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First review of the iPod Nano

playlistmag.com — There’s a new iPod on the scene—the iPod nano—and we’ve got one. What follows are our first impressions of this very impressive little player.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 8, 2005

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  • brewer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You know, one thing about the hp-jack being on the bottom (other than the neck lanyard thing) is that if it is in your pocket, you can push the buttons as if it were not in your pocket (aka, it is not upside down relative to your hands). That way you don't have to mentally adjust for its orientation.

    Make sense?

    mine should be here next week. black, 4g, duh.
  • Nodnetni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i wish ny student loan money would hurry up and get here, so i can get one.
  • headworm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1winklepr, correct me if i'm wrong, but this thing does have longer battery life than the mini's. 2nd Gen Minis last for up to 12 hours and the nanos last up to 14. The mini's screen is only something like 2 or 3 lines larger than that of the nano. The jack being on the bottom, i must admit is rather stupid, it makes sense, but still stupid. If you are after an iPod with huge battery life, why not check out some of the third party external battery devices? I believe Belkin makes one. Anyways, I will be purchasing one, I just need to sell my mini first. Anyone looking for a cheap green iPod mini 4gb?
  • gregcotten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why buy a $250 4GB Nano when you can buy a $300 20GB 4G Color iPod? For $50 dollars you get 5 times the amount of storage AND a TV-Out.
  • nickzee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1not even a review
  • eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Where's the review where they take it apart??
  • SilentSpyder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Why buy a $250 4GB Nano when you can buy a $300 20GB 4G Color iPod? For $50 dollars you get 5 times the amount of storage AND a TV-Out."

    Ditto. I think we've become spoiled by size. Maybe it's because I used to carry around a Archos Jukebox in my pocket before buying my ipod. But a regular iPod is SMALL, it is pocket-sized. I'd pay the extra $50. I think the only people who buy mini's are people who think they're cute, and don't do enough research...or have enough money that they don't care.
  • Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0overall, I think that this whole thing is a bit of a disappointment. We were all expecting this awesome new item, and now we get this. I was thinking about getting one, but now i'm shifting more and more back to loving my 20GB color model. Apple, you guys are known for innovative, beautiful products. You got half of it right, but that wasn't the important half
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0winklepr-God damn man thats a lot you wrote.

    I wish there was an ipod killer.
    For some reason I like Steve Jobs better than Bill Gates.
    Is that just me?
  • hazri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Still cannot play FM Radio. Pass
  • Winklepr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It be like a Lexus website posting the same preview/review of something the Toyota website originally posted. Just instead of it being the luxery-branch of a car company, its the audio-journalism-branch of a computer-journalism-magazine
  • snapcase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This thing just looks like a huge waste of money. So what if it's smaller, it's too expensive for how much music it holds. I'd rather go get a 60GB ipod photo.

    Procol Harum rocks, and mushroom is a fool.
  • Winklepr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Luckily there is Apple branding, people will buy stuff to have the "name brand" of iPod if nothing else. But I guess I just expect too much from them, but then I'm told I should expect more from them because they are Apple and not a PC-brand, and that's what you pay extra for... In all honesty though, besides the off-topic dispute of Jobs business-practices, what is the point of having slideshows on your iPod Nano if you can't display it on something larger like a TV? I mean, watching a slideshow on a 1.5" screen doesn't seem that practical to me... Am I missing something. Also, viewing photos on a 1.5" screen is worse then viewing them on my Camera's 1.8" screen, especially when many cameras (even the tiniest of digital cameras like canons SD450) have 2"-2.5" screens. At least on the full size iPods you have a 2.2" screen I believe and the TV-out option for viewing on larger devices and playing slideshows on a whim. This is a argument I say many iPod Mini people make when iRiver released there H10 or saw the Creative Micro Photo. I wish more people stuck to their guns on this. Oh well, cool links for other reviews in this board - although seems none seem to prefer some of the iPod Minis stats over the Nanos stats. I'm still awaiting the first review that points out some negatives cause I doubt this player is flawless by everyone. I mean I even see people who don't believe its flawless in here, some paid-journalist-reviewer must recognize these things right?
  • Winklepr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Isn't playlist owned/by/is MacWorld? I always believed it was, just like a magazine MacWorld publishes annually or semi-annually kind of kind there Tiger-special Mag and other things. I'm pretty sure Playlist is owned by MacWorld, kind of like a part/portion of it. Kind of like ZDnet and Cnet are apparently one in the same business too...
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0winklepr:

    "Luckily Jobs doesn't stick to his word,"

    I just summarized your page long rambling down to your actual argument: that Steve Jobs is a bad business man because he adapts to changes in the market when they occur. Yes, he's awful.

