Pros: Absolutely desirable, high quality, high capacity MP3 jukebox with a great interface.
Cons: Poor(ish) battery life
The Bottom Line: This is the MP3 player all the others measure up against (and fail). Excellent quality, excellent useability and superb design. It sounds rather good too!
za9ra22's Full Review: Apple iPod 3rd Generation White (30 GB) MP3 Player
With the latest crop of MP3 players, and particularly the newer ‘click-wheel’ generation of the iPod, it may seem odd to post a review of a now discontinued model. But 30Gb 3rd generation iPods are still available as refurbished units from some sources, including at the moment from Apple themselves, and there’s a healthy trade in used ones, so as untimely as a new review might seem, it’s not entirely pointless, and if I say this was without doubt the best $279 I have spent, it’ll give you some idea how much I like this thing.
Buy an iPod? Me? No way. I mean, who on earth needs a box the size of a deck of cards that can hold thousands of tracks and play them back at remarkably good quality? I mean, who? Not me, that’s who. I can drag a box the size of a briefcase to my car, full of CDs I might want to play, stuff all my collection into a multi-disc CD changer in the stereo at home - who needs another gadget, particularly one that costs so much and doesn’t do anything much but play my own music back at me.
That’s what I thought too. So indeed, I did have a box full of CDs in the car, and a CD changer in the stereo at home. I dragged copies of my favorite music to the office and kept more copies in other vehicles and for the upstairs stereo too. It wasn’t hard to notice that I never seemed to have the actual CD I wanted, or that if I wanted to play something on the portable player while mowing the grass, I could never find the disc I was looking for and ended up playing something that would do instead - but we all have that sort of problem, don’t we.
Then, while wandering around the internet, I found that Apple had a 30Gb 3rd generation iPod for $279 - a price I could just about justify to myself. Big enough to carry all my music, and not the $499 price tag that I didn’t want to spend.
I waited patiently for it to arrive, copying all my collection to my iTunes library so I would be ready.
Little did I realize how much this little box would do.
It’s not that it really does much else than play music (or audio books), because despite people wishing it would play at being a mobile photo album or receive TV, or keep them organized or go out and do the shopping it doesn’t do those things. It does have features to allow contact and calendar information to be synched to it, and a ‘note’ reader that technically allows almost any document to be carried around, but the small screen isn’t up to much more complex tasks than displaying the menus and tracklists it was designed for, so the more esoteric tasks are mostly there for show. And it can be used as an external firewire or USB drive, which can be useful, but that's just a bit of a bonus. What it does is play music. It certainly plays music.
Getting music onto an iPod is simplicity itself. You fill iTunes (either Mac or PC) with whatever tracks you want, organized whichever way you want them, and then just plug the iPod in and either let it sync automatically or manually copy everything across. It took a few minutes.
The result is quite amazing. It’s not just that the iPod is one of those rare items where form and function meet eye-to-eye and result in a product that has an air of complete ‘rightness’ about it, (though it is), and it’s not just that it actually sounds pretty good, (though it does), but that the ability to carry an entire music library around in a package that’s smaller than a pack of cigarettes is nothing short of astonishing. For me, who rarely had the opportunity to listen to what I wanted to hear where ever I was and whatever I was doing, this iPod connected me back to my music in a way that I don’t think anything else could. Whatever track, or CD or collection or assortment of tracks I wanted to hear while out in the car I could have at the touch of a couple of buttons. Same in the office, and as much while mowing the lawn, working in the kitchen, sitting out in the garden or out walking, jogging or shopping as sitting in the living room. Quick, easy and effortless acess to any of my music at any time I want it. In the end, that’s worth a lot more than $279 to me.
It’s not that the iPod is without faults. Battery life is a little dubious, with 6 hours being more typical than 8, but frequent partial recharges are fine, and the only real issue is with the sometimes bizarrely inaccurate battery meter. Mine sometimes runs 2 hours or more after telling me it’s fully discharged, and more often than not tells me it’s only partly charged after the requisite 4 hours, then runs happily for 6 hours plus. And of course every square micron of an iPod collects smudges like they’re going out of fashion, and the shiny back is prone to scratches caused by almost anything it touches - if you stare hard enough, you’ll hurt it. On the 3rd generation iPods, many find the touch buttons just a little too touchy-feely. I’ve not had that problem myself, but a little care in handling is said to avoid inadvertent button-presses.
The upside to this is the sheer elegant style of it. While it’s not the only MP3 player around, and it’s not the most feature-packed for the price by any means, this is by far the most well-thought solution to the question of how to travel with an entire record collection and access any track with the minimum of fuss and better than average sound quality. The ability to create smart (or dumb) playlists in iTunes and thus have ready access to your music in your own choice of ways, to have a bright, clear display with good backlighting and an easy to navigate interface which feels natural to use, make this device difficult to beat. When you add the choice of user-defined quality levels so you can get your own preferred balance of sound quality against file sizes, the tight integration with iTunes (and the iTunes Music Store if you’re into buying tracks on-line) and the neat accessories, this iPod, capable of carrying several thousand tracks (mine has over 3200 and is only half-full) and with the look and feel of a product that is superbly designed, is undoubtedly a winner.
If you like music, this box will let you take it with you everywhere bar the shower. It’s not that it does anything at all except give you access to your music when and where you want it. But where music is concerned, that makes all the difference in the world.
Go play with one. Take money. Resistance is useless!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 279 Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
30 GB model holds up to 7,500 songs; supports AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV Holds 25,000 ...More at Amazon Marketplace
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