Ipod, shmi-pod!

Life

Having never had an Ipod before, I was intrigued when an Ipod Nano came in for review. I snaffled it ahead of a few contenders and looked forward to enjoying this new style icon.

Scratch pervert

Now I had heard in the media that there was some trouble with one batch of Nanos that were particularly prone to having the screen scratch. Imagine my surprise when, after leaving the Nano face down, on its own packaging, the screen scratched!

Hands on

I installed Itunes and got moving, dropped some music on to the device and started listening. The sound quality was OK, I can’t fault it, but I can’t laud it either. Adequate I’d say, which is more than I can say for the controls. To have the volume control buried two levels into a menu for an audio device is incomprehensible. The volume control is the most used control for an audio device, why make it difficult to get at?

As regards the other features, when you plug it into a machine (this one was tested on a Windows XP Pro PC), it shuts off its audio output. Fair enough, most players do. But it then displays a message that says “Do not disconnect”. Now it appears as if this is due to the battery charging, but why not say that? The charge icon itself is not that informative when overridden by a message that infers dire consequences if disconnected. One must use the disconnect option from the software to avoid those dire warnings. This highlights another “interesting” design feature. If you plug in the USB connector while the headphones are plugged in, then you must remove the headphones to get at the release for the USB connector. Design icon? Style over substance more like.

Picture perfect

The photo import from PC function is fairly simple and as one would expect, with the Ipod’s slideshow option offering a decent range of options. However, it is a preview option only and the screen is only on a par with the average digital camera LCD. As such, with no zoom option, it isn’t for viewing the images but rather getting a thumbnail type preview to organise.

Disappointed

Rarely have I looked forward to a product so much and been so under-whelmed.

It looks gorgeous, no argument. But put it on your mantelpiece and look at it, because it fails on some basic ergonomic points, as far as I can see. So given that its raison d’etre is to play music, and it only does that reasonably well, why would one put up with the faults? For a classic sports car, I would put up with some quirks, but for a lifestyle product, never. This is one for the fans only. The proprietary nature of it seals the deal. I dragged and dropped some MP3s direct to the device and it saw nothing. I knew that it required Itunes, but I thought I would try it for the hell of it. After failing to see them, as I knew it would, I put it back in the box. I do not want an Ipod Nano.

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