September 20, 2005
Nano Impressions
I received my iPod nano about 5 days ago and have had time now to reflect on the product after making it through the "Wow" phase. I didn't want to post anything while I was on the "new owner high" that comes with buying any well-hyped product.
I must admit that after purchasing the nano I was constantly reading reviews and news stories to reaffirm my decision. Anytime you unload $300 on something you want to feel like you made a good decision and didn't get ripped off. This happens a lot with car buyers. You become hyper-aware of your particular model of vehicle and how many (or few) of the same model of car is on the road. I guess it's only natural.
Anyway, the honeymoon is over so here is my no holds barred review of the new 4GB iPod nano.
The form factor can only be described as stunning. Apple has really out done themselves this time as the nano is the perfect blending of function and form. The screen, though smaller than its predecessor, is a high resolution colour display that actually shows one more line of text than the iPod mini. The interface it the same as the other iPods, which is, simple elegance, and pretty much what makes an iPod an iPod. If I had to find something to gripe about it would have to be that screen is virtually unviewable without the backlighting on, which means you're using more of the battery. However, I set the backlight to turn off when idle for 2 seconds, so it's really not an issue. If I had to find something else it would be that I haven't yet been able to easily tell where the click wheel is when it's in my pocket. I maxed out the volume once while trying to turn it off without looking and nearly jumped out of my shoes. I read somewhere that they went to great lengths to make the scroll wheel feel different that the rest of it, so maybe it will just take some time before my sense of touch is good enough to make the distinction.
Musically, I couldn't be happier with the nano. It sounds great. It has about 650 songs on it now with about 900MB free. I really like the new feature of iTunes 5 which allows you to add lyrics to your songs which you can then view while listening to the song. The only problem is that when you have the lyrics selected and stop moving the click wheel for 5 seconds or so the screen switches back to the "Now Playing" screen. If you return to the lyrics page you've got to start from the top and scroll down to where you were to continue reading along. In song's with guitar solo's or other interludes you have to continually jiggle the scroll wheel to keep the lyric page active, annoying by any stretch.
The ability to view photos on the nano is a cool feature that comes up a little short. The color screen is very nice and the pictures are quite clear but small. I must say that I'm a little disappointed that the photos aren't viewable on a television*, however, I think that whole photo thing was thrown in just "because we can". I think that the nano was designed to be first and foremost a music player, all the other things are a bonus. In fact, they were probably included to make the iPod and the iPod nano seem more like siblings than like cousins. The iPod shuffle is like some long lost second or third cousin that is only related through marriage and shares the same last (or in this case, first) name.
I have had a few weird things happen, however, like when I manually unmount the nano using iTunes and then remove it from the dock it won't turn off unless I first move the scroll wheel at least one menu item lower (or higher). I've also had it freeze up once after deleting a stopwatch timer. Neither one of these things is critical (except the freezing thing if you don't know how to reset the iPod) but they are cracks in the legendary Apple "attention to detail" which is why I'm a Mac user in the first place.
All in all it's a pretty sharp machine. I highly recommend it.
* I am quite curious what would happen if I was to plug the nano into an iPod photo dock that was connected to a TV. Although I think that the nano is software crippled in that department as well as hardware insufficient.