Brief Hands-On Report--iPod nano

By Lee Fairbanks

I was able to snag a Black 4GB iPod nano on Thursday. This was an ordeal in itself since only two of the five Washington DC area stores had nanos at all and the first store I visited was out of black. The packaging is about a third the thickness of the cube-like box the iPod mini came in. All customers that were buying nanos got a special black nano bag instead of the normal Apple Store bag.

My first impression is that the device looks absolutely beautiful. It is even smaller than you would think, about the thickness of 5 credit cards stacked up, and much thinner across. You really have to see it in person to appreciate how small it is. The screen, although much smaller than a standard iPod's (and a bit smaller than the old mini's) is bright and crisp. This is the first color screen iPod I've owned and it definitely makes the display easier to read. The small clickwheel works just as well as you are used to. Even though I have pretty large hands, I was able to use the controls.

One thing I love about the nano is its battery life. I fully charged it Thursday night. After using it for two hours a day from Friday to Monday, I still have about 50% battery left! Using flash memory instead of a hard drive seems to make a large difference in power usage.

So far I have only two minor gripes. The headphone jack is at the bottom which I find annoying. I am sure I will get used to the new way, but it does mean that I will have to unplug my headphones to dock it, so that is somewhat annoying to me. My other minor complaint is that the front of the unit seems to get scratched easily in much the same way that the first generation of iPods did. I worry that over the long term it will start to look bad.

The move from hard drive to flash memory however should make the actual reliability of the device much better. Since there are no moving parts, there really isn't anything to wear out internally. I haven't dropped the unit yet, but I imagine if I did that nothing would happen to it. The data is stored on flash memory chips, so there won’t be any skipping, no matter how hard you exercise. The sound quality is exactly the same as other iPods.

Firewire users take note--FireWire sync is not supported on this unit, only USB. If you do connect it via FireWire, a message pops up on the screen on the iPod saying that FireWire is supported for charging the unit but not for transfering data. If you have an older Mac that does not have USB 2.0, you may be stuck transferring at USB 1.1 rates which top out at roughly the same rate as a 4X CD burner. I have a G4 933MHz tower that came with only USB 1.1 but the nano worked perfectly with it using a USB 2.0 PCI add-in card.

All in all, the iPod nano is a fantastic product. I highly recommend it just as long as you have a USB 2.0 port available.