iPod Nano = iPod Love... Well At Least A Little Lust

I've been a bit out of the MP3 scene... there is only so many units one can play with and I definitely have bought more than my share of units. The last major MP3 player I bought was the iRiver H10 (can't really count the Lexar LDP-200 unit as a major purchase). I hadn't planned on buying anymore MP3 players for a while... then I saw the pictures of the iPod nano unit on the Apple website. I was intrigued... but I didn't really go through the specs very closely and said that was nice.

Well, I had to come up to Washington DC for a medical meeting. I stayed in Tyson's Corner in McLean Virginia at the Ritz-Carlton and came in a day before the meeting. Well, I was curious and walked on over to the Tyson Corner Shops right to the Apple store. There I met the iPod nano... the store just got their shipment of unit on September 9 and I was staring at the demo unit. The store salesman let me handle the unit... like all the other people in the store, we all drooled over the unit. I asked which versions they had available... and the salesman said "all of them". I had my choice of either 2GB or 4GB in either standard iPod White and the new iPod Black. Out came my credit card and luckily they gave me an educator's discount for being a teaching physician at the hospital. I got the iPod nano 4GB Black edition.

Short Take

I thought the iPod Shuffle was an overall disappointment for what I desired. The iPod Nano really makes up for the shortcomings of the iPod Shuffle for those desiring a full featured iPod based on Flash memory. The Nano is likely best described as a much smaller iPod mini with almost no moving parts. It is smaller than a credit card in height and width. The unit is seems to be a tad bit thinner than the Shuffle and the unit is comfortable to hold in your hand... although not quite as nice as the iPod mini. The unit is very responsive and sounds louder than any other iPod unit I've owned or played with to date. The black color looks especially nice on the Nano. The 1.5 inch color LCD is bright and very clear... photos look especially nice on them. The unit is a speedy external drive as well. Since the Nano is based on flash memory, you can take your Nano to all your workouts without fear at least from running and jumping up and down... if you drop it, you're on your own bub.

Unlike other competing MP3 players, the iPod Nano does not record or tune into FM stations. However, that is a personal choice so it really isn't a detractor. The lack of user-replaceable batteries can irk some people. The major problem with the design of the Nano is the placement of the headphone jack and the dock connector/USB plug. They are right next to each other and often requires you to take out the headphones so you can take out the USB connecting cable. You definitely have to take out the headphones to place the Nano into a dock connector. Otherwise, The Nano has an occasional weird slowdown when transitioning some menu screens... but it isn't consistent.

The only other worrisome part of the iPod Nano is the price of the unit. Some might balk at the $199 price tag for a 2GB unit. The 4GB unit costs $249. If you can still buy the discontinued iPod Mini, that costs $199 for a 4 GB unit and $249 for 6GB ansd that's before any discounts are taken off. Other competing units run $150-$200 for 5GB units with equivalent features. If you just want to lay around and listen to music, there are tons of options in the same price range or cheaper that do as good a job as the Nano.

In the end, the iPod nano is a great successor to the iPod mini and takes away the worries about damaging the unit due to high impact exercises and the such. It is meant as a primary unit for those who don't have a ton of music to listen/sort through or a secondary unit for those who do have a ton of music to listen to. It is also flexible enough to act as a speedy USB hard drive, photo viewer, and some basic PDA functions like an alarm clock and contact keeper.

Price

Costs about $249 for the 4GB unit and $199 for the 2GB unit. Judging from the price, there is no reason to get the 2GB unit... just spend the extra $50 to get the 4GB, it is worth it at the end. There is a student/education discount of $20 for iPods through any Apple Store or Apple online. You can get a bit of a discount online. Judging by initial sales, I don't see any major price drops in the near future. Personally, I doubt Apple will bring out a 6GB version of the Nano before 2006.

