided which songs to put on itself. My son wasn't really thrilled with a selection of songs consisting of a large portion of Tony Robbins Self Help tapes and no Led Zeppelin. I had to download the instruction manual, no it doesn't come with the IPOD, you have to download it and read it online. I followed the instructions to delete and tried to create my own file of music my son likes to sync with. Trouble was, it didn't delete the files for some reason. I reset the IPOD. For some fun filled reason this not only deleted the songs on the IPOD, (which I wanted), but it also deleted the music library.

SETUP TRY TWO!

Alright, on try two, I did at least hit that manual song selection button so we could pick his songs. Right after we RELOADED the music library of course, which took another half an hour. Actually though, this time loading the IPOD was a breeze. I selected at my son's Request, a couple of AC/DCs best albums Back in Black and Dirty Deeds. The entire Led Zeppelin catalog, and original Van Halen (w/ David Lee Roth) catalog and the original Black Sabbath (with Ozzy) catalog were all easily dragged and dropped from the music library list to the Ipod. Albums by The Who and YES, Metallica, Guns n' Roses, Gorillaz, even some Hendrix and Clapton they all fit. As I loaded his iPod, he told me that the girls in his school had never heard of Led Zeppelin, he couldn't imagine why.. well now they can, thanks to the iPods storage capacity. I am sure he will listen closely to figure out which of Jimmy Pages guitar licks he wants to learn next.

2 Gigabytes isn't much, but it's enough to hold Nick for quite a while. I have my music files on my computer using 128 kbps compression, and literally over 40 albums fit on the Ipod. Now that I figured out how to add and subtract songs, it is easy to plug it back in via my computers USB port and change the songs. You just click the iPod icon and select what you want to delete, and select the music library and drag n drop the new songs you want. Adding to the Music Library is also easy, you just click add to library and click on files or even whole folders (which is what I did). It even downloads and displays the album art when it plays songs.

Ease of Operation

If my 11 Year old son can operate this, I certainly can! Actually it really is so easy. A menu button can be surfed through by swirling the wheel back and forth and then clicking the button in the center to select. It's just like a DVD selection button! You can select your music by genre (heavy metal, classic rock, rock etc.), artist, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton, etc), Album (And Justice for All, Back in Black, etc.) or song. I was also surprised to see you could select the songs by composer! I.E. the writer of the song. Van Halen's You Really Got me, would be found under Van Halen in the artist category, but Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks in the composer category!.

Other Cool Stuff

The iPod also has shuffle modes, a photo slide show option, calculator, and:

The iPod can be a Contact manager? I didn't try it, but I selected contacts, and it gave instructions on how to download your contacts in the form of Vcards. Maybe I should get one of these myself! I could have my entire client list in the palm of my hand!

It also has a calendar, To Do List, and Notes. Basically, you can import a txt file to do list into the iPod, and have your days or weeks itinerary in one very portable format.

Fun Music Game. It has a few games, I played one, the music game. It plays a clip of a song, and lists about 5 songs it could be. You must choose the correct song! It also had a solitaire game, but I couldn't figure out quite how to move the cards.

Sound Quality / Ear Buds

This second generation iPod didn't do anything to improve the earbuds, I hate those things. I listened to Led Zepplin Houses of the Holy as I write this with the earbuds. John Paul Jones deep bass and the pounding of Bonham's drums is a bit lost either from MP3 compression or those buds. I also find them very uncomfortable.

I plugged in my KOSS Porta Pro over the ear headphones, and popped on Black Sabbath's debut album! Soon Tony Iommi's screaming Gibson SG guitar solos filled my ears, backed by Bill Ward's powerful drums and Geezer Butler's deep bass lines. Ozzy filled my ears singing oh no God please help me!. the sweet crisp acoustic guitar plucks from Fragile by YES also sound very nice. Yup, get rid of those cheesy earbuds, grab your headphones of choice with the 1/8 inch jack, and the iPod will deliver your digital musical files pretty well. Although MP3 is a very compressed form of music, the difference between MP3s and the original lossless files are only readily apparent on high end music systems, not on iPods or casual listening. That being said, I was pretty pleased with the sound of this new iPod. The unit itself delivers crisp stereo deep bass and nice midranges and highs, even if the included earbud style headphones do not.

So What Does the iPOD HOLD?

2 Gigabytes (actually 1.78) of music files MP3, WMA or AAC. Photos in JPEG, VCARDs for contacts, and TXT files for your notes or to do list.

Battery Life

Charging the battery is as simple as plugging this into your computers USB port. The charge lasts about 20 hours. Nick played this almost constantly from the day we got it without the need to recharge. This iPod uses flash memory instead of a hard drive, so no moving parts are necessary.

What's Included (and what ISN'T)

The iPod itself is included, a scant instruction sheet, earbuds and the USB port are included in the tiny box. What isn't included is a CD for the latest version of ITUNES, which you must DOWNLOAD. Thank God for cable modem, its a 35 megabyte file. You also have to download the full instruction manual, it too is NOT included. This iPod will NOT work with the older version of Itunes, you must download the latest version.

What's better about the SECOND generation?

Well first of all, Captain Picard isn't quite the blowhard that James Kirk is... oh wait, wrong next generation review. This slick metal Ipod holds 2 Gigabytes for the same price ($150.00) that our former plastic black Nano held one gigabyte. It is also even a bit smaller. I didn't think they could get any smaller, but I've seen another iPod that is literally the size of a pool chalk.

Summary

The lack of instructions and having to download Itunes and the instruction manual to even start enjoying this, the quick ceiling of 2 Gigabytes and of course those awful earbuds keep me from giving this a full five stars. Flash memory has increased in leaps and bounds, and it's not susceptable to jarring like hard drives. This iPod is an improvement over the first generation iPods. I will stick with my 20 gig HUGE Samsung MP3 player because it fits most of my music collection, but for kids on the go who just want enough classic rock to make it through the week and don't mind the ear buds, this new iPod is sleek and smart looking, easy to use and a four star product.