How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Upgrade Cycle
Written: Dec 15 '08 (Updated Dec 15 '08)
Product Rating:
Sound:
Ease of Use:
Durability:
Portability:
Battery Life:
Pros: Prices for this "old" model dropping like a rock. Fantastic screen, accessory compatibility, and pocketable.
Cons: Tied to iTunes software. Capacitive touch wheel is rubbish, and battery life isn't great.
The Bottom Line: It still has all the shortcomings of the iPod Nano line, but this older 3rd generation model has one killer feature going for it: A steadily falling price point.
zero_'s Full Review: Apple iPod nano 3rd Generation Silver (8 GB) MP3 P...
Longtime readers of mine will know that I've forever been an ardent detractor of Apple's iPod line, and just about everything related to it. I've long asserted that iPods are and always have been the Mercedes CL65 of portable electronics: Expensive, and flashy, and with loads of gadgets for impressing your friends but not actually terribly useful, especially in the face of competition that's cheaper, more practical, and just flat out works better.
The ubiquity of the iPod is, I think, one of the great desk-bangers of our time. If it weren't for Apple's deft capture of the notion of “hip,” positioning the iPod as a chic and trendy “must have,” there really wouldn't be a lot going for them. They're certainly not the best value in the MP3 player market. They're not especially great in the battery life department, they're not exceptionally durable (and dents and scratches blemishing the finish of your exceedingly expensive iPod just make things all the more sour), their battery life is universally pretty miserable, and despite what glassy-eyed Apple cultists will have you believe they're not exactly miracles of ergonomics, either.
And then, there's the perpetual upgrade cycle. Apple has been forever playing catch-up with their competitors, feature-wise. The iPod was not the first MP3 player to provide a photo viewing mode, nor was it the first player to make the jump to durable flash storage. There still isn't any iPod on the face of the earth that has any sort of expandable storage, something that the Sandisk Sansa series (and others) have provided since nearly the beginning. And it was far and away one of the last players to support video playback, changing only in the very last generation when Apple finally decided that the feature would be a good enough idea to copy it off of everyone else.
Every time a new bit of functionality does finally get tacked on every year or two there's a so-called “generation” change, which entails buying a new exceedingly expensive iPod... Which usually comes coupled with a minor form-factor change that makes all of your existing cases, straps, and docks useless.
This, in conjunction with all of the above shortcomings including the price gap has always made picking an iPod over one of its legion of competitors a rather daft idea.
This generation changing business, though, can actually be a bit of an advantage. Apple not so long ago announced, in the usual flurry of marketing, the release of their new “4th generation” iPod Nano. Everyone with an old 3rd generation Nano is suddenly unhip, and missing out on new killer feature of the 4th gen which is, actually... Nothing.
The 4th generation Nano has a form factor not unlike the 2nd generation Nano, but with the same sort of video playback support added in the 3rd. And a shake sensor. And that's really it. No new killer feature, no improved battery life or better audio hardware or higher resolution screen or anything. They just decided to turn it sideways again and try to coax everyone into upgrading.
The new 4th gen units are selling for full, holiday-season-highway-robbery retail price. Right now at the very moment of writing, though, there are still tons of “new old stock” 3rd generation Nanos still sitting on store shelves, and their prices are steadily dropping. It's not too tough to find an example of the 8 gig model, a full $179.99 a mere three months ago, retailing for $119 or even as low as $99.
With the holiday shopping season breathing down everyone's necks, the economy fading away, and the iPod still topping the wish list for every teen and hipster on your shopping list, picking up one of these cheaper, “old” generation iPods isn't nearly as daft of an idea as it used to be.
What you get is a perfectly functional real iPod with video playback support, iTunes support (if you swing that way), compatibility with all manner of docks and cables, and oodles of cases and accessories still available on the market.
Once you get past the price, the 3rd generation Nano is still an iPod with all the caveats this entails. It's still tethered to iTunes out of the box, and you'll be forced to go with any number of third-party software packages of potentially dubious origin or quality if you want to use your player without Steve Jobs staring back at you through your telescreen.
I'm not a big fan of iTunes. I don't like the DRM-laden music tracks you're usually forced to buy from it, I don't like how much of a resource hog it is, I don't like how it shovels advertisements in my face, and I just don't find it all that compelling or easy (or even worthwhile) to use. I use my iPod exclusively with third-party software (GTKPod, under Linux) and have relegated iTunes to the dustbin.
The video playback support is still not all that easy to use, even though it's there and works just the same as the new iPod models. The iPod can only play back 320x240 MPEG4 video with AAC audio at the right bitrate and the correct blend of herbs and spices, which means you'll have to convert every video file you want to play on the thing. (This is actually par for the course with most small MP3 players that support video playback. Only when you get into the $250-and-up “portable media device” category do you get the luxury of compatibility with desktop style video files.) And there's still no expandable storage, so you'll have to deal with the limited storage space available to balance out your compliment of movie files (which are a big investment in time and storage space to convert, store, and copy) and your actual, you know, music. Eight gigs isn't a whole heck of a lot these days, especially considering that even the earliest stone-age, hard drive based, first generation iPods had more.
And it's still controlled by that stupid capacitive touch wheel which I don't like. I like the idea. It's a neat concept. I prefer laptops with touchpads over those with those little eraser head mice or trackballs, but that's a different category of gadget. You don't often have the luxury of using your iPod on the nice clean mahogany desk in your office and are instead often fighting with trying to operate it with gloves on (won't work), or when your hands are cold (also won't work), or wet (won't work, and not a good idea), or by feel.