    Summarize your next response in less than 10 lines or I'm not even going to bother looking at it.
  • hutchy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Hey Playlist Mag, the first rule of plagerism:
    If you are going to copy a review from Macworld and post it on your site, at least remove the references to Macworld in the actual article."

    Macworld.com actually links to that very article, so shush.

    And on the topic of the Nano, it looks good, I'm very tempted, but I think I'll wait a month or two and pick up a cheap mini.
  • Truegod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Not a very good review, more of a overview. Just a couple of things about actual usage...
  • Luftwaffle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How is it a disappointment, Lumiras? Because it didn't live up to rumors that it'd have an 8GB capacity?

    The only thing I'm not really liking about it is the headphone jack on the bottom.
  • trunkster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0nonoPod haha
  • mushroom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0the biggest question is who the hell is "procol harum"


    http://playlistmag.com/publications/playlist/images/2005/09/blacknano.jpg
  • jteague82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0bleh... not a review at all
  • adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think the real question is, when can I install linux on it or play Doom?
  • ender78, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So it really has no photo features ? That bites ! I would expect it to have the same photo oriented features as the iPod.
  • notkevin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its not much of a review, its more like a preview.

    "We’ve played with the new nano for only a couple of hours and so it’s too soon to issue a final judgement"
  • Nodnetni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0photos yes
    "Holds up to 25,000 photos(2)"
    straight from the site.
  • suicidal-kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just think that now it's too small.
  • pinsomniac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ender: I might be mistaken, but I believe the nano does have photo features. It simply lacks TV-Out capabilities, that's all.
  • DarthPilatus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Hey Playlist Mag, the first rule of plagerism:
    If you are going to copy a review from Macworld and post it on your site, at least remove the references to Macworld in the actual article.
  • Pest0003, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I really don't see the 'amazing' advantages to making stuff smaller. My regular sized iPod fits PERFECTLY in my pocket. If it was any smaller I would be afraid that I would lose it, or that I would put something in my pocket and crush it. I don't want to have to use the tip of my thumb to use the scroll wheel... I wanna slap my big thumb down where ever it falls and start spinning. I don't want to have to focus my eyes to the tiny screen to read what song is playing... I want to be able to glance down and see it.

    I'd much rather see a price drop is the bigger models, or one with even more space on it.
  • FuzzyBunny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Why buy a $250 4GB Nano when you can buy a $300 20GB 4G Color iPod? For $50 dollars you get 5 times the amount of storage AND a TV-Out."

    For the same reason people payed $250 for a 4gb mini a year ago when they could get a $300 20gig iPod. There are a lot of people out there for whom 4gigs is more than enough space and size and durability are important factors in a player.
  • englishgirl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ahh, there's lots of sorts of people who buy apple products, don't take anything personally. i love to mock ipods cos they're so hip, but that doesn't mean i'm not super excited about having my own!

    although... that's probably because the last personal player i had was a cassette walkman...
  • brewer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0tsupersonic:

    I aint no macmaniac and I have an "old school" iPod (technically 2nd generation, with the better clickwheel, but the standard firewire port, no dock) and a nano on the way and these are the only Mac products I have ever and will ever own.

