On Friday, I received the new iPod with video directly from Apple. After having sold my 4th generation iPod just weeks before the announcement, I had a hard time keeping myself from ordering the iPod and after a few days of contemplating the new features, I went ahead and used my educational discount, the money from the sale of my old iPod, and a few extra $20 bills to purchase the 60 GB White iPod. There’s no real way to describe this new iPod except as fantastic. It’s simply better than the previous versions and even if you’re not interested in watching video on the screen or looking at photos, it makes an excellent music player. I’m not going to recreate reviews such as those found at iLounge or ArsTechnica but I will post a couple of thoughts.
iPod with Video
First, the iPod, contrary to the pictures featured on Apple’s site is no larger than previous versions. It is simply an illusion from the larger screen and slightly smaller click wheel. It is though slimmer and it’s hard to imagine how they were able to accomplish such a task. The 60 GB version I have is a bit larger than the 30 GB version but still slimmer than the previous 20 GB one. They also made the front face flat, removing the curved sides on the top. This makes the iPod look much more like the iPod nano and is generally an improvement. It fits just as well in your hand as before and looks a bit more classy.
The screen is spectacular. It’s bright, colorful, and vibrant. I encoded two TV shows, The West Wing and ER, before I received the iPod and once loaded on the iPod via iTunes, I tried the video functionality out. Playback was smooth, bright, and entirely enjoyable. While holding the iPod in your hand is slightly cumbersome, I couldn’t imagine using a stand as that would ultimately increase the distance between your eyes and the screen, making the image smaller. The width of the screen, 2.5″, is perfect for the distance between your eyes and your hand, but too small for any larger distance. I also encoded the movie Garden State and it appears just as good on the screen. I did use Handbrake to encode the DVD instead of Quicktime Pro, and apart from taking much less time (a 102 minute movie took 38 minutes to encode on my dual 2.3 GHz machine), showed no difference in quality on the screen. I followed these instructions to complete the encoding and if I were to make any changes, I’d use the 2-pass encoding to increase the quality for playback on the big screen. That said, since I don’t have AV cables, I haven’t been able to see how the quality of playback is on a TV.
The click wheel is a bit too small for my taste. I found the previous sized one much better and easier to use, but that said, it’s not too much of a hassle and if using Apple’s own developed one instead of Synaptics lowered overall cost, it’s fine with me. It simply means that you need to scroll a bit more as the distance scrolled each time around is less. I did find the packaging to be somewhat of let down. While the box is classy, the included accessories (pouch, cable, headphones) were packaged in a cheap, white plastic bag. Previous iPods had much more elaborate packaging and no matter what day it was, it felt like you were opening presents on Christmas. The included case with the iPod is a joke and I’m not entirely sure why Apple didn’t simply include an iPod sock with each iPod.
The UI is good. I’m lowering my rating on this from prior ones that I believed were excellent as it’s simply becoming cluttered. More functionality leads to clutter and at this point, it’s no longer as elegant as before. The white space on screen is no longer minimalist but just a result of the larger display. Icons are a bit too small in some cases and the Menu button doesn’t work as expected when looking at notes. Instead of going back to the Menu, it simply shows the previous note. I expected a bit more from Apple on the UI front. However, the UI when it comes to navigating music and playlists is as terrific as ever. Hopefully the other problems can be solved in a simple firmware update.
Overall, I’d rate this iPod a 8.5 out of 10. I chose the larger capacity model mainly because of the improved battery (20 hours of music vs 14 hours of music) but the larger capacity is also useful if you plan to store photos or videos on the iPod. The only suggestion I’d make is to purchase the white iPod over the black one as they are less prone to scratches and most of the accessories available, including those from Apple, are found only in white. The lack of FireWire, while not a problem for me, is still somewhat odd and I hope this isn’t a message from Apple that FireWire is being phased out.
Copyright © 2000 - 2007, Aram Kudurshian. All rights reserved.
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