Apple's I-Pod Breaks Through into Geek-Land
Written: Oct 16 '02
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Pros: Better Price than 10 or 20 Gigs, Stylish
Cons: Very few!
The Bottom Line: I definately recommend this player, it has great capacity, great sound quality, an all around high performer.
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| chk89's Full Review: Apple iPod 1st Generation 5 GB (PC) MP3 Player |
I had always wanted one of these IPOD things, and for so long I was jealous of those Mac users out there who could go get one when I couldn't. Now that Apple has gotten some sense and made the things PC compatible, it became accessible to me. I am very pleased with this product and it is all I hoped it would be.
DESIGN
Weighing in at under half a pound and only 4x2x.75 inches, the IPod is a beauty of modern design. We all know how they are at Apple when they get it into their heads to make something look good. A new feature on this edition of the IPod, a cover for the firewire port, which friends have told me used to get debris lodged in it. The IPod comes with a stylish remote that doesn't have a display but nevertheless gets the job done. The whole unit clips onto your belt for your jogging, walking, or anything else that you plan to do while listening to your library of literally thousands of songs.
FEATURES
Included with your IPod is a very nice piece of software called MusicMatch. All you have to do is fire it up and it will detect your IPod, and then all you have to do is press sync to sync up all your songs. MusicMatch will even normalize all the volumes of your songs so that the Metallica song doesnt suddenly blast your ears out after you've been listening to Mozart for ten minutes. Supposedly you can place contacts onto your IPod via a method similar to those used by PDA's in general, but I could not get it to work. Not important for me however because that is not what I am using this for. It only takes a mere 16 minutes to sync up an entire 5gb library of songs, a massive improvement over USB which would have taken in the neighborhood of 5 hours.
PERFORMANCE
Songs played great on my IPod, using the earbuds that are included or using my preferred headphones. Sonic imagery was very clear. Sonic imagery is that thing where if sounds like sound is coming from a specific direction. Believe it or not this can make a big difference in music enjoyment. Other than that the quality of music really depends on the quality that you use to encode your MP3's. The normal bit rate encoding is 128, which is equivalent to CD quality. Below that it gets a little bit hairy, and above it I feel is overkill. I have never noticed that much better quality at the higher bit rates. The higher you go however the more space it takes up, and with this 5GB version of the IPOD, you may have to make the bitrates a little bit lower to make your whole collection fit on it. Considering however that I have never had a problem with hitting the end of my collection, the high speed transfer rate makes it easy to just swap songs on and off your IPOD.
VALUE
It is true that this unit was pricey at around 300 dollars, but the fact remains that on any other platform getting this much quality music in one box is unattainable for that price. I say suck it up, you won't regret it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 295.99
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Epinions.com ID:
chk89
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Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 1 member
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