Personally, I think the 2GB Nano is a rip-off considering $50 will get you the 4GB Nano. However, if the Nano is a secondary MP3 player (you have a 20GB iPod for most of your music needs), the 2GB Nano is a great upgrade from the $149 Shuffle although a bit bigger but a ton sexier and much cooler looking/feeling... so it depends on your viewpoint. You can read my 2GB iPod Nano review on what my girlfriend thought of her unit

You can read my article The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth! to find some tips for saving a little money on electronic purchasing.

You can find additional money saving tips specifically for new iPod units at the very end of this review. This is complimentary to the tips in other epinions article.

Specs and Design

The Nano has dimensions of 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches... yes, you read that right... this unit is thinner than the iPod Shuffle. The Nano weighs only 1.5 ounces as well. The unit is more reminiscent of the iPod, iPod photo, iPod U2 models rather than the iPod mini. Compared to the iPod mini, the Nano takes up about 1/3 of the space! On a side view, the Nano seems to be made of up three layers... the bright silver back, the middle black or white upper casing, and a clear polycarbonate layer on top of that. The top of the unit has only the hold switch. The sides are clean. The bottom of the unit has the dock connector port and the headphone port (which provides some problems which I'll go into later). The front of the Nano has a bright 1.5 inch color LCD and the Click wheel used in the last round of Apple iPods. Note that the Click Wheel is pretty flush against the surface of the Nano giving the unit a very slick feel!

The Click Wheel is extremely responsive compared to the 1st and 2nd generation iPod minis. A quick twitch really shot up the volume very rapidly and I glided through hundreds of songs very rapidly compared to my iPod minis. So it seems the touch sensitivity of the Nano has been tweaked and improved greatly. Faster circling around the Click Wheel sped you through lists of songs while inching around the Click wheel let you go a song at a time.

The design does suffer from some former iPod complaints. The clear polycarbonate layer as well as the back attract fingerprints way too easily. The clear layer is also somewhat easy to scratch as well. The most severe of the complaints is the placement of the headphone jack near the iPod connector port. While this placement works well with some accessories (the earphone lanyard) it is horrible for others (the actual dock since you have to remove the headphones to put it in the dock!). This placement makes it difficult to remove the dock connector since it is so close to the earphone jack (you often have to remove your earphones to remove the dock connector!). Although not a deal breaker, it is annoying.

Note that about the 4GB Nano has about 4GB of memory in the unit, only 3.7GB are available for your use! 300 MB are needed for the operating system and other essential software for the iPod nano (this was no different from the 4GB iPod Minis by the way!)

In Use... The Music, The Photos, and Navigation

Overall, the Nano sounds clearer and louder than the iPod minis I own and the Shuffle as well. I was quite pleased with it and the loudness of the unit as well even with the included Apple earbuds. Most people will not likely notice any slight sound distortions. There are no audio delays going from one song to another. The unit does not skip under hard jostling (no problems while exercising and jogging). The Nano is capable of playing the following music files:
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF

There are 22 preset equalizer settings on the Nano and most basic features for music playback are easily accessible via the Nano's controls. The Shuffle function is quite prominent on the default menu settings. Overall, the Nano is a solid music player.

Navigation remains quick and easy due to easy to use Click Wheel. This remains my favorite way of navigating through hundreds even thousands of songs... especially with the ability to group songs by albums, composer, artist, and the such. There are occassional slight visual glitch where the screen display slows down in changing menus or switching to the song information.

Photos are handled the same way as the old iPod Photo and current generation iPod units. Photos must be synced through iTunes before you can display them on the iPod Nano. iTunes will reformat the image to a small thumbnail so that the iPod Nano can quickly display it on your 1.5 inch screen. Unless you check the box in iTunes, you will not transfer the actual photo files to your Nano to tranfer to other computers. The causes a bit of waste in the memory space department since you are technically storing the image twice on your iPod. The images are vibrant and sharp for the screen... no complaints there. I would even say it is the best color screen on a flash memory MP3 player that I've seen so far. You can easily set a slideshow on the Nano screen with your choice of music. iTunes is capable of transferring the following file types for "viewing" on the Nano:
Syncs iPod-viewable photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats

Battery Life

The battery on its first charge lasted 10 hours over the course of 5 days. Not bad overall. My second run is at 2 hours with a full battery meter still showing. I'm hopeful that 14 hours of straight playback is possible. I would note that the batteries are not user replacable and that you will see battery life diminish after 1 to 2 years of use. I'm seeing that with some of my iPod minis now. The battery is 80% charged in 1 1/2 hours via a powered USB 2.0 port. It takes 3 hours to fully charge in this manner.

Note that the Nano can be charged via the Firewire cables but you cannot sync the Nano via Firewire as far as I can tell.

Connecting to a Computer and Use as an External Hard Drive

The iPod Nano can sync via USB 1.1 connections although it is slow. A transfer of almost 1GB of information took a little more than 30 minutes to complete. I was able to download that same 1 GB in under 2 minutes through a USB 2.0 port. iTunes took 15-20 minutes to sync my songs and pictures to the Nano.

HD Tach shows a Burst Speed 9.9 MB/s. Random access time of 3.2ms. Average read speed of 5.3 MB/s. This was done on HD Tach 3.0.1.0.

I have not been able to sync the Nano via Firewire or use the Nano as an external hard drive so far. So as of now, Firewire users are out of luck.

Extras

The Nano has a World Clock capable of showing three different time zones, an Alarm clock which functions exceptionally well as with most iPods, 4 games, store Contact information if you had a vCard on the patient, store notes (can display text files if you placed the files in the right directory), Calendar, and a nice looking stopwatch feature.

If english isn't your first language, you have options to set the iPod to any of the following:
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese and Turkish

If you wanted .ogg music file playback, this isn't the MP3 player for you. There is no FM tuner on the Nano. There are no recording options like in some other MP3 players. Keep that in mind when making your decision when comparing to other MP3 players.

iTunes

It's an iPod so the integration with iTunes is very tight. It is easy to purchase music from the iTunes store, encode CDs to appropriate music files types, and sync the songs you want (as well as pictures) to the Nano. You should be using the latest version of iTunes which should be ver. 5.0 as I haven't had problems with it (I have it on my main computer). However note that there have been a number of complaints/bugs reported by iTunes 5.0 users and prior versions of iTunes seem to work well with the Nano as well (version 4.8 and 4.9 seemed fine). The CD that comes with the Nano installs iTunes version 4.9 which is nice and stable (I have this installed in my notebooks). And yes... Podcasts are supported by the Nano!

In the Box

You get a USB dock connector cable, the iPod white earbuds, 2 sets of foam coverings for the earbuds, iTunes version 4.9 software and PDF instruction manuals on a single CD, an adapter to attach to the iPod mini dock to more easily fit the iPod Nano. You have to buy the actual USB AC adapter if you want to charge the iPod Nano away from a computer or a USB 2.0 hub.

Accessories?

At the time I write this, there are very few Nano specific accessories available. You can get the colorful armbands for workouts at your local Apple store but as far as I can tell... that's it. The iPod Nano tubes might be available within a few weeks which will help protect the Nano although hides the Nano's beautiful shape and well as increases the Nano's size slightly. The tubes also don't protect the screen area as well. The lanyard is available on the Apple store website although I worry about how tightly the Nano is connects to the lanyard (note that I haven't seen the lanyard personally). Most power adapters that worked with the iPod mini should work with the Nano.

As of January 2006, there are a ton of cases and other fashionable extras for the Nano. As far as extending the capabilities of the Nano... nothing specific as of yet. It would be a safe assumption that any such accessories would connect via the dock connecter port.

You can read my review on the Logitech mm50 portable speakers for the iPod. I love these things. They are a fair size with very few compromises on quality and sound!