The iPod's touch wheel provides no tactile feedback whatsoever, although there is an option for audio feedback which is a good start. Because there's no other way to tell if it's working (and it often doesn't) the iPod is very difficult to use in any situation where you can't look at it like from inside a pocket or purse. Likewise there are no dots or raised markings to find any of the controls by feel, and the smooth, nearly completely square face of the 3rd gen Nano doesn't provide a lot of tactile clues. Trying to find the play/pause button while the player is in your pocket is more difficult than it has to be, and if you're on the move is often impossible. You resort to stopping whatever you're doing to fish the thing out and look at it (or at least orient it right-side-up) to fiddle with it.
Hand-in-hand with this, I also find the touch wheel to be very imprecise. There's a very fine line between not mashing down on it hard enough or circling over it fast enough to make any selection happen at all to whizzing right by everything, totally overshooting the song or menu option you were looking for and forcing you to page back.
There's also the fact that the hold switch operates backwards from everything else in the known universe. Red warning color for locked? Whose brilliant idea was that? So the iPod Nano scores very few points for usability from me.
Here's what it does score on: Looks.
The 3rd gen iPod Nano has the best tiny LCD screen I've ever laid eyes on. It's bright and vibrant and all of those things a modern expensive gadget's screen should be. It's also very crisp, and once you manage to wrestle your movies and videos onto the device it's easy to get sucked in to the point that you totally excuse the fact that you're looking at a thing about the size of an air mail postage stamp.
The matte-and-silver color scheme is also a winner, or at least an eye catcher. Sure, the mirrored silver back of the 3rd gen Nano will get scratched to all heck in the first five minutes you own it. But nothing matches the feeling of holding in your hand something with the sheer amount of elegance that Apple managed to put together with this design.
It's worth note that the new 4th generation iPods have no mirrored shiny bits at all. That's a cop-out, if you ask me.
The Nano's thin form factor is also one of its strongest points, making it one of the most easily pocketable players on the market and certainly the best feeling. The Nano is thin but dense, feeling very heavy and laden with quality for its size. I think the short-and-fat shape of the 3rd gen Nano is also one of the best and most inherently durable of the mini-iPod designs. The lack of thickness in the thing makes it feel as if a good stiff pinch could snap the thing like a twig (and it probably could, or at least break the screen) but at least the 3rd gen model isn't as long, skinny, and twiglike as its siblings.
The price of the Nano's barely-there physique is very little space provided for a battery, and therefore less than stellar battery life. My Nano scores six or seven hours of audio playback and maybe two of video. This isn't enough to get through a full workday with a ten hour shift, and also makes the Nano yet another gadget you have to remember to recharge every day. This is in contrast to my Sansa Express which lacks the flash factor and video playback of the Nano, but can be used without recharging over the course of several days.
The 3rd gen Nano's battery is, just like every other iPod, not user replaceable. When your battery croaks in two years, as heavily used lithium-ion batteries are wont to do, Apple want you to mail it in for repair or buy a new unit.
Compounding this is the fact that you can't ever actually turn the Nano off. You can only put it to “sleep,” where it retains quite a bit of data in its RAM and goes into a low power state. This means it appears to spring back to life instantly when you turn it “on,” but that low power sleep state is still enough to drain your battery a tenth or more over the course of a day, even if the player is “off” the whole time.
But when you clear away all the cruft, and the price, and the proprietary nature of the software, and some of the braindead design decisions the 3rd gen Nano is still a very competent MP3 player.
If that's all you're ever going to do with the Nano it's really not much of a waste. The 3rd generation units have inherited the neato “cover flow” feature from the iPhone and iPod touch, the organization of music by album, artist, and genre is smart, and the Nano's playback hardware is decent sounding. This in conjunction with the Nano's pocketable form factor makes it an excellent player for casual usage.
There's another plus to owning an iPod instead of one of its myriad competitors: There are a billion and one accessories for the thing. You can't swing a stick without hitting a retail outlet – any retail outlet – with some assortment of iPod junk. Cases and covers are thick on the ground, even for this “old” 3rd generation model. Then there are car stereos with iPod plugs, clock radios with docks for charging and playback, FM transmitters, Bluetooth headphone dongles, gadgets to hook the thing up to a TV, even little minature jukeboxes you can plug your player into.
The 3rd gen Nano will work with any of these just as well as any other iPod. If you or your family already have a pile of iPods and assorted iPod accouterments, adding a (relatively) inexpensive 3rd gen Nano to the mix isn't a bad deal.
And that, really, is the crux of the issue. The 3rd gen Nano isn't a bad idea at this very moment largely because right now it's a good deal. But it's a limited time good deal, and until the next big generation leap (saints preserve us, of course) it's a deal that'll just go away in good time.
Would I have gushed forth about it when it was new? Nah. With all its shortcomings, I don't think the Nano or any other iPod is really worth the price.
If you have one on your shopping list right now, though, either as a gift for someone else this holiday season or a gift for yourself, I'd steer clear of the latest and greatest and have a long think about the older, perfectly serviceable, better bargain: Last year's iPod model.
I did. And, I have to begrudgingly admit, I've actually grown to sort of like the thing.
Dang it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99 Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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