Everyone loves Apple stuff. So when I saw how small the new iPod Shuffle looked on Apple’s website coupled with the similarly diminutive price I couldn’t resist placing an order. To be honest it was more of an impulse buy / cheap retail therapy exercise – I’d never really considered the merits of such a small mp3 player.
However months later I thought I’d post my brief review. The first obvious thing that strikes you with the new shuffle is it’s tiny size. It really is ridiculously small – walking into the gym ‘wearing’ it people ooohed and aaahed at the little music player. It’s about the size of a small thumb but thinner. Even so Apple have still managed to cram everything you need to listen to music into the shuffle. A headphone socket that ingeniously doubles up as a charging dock is found on the underside and there are lights (visible from two directions) showing the status of the tiny ipod letting you know if it’s on, about to ‘hold’ (press the play button for 5 seconds and the device buttons are rendered useless until you press play again for another 5 seconds, neat) or of course off (not illuminated).
You can shuffle songs or play them in the order that they have been placed on the ipod via iTunes. You can pause, play and fast-forward and rewind music and of course control the volume. That’s about it in terms of functionality – there’s no display to show you which tracks are playing – where would they have fitted one? Perhaps more importantly to Apple it would have cluttered the design. The shuffle is clipped to clothing or simply thrown into a pocket – it’s made of aluminium and is very light. Apple also offer the option of engraving the clip part of the shuffle which is a nice touch for gifts. Oh I forgot – it stores around 1GB of music. Audio quality is ok, nothing spectacular as with most mp3 players which use compressed audio…but it’s certainly fairly punchy especially when using better headphones.
GOOD
* Size
* Functionality
* Design
* Ease of use
* Capacity
* Software
* Battery life – seems to last for days
* It’s an Apple product
* You’ll take it everywhere, possibly using it more than your usual ipod
BAD
* No display or way to select individual tracks
* Audio not brilliant
* I keep losing it amongst paper on my desk
SUMMARY
A brilliant product and typical of Apple. This is great, I can take it anywhere and I just listen to my music. Who needs to select tracks when surely a random selection of your music library is more fun? I’ve found that my usual video ipod is now gathering dust – i can’t be bothered to look at tiny photos or videos or play games on the move – the shuffle has won me over, go and buy one they’re so cheap.
*****