As for cases/protection, I went with the Invisible Shield body protector from www.theinvisibleshield.com which costs $19.95. These are transparent thin layers (0.008 inches or 1 mil thickness) of some material developed by the military to protect helicopter blades! This stuff makes the Nano nearly scratch proof! It keeps the overall look of the Nano adding very little bulk/thickness. It does give the Nano an overall glossy appearance, and you lose the smooth feeling on the surface of the Nano (There is more textured appearance and feel to the Nano with the invisible shield protector). Screen clarity is NOT affected when the backlight is on. There are two versions sold by the company... one with a click wheel cutout and one without. I used the one without and the click wheel is slighly harder to press in... although rotating it felt easier (because of the increased grip of the surface).

Competition?

Apple's own iPod mini, iRivers H10 and 900 series flash players, Samsung's army of flash memory units and more depending on what features you wanted to see on your MP3 player. On the whole, the iPod Nano is more expensive than all 4-6GB mini hard drive based MP3 players although cheaper than competing flash drive players (due to the competition having smaller memory sizes usually 1GB or less).

Money Saving tips

Although these can be applied to various items especially other electronics, I am doing this specifically for Apple iPod products since they rarely drop in price from Apple's MSRP until Apple discontinues production on it (at least that is the most common scenario). I composed a few ways to save a few bucks on the iPod here... especially if you want to try before you keep your purchase. Note that purchases from the Apple store or Apple.com website means you subject yourself to the extremely inflexible returns policy (10% restocking fee for returns whether it is defective or NOT!).

If you have never shopped at Crutchfield.com, this is a good place to buy your Nano from. Crutchfield has excellent customer service, provides additional printed material on connecting to other devices, and offers a vast array of online help. On top of that, you get free shipping on purchases over $249 and no sales tax unless you live in Virginia. Since the Nano doesn't have a significant price drop from any reputable store, crutchfield is an excellent place to buy one... especially with their flexible return policy. On top of that, using a referral code will also net you a $20 discount (first time shoppers only!) and give the referrer a $20 credit at Crutchfield as well. My referral code is p21r2-pqrdb-d9ryg and inputed on the payment screen (where you put in your credit card number). I get in stock purchases from Crutchfield within 2-3 business days! Use the link from epinions to reach Crutchfield.com.

Another quick discount is using the A9.com search engine. Why? This is amazon.com search engine that also incorporates results from google.com. When you use the A9 for a certain period of time, you earn a 1.57% discount from purchases made at amazon.com (note that amazon must be the seller of the product! Someone selling a product through Amazon.com site does NOT earn the discount!). Couple this with amazon's overall good customer service, no sales tax, potential free shipping, and flexible return policy, it makes purchasing the Nano from amazon very tempting.

PCMall.com, MacMall.com, PCConnection.com, MacConnection.com, and affliated sites are decent places to shop as well. Often the price will be lower by $5-10 with free accessories (after rebate of course) and sometimes a decent mail-in rebate is available on top of that (rare for the Nano in my searches so far). There is no sales taxes expect for people in California but S&H do apply. The PCMall and MacMall sites allow for the same laser engraving that is available at the Apple.com store. I don't have experience with their customer service department but I believe it is more flexible that Apple.

Target.com is a decent place to buy the Video iPod (when it becomes available for sale there). You will often find a 10% coupon to use and the return policy is much better than Apple's policy. However, target.com charges sales tax and S&H charges. If you want to purchase from Target.com, I would recommend using a Citibank credit card that is enrolled in the Thank You Merchants Program since that will give you up to 7 points per dollar spent at target.com (5000 points gets a $50 gift certificate to places like Target. 3000 points gets a $25 certificate).

Buy.com is another good place to make a cheap purchase. Buy.com will have a small discount with available dollars off or small percentage coupons available to further lower the price. Couple this with the often free shipping and no sales tax to most of the US (I believe they are based in California) and sites like ebates.com or fatwallet.com can lower the price of the Nano up to 10%! However, the customer service at buy.com leaves something to be desired.