    And your new iPod won't last that five years without a battery replacement.
  • tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The iPod Nano is IMO a really big disappointment, yeah people will buy it because they're hooked on Apple. I gotta say, this thing looks horrible, it's out of proportion. The iPod Mini is the smallest an mP3 player should get. Yes, the pricing on this blows. I was waiting for a color iPod mini, but I got tired waiting and decided to buy the color 20gb iPod. I gotta say, this is my last mP3 player purchase in 5 years, only because it has more than enough storage capacity to hold all my songs and photos. So, Macmaniacs, go buy your cute little nano.
  • Draven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone interested in a 40gig 3rd Gen? seriously..
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I purchased an iPod Mini today right after the Nano announcements. Why? For one I like the color green, and that's no longer an option. More importantly though, the $199 baseline price now gets me half of what I would receive before. 2gb is not really enough room to keep a few MP3s on an iPod along with a possible OS X install. Additionally, I like the idea of having a real hard disk if I plan to boot any of my Macs from it. The smaller click wheel and screen also made the Nano less appealing to me. Learning about the headphone jack placement, and lack of a remote input just reenforces to me that I made a good decision. The iPod Mini was small enough already.

    winklepr said:

    "Also he's [Steve Jobs] not as much of a business man, otherwise I think he'd release OSX to the masses and do away with a lot of microsoft people before vista hits (whenever that happens)."

    Right, one of the richest people in the world needs financial tips from a teenager on Digg. I guess you missed the whole revitalization of Apple that has occurred since Jobs' return and that small thing called Pixar.

    As a Mac user, the last thing I want to see is OS X on beige boxes. The money Apple receives from hardware sells finances the R&D that funds OS X, and makes it light years ahead of whatever Microsoft or the Linux folks are doing. This subject has been discussed so many times, and refuted accorddingly
  • MrSlate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Dravin, and Headworm I am interested in your ipods... Let me know..
  • agent0range, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0908/nano.htm

    Some photos of the nano's guts! I still have a hard time believing that it's thinner than my shuffle....
  • Xertion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just don't like the "now defunct iPod mini" comment in the artical. WTF do they mean defunct? My 2nd Gen 6GB mini is great and I won't trade it off for that thing. Earplug on bottom, can't use available add-ons. No thanks.
  • englishgirl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0
    now, i'm new to it all but i'm getting a powerbook to replace my pc because i spent a few weeks on my boyfriend's and loved how much easier and reliable it was. so, being a student, i'm doing that deal: getting the mini and powerbook discounted and claiming that £100 back also.

    this seems perfectly reasonable to me as i'm getting the ipod almost free and i really wanted a personal player so that's all fine.

    why then are so many people knocking the mini? it does what it's meant to, right? and as an art student and design enthusiast i don't mind saying that trading a colour screen for a coloured shell suits me just fine. personal pref. ipod is about as chic as you can get, and very commercial, so i suppose the fact that my ipod will be "out of fashion" is actually quite a good thing in the fight for individuality!

    does anyone have anything nice to say about the mini?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0that was an amazingly bad review
  • muzikmixr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just boght one today. OMG this this is sweet! It is soo much smaller than I expected it to be. The black one is the one I bought. The screen is pretty clear as well. It is different having the headphone port on the bottom as well, but you get used to it easily. I love it!!!
  • headworm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Now that I look at the Nano (without the OMG feeling) if they had of just put 4gb flash memory and a colour screen (and perhaps a larger battery) inside the iPod mini shell it would kick ass. iPod mini 3gen. I hope someone makes one of these on hack-a-day or something. I think i would buy one over the nano. If it is that small compared to a shuffle, it's too small for my tastes. But, i shall wait for my friend to have his delivered and have a play with it then.
  • Ainast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just wish they would drop the prices on the old ones to around 40-50$
    better yet why not just make a cheap one. I don't like small things. I feel like I will lose them. hell I always lose my jumpdrives.

