Boys And Their Toys
Written: May 26 '04
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Pros: Storage, sounds, inline remote, speedy file transfers
Cons: iTunes, price, earbuds, carrying case
The Bottom Line: One of, if not the best MP3 player on the market. It’s easy to use, sounds great, holds a ton of music, all in a tiny package.
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| funkdaddysmack's Full Review: Apple iPod 40 GB White MP3 Player |
Background Information
My job certainly has its perks. Being an IT guy, it’s fairly easy to stay current with the new toys in the industry, something I could not do out of my own pocket. For example, I’m on my soon to be 4th laptop in two years. It’s the little things that make a job enjoyable!
I’ve always had a thing for the iPod. They’re brilliantly engineered, sleek, and often touted as the best MP3 players on the market. Obviously I wanted one. Until now, I had never thought about getting one seriously because I was afraid I wouldn’t get enough use from it to justify the cost. Luckily at work, some brilliant employee recommended that we buy them to use as portable hard drives, as we often need to carry around many files with us at a time, USB pen drives just won’t cut it.
A few weeks later our brand new, shiny 40G iPods arrived (3rd generation).
Unwrapping, And First Impressions
As much of a PC lover as I am, I certainly have respect for Apple. Just opening the packaging on the iPod was joy in itself. All the materials and packaging are so neatly arranged, it’s hard not to appreciate it. Everything is organized, from the ear bud foam covers, to the inline-remote, to the software CDs, to the player itself. Everything has it’s place.
The materials apple uses will make you understand why the price is way above the market-norm of electronics. The wires (headphone, docking cradle/firewire) are all of great quality, you can tell it immediately as you touch them. The dock for the player is a nice weight, great shape. The player slides in with a satisfying click, there is no give or shake, the engineering tolerances are very impressive.
Through Its Paces
The player, though I’ve seen and held them before, is very satisfying every time I use it. The rounded edges are very comfortable, and the weight is impressive, it’s amazing to think you can hold 37G of music and/or files in such a small package.
The controls are nice, and adequately intuitive. The playlist / browse sections are fairly useful, though I use the playlist feature most of the time (I like to know exactly what music I’ll be listening to).
The features on the player itself are nice, you have a good bit of control of how things are set up, again it is quite easy to figure out. The backlight feature is very helpful in low-light situations, it comes in handy more than you would think (more on this later).
The sound quality is the best I’ve heard from any portable player yet. Very clean, crisp, and clear. This is even with the included earbuds. I’m no audiophile, I’m sure there are those who scoff at the thought of using the earbuds that came with the player.
I’m a huge fan of the inline remote, another first for me. I’ve read a few people don’t care much for it, but I love it. It has a clip on the back that allows you to clip it in place, usually on my pocket or shirt, for quick access to controls (Volume, Play/Pause, Track Control). The headphone plug into the remote, another nice feature (some players only allow you to use their headphones / earbuds with the remote) so that you aren’t stuck with the earbuds if you don’t want to use them.
Setting up the iPod in the PC world isn’t as seamless as it could be, but I was willing to trade that for using one of the greatest MP3 players on the market, it’s worth the “extra effort.”
The Likes
- 37G of storage, can’t get much better. I have a lot of music and I’m nowhere near the limit.
- Sound quality, as I’ve said before, this player sounds great even with the earbuds. Most of my music is encoding in 192Kb or higher, but even the 128Kb songs sound terrific.
- The inline remote is great for me, I find it hard to believe people wouldn’t like this item.
- Both firewire and the USB 2.0 file transfers are plenty fast. I copied around 10G of music over in about 15 minutes, not bad at all.
- Using it to transfer data files is rather easy, it shows up as another hard drive on your computer, it’s as easy as drag and drop.
The Not-So Likes
- The screen is great in backlight mode, but the text is often too light for my tastes in everyday usage. I would have liked a bit more contrast, but it’s definitely useable. I probably just look like a nerd with the iPod right in my face
- The earbuds, while they sound good, are not very comfortable over long periods of time. Perhaps my ears are too small or something, but I’d much rather use my other set of headphones.
- The price is extremely high. So high, I think they could have included a USB2 cable in the package instead of the extra $20 I needed to spend.
- The case for the iPod is nice in that it very securely holds it, but there is no window to see what song is playing or use the controls. Nit picky? Maybe, but it would be nice to at least see what was playing (40G of music, you won’t know the name to every song!)
- The ‘On the go’ playlist feature is nice, however it seems that whatever was in there is lost whenever the player is turned off. I’d rather have it stored in there and remove them manually.
- Almost forgot… iTunes! For the Mac it may be a terrific piece of software, but it is neither as stable or streamlined as I would like in my pc world. I’m a huge fan of Winamp, and I’ll use that to play my mp3s from the iPod instead. iTunes is too bulky for my tastes, both in how fast it runs and the actual size. The loading times are too sluggish, and everything just seems to be reacting too slow. I’m not a patient person! When I’m playing music, I don’t care about looking at the album art, genre, play count, and when the song was last played. I want to listen to the music, and not worry about it bogging or crashing my computer.
- I want an FM tuner (The gym broadcasts the TV channel sound over FM)!
- Battery life is ok, but not terrific.
Conclusion
I have no doubt this is one of, if not the best MP3 player on the market. Overall it’s easy to use, it sounds great, and holds a ton of files and music, all in a tiny package. There really isn’t much you could do to make it better.
I use it all day when I’m at work, when I go to the gym, even when I’m in the car on longer trips. It’s a very useful device. Especially in the work environment (wink, wink)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 465
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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Epinions.com ID:
funkdaddysmack
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Member: Dan Dreese
Location: Williamsport, PA
Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 10 members
About Me:
24 years old, Database administration
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