Apple iPod Nano and Apple iPod Touch review

Posted by Duncan Bell on Tue 7 Oct 2008

The new batch

Apologies in advance to any Apple haters reading this. You're not going to like it. The new iPod Touch and Nano, despite barely moving forward technologically from the previous generation, are so much better than their rivals that it makes you wonder why anyone else bothers.

Let's get what's wrong with them out of the way first. The sound quality on these is fine, as ever, but unlike a Creative or Sony player, you can't ever get them to really bass it up - although having said that, the Touch's audio is notably better than the rest of the iPod range, simply because it goes louder.

The earbuds you get remain a very stylish joke. Some people hate having to use iTunes to synch their music, video, contacts, photos and applications. But you know what? Some people hate flowers and sunshine. Some people will simply never be happy.

Those aside, it's hard to fault either of these devices. Both now have Genius, Apple's Last.FM/Pandora-style application that puts playlists together for you. It's scarily good at picking similarly-themed wheat from the musical chaff of your music collection.

The Nano adds the Walkman phone-like option to randomly pick a new song by giving your 'Pod a shake - literally "shuffling" it. Forwarding to the next track would be more useful, but it's still quite neat. It's also slimmed down financially and physically. The "squashed" look of the previous Nanos is gone, and the new 16GB one is just 20 quid more than the old 8GB.

But as good as the Nano is, The Touch is on another plane. The 32GB model was already the best MP3 player you could get. It now looks even sexier, with its sensuously curved back; is easier to control thanks to volume buttons on the side - honestly, you can't believe what an improvement that is - and is £30 cheaper.

With more storage than the Nano, Genius can really go to work, too. If you come at the king, you'd best not miss, but no iPod rival is even getting close. With this generation, the gap gets just that little bit wider...

As long as you're not a confirmed hater of the way iPods sound or the way they interact with iTunes, the Nano is unimpeachable as a ticket-pocket-sized player. It's now got a proper, grown-up 16GB capacity and the Genius feature is uncannily clever.

The only problems we had with the Touch came with its PDA functions - MobileMe, Apple's online synching service is a mess at present. As a music and video player, it's miles ahead of any rival, and with the App Store now filling up with quality games, it's not a bad little console too. It's undeniably expensive, but it's such a genuinely premium product, it doesn't feel overpriced. For us, it's arguably the best gadget that's ever been made.

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User Comments

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4|09|2009 21:12

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