    PS: does anybody think AOTS is going to put a Nano up somebody's rectum like the webserver? G4 sucks :-( I feel so depressed.
  • Ajzz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"...and makes it light years ahead of whatever Microsoft or the Linux folks are doing."
    Then you wake up and smell BSD, it takes more than a ripoff of konfabulator, an object dock, and iMovie packaged in a UNIX distribution to be light years ahead of anything. I see it more as a Walled Garden vs The Internet situation, guess which is Apple and which is Linux/Windows.
  • appleIIc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is very definitely an innovative player, smaller, faster, slicker, all while preserving the time tested interface. It would have been cool to retain the a/v output of the ipod photo line. I'm sure it scales the photos down when it transfers them from your pc. I mean you won't be displaying them anywhere else, still color screen = thumbs up. Audio in sounds like a likely software upgrade possibility, But what I really mean to say is that it should have bluetooth and wifi capabilities along with optional blood sugar testing capabilities, oh and who can forget DVD quality video on a 1.5" screen and optional baby monitor/ burgler alarm. It should be able to tell you stock forecasts along with GPS realtime fishing sonar capabilities. Oh yeah It should also work as a walkie talkie and convert standard spoken english into any one of a million intergalactic or terrestrial tongues merely by adorning one's lapel. And open beer bottles. Are you listening Steve Jobs?
  • tdamore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Not much of a review IMO. Sorry, no digg on this one....
  • aznboi04k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this is not a review! more like a recap! booooooooooo
  • Winklepr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The 2nd Gen iPod Mini has a "real world" estimated battery life of 18+ hours, CNET and iPodLounge both got well over 25 hours of battery life though with it just letting it play with no equilizers, minimum backlighting, and medium volume, and no song switching - just playing from beginning til battery dies. This iPod on the other hand has a "real world" estimated battery life of 14 hours, and I'm sure it'll probably get a little bit over that too with 17 or 18 hours in the same tests. Either way you look at it though its quite a substantial loss in battery life, especially after the 1st gen iPod Mini went up from 8 hours to 18, and now we're back down to 14? Why couldn't we have continue that trend upping the battery life? I may be in the miniority taking battery over smaller-size, but I thought the Mini was small enough - and moving that to flash with keeping its currently battery would probably triple the battery life, and I think that would've been a huge selling point even if it was just a update of a current product oppose to releasing a new product altogether.

    bedouin said:
    "Right, one of the richest people in the world needs financial tips from a teenager on Digg."

    First not a teenager, Secondly - you've got to hope for some things as a consumer, just stating one of my personal hopes and I don't see all PC units as "beige boxes," in fact I think some of them are getting pretty slick - especially some gaming rigs I've seen out there. Most importantly though, we are talkign about the same steve jobs right? The one that said he'd never do flash iPods because flash is not the future, hard drive based players are. The same one that said many times that he wouldn't do a multibutton mouse? All things that came because consumers had hopes, or some people gave him financial tips in that area that seemed to work. Now 2 out of 3 iPods are flash (grouping the U2 with the other iPods), apple releases the mighty mouse and no longer sells there one-button wired mouse in their store and as I've read has discontinue orders and once they run out prepackaged with systems, they'll ship with the mighty mouse as well. Obviously a lot of things Jobs has decided or swore to never do was not well thought out, so at least somebody is there to give him financial tips in new developement areas like flash-based players (since even though I liked the iPod Mini more, I know the nano will sell like hot cakes none the less) and multibutton mice (although the mighty mouse has a bit of a hefty price and still isn't that great, it'll sell for people wanting a apple mouse to match their apple systems and will still be largely sucessful and maybe improved in future releases). Luckily Jobs doesn't stick to his word, at least in the areas of flash (which I do believe is the future over HD's once the sizes get large enough and the prices begin to drop, which we are certainly beginning to see) and I think a majority will support multibutton-mice over single-button mice, but as alwasy there will be the miniority who believe single-button mice and/or HD-based audioplayers are still the future. But remember, this is all in my own opinion as all of yours is your opinion which I do respect. But lets keep it to us stating our opinions on Digg oppose to turning it into "financial tips from 'teenager' on Digg." Deal? Deal.
  • blogkitten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ mushroom:

    You're kidding, right? Procol Harum originally recorded "Whiter Shade Of Pale". If you haven't heard of that song, I think I will need to go order my walker from Old Peoples R Us.

    Back to the Nano - I loved the photos with the article. I knew it was small, but when I saw it next to the packaging for the ear bud foam things, then I had a visual point of reference to its size.

    I still want one, black please. ^_^
  • kday, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0weak looking. Also it is unnecessarily long.
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