Apple iPod Nano 8GB - Black

Price: $389.99 - $389.99

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Excellent for the non fussy04/13/07

Pros:

Sturdy build, all metal, long battery life

Cons:

bundled earphones are useless, no custom equalizer option, backlight cannot be dimmed

This is my first Ipod so I have no previous Ipods to compare it against. I badly wanted a new lager capacity mp3 player and couldn't decide on either the 30GB Ipod Video or this one, in the end I settled for this as judging by the state of my mobile phone (always dropping it), I think I'd be safer with the flash-memory based Nano.



The Nano 8GB is all metal and when I bought it, it came with a whole lot of extra free stuff like a screen protector, arm band, a quick travel charger and a soft casing which slips onto the Nano live a perfectly fitting glove.



I have so far filled it up to about 2 GB of songs and I have more stuff to put onto it. I also like the fact that I can easily plug it into any new PC and use it like a removeable storage drive.



The display light is really bright and this makes viewing it easy in bright conditions but I think it also sucks up a lot of juice. I have the light turned off and only turn it on if I use it in totally dark conditions. I wish Apple had put in an option to dim the light, such as power saving - medium - full brightness.



I also really LOVE the search feature. You can search through your gigabytes worth of music just by entering a word or letters and the Ipod will display a whole list of songs that has that word in its name or ID tags. Very very useful and it really makes locating a particular song real easy. This is real handy when you have several hundred or thousands of songs or sound clips stored on it



You will have to download Itunes yourself as no disc is included.



The included earphones are white in color and kinda clashes with the all metal and sleek black Nano. But my biggest gripe is just how useless these earphones are. They are the reason why I bump down the sound rating down to "just okay." You will most likely want to get a better pair as the included pair outputs very weak bass and sometimes distorts at louder volume. I like Sony's earphones as the bass boost is really good but they are a big larger for my ears to fit comfortably.



The battery life is also EXCELLENT! I have been playing it for a long time now that I don't even remember but the battery is still going real strong. With the quick charger, I am able to get a full chrage in about two hours. Using the USB cable takes much longer.



The tranfer rate is noticeably slower than my other USB 2.0 devices but still bearable and much faster than USB1.1 devices. I was able to tranfser a 2GB folder in about 8 minutes. I can do the same on my USB drive in about 3-4 minutes.



All in all, I like this Ipod a lot, I just wish the earphones had more bass (the midrange and highs sound okay).



I would highly recommend this to anyone who don't plan to watch videos on tiny screens and who are prone to accidentally drop (or likely to drop at least two or three times) their mp3 players.



I give this Nano a 4 star value rating only as I think it could have been cheaper so as to be a better value compared to the larger Video Ipod. But then again, both will cater to different needs.