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Apple iPod touch (2G) 8 GB
by thriftygiftyisme
=Apple iPod touch 8 GB=
My treat to myself, I brought this myself at Christmas.
=Contents=
Included in the box is a USB cable, Head Phones, IPod Dock adapter, and a quick start booklet, which explains everything you need to know.
=Colour=
I have the white IPOD, it was also available in ... Black.
=Dimensions=
The size us just under 6cm in width, 11cm in height, and just under 1cm in depth. This is light in weigh, and weighs 101grams. The visual screen is 3.5in wide, and the pixel resolution is 960x 640 at 326 pixels per inch.
=Buttons=
There are four buttons on the IPod
1st - This is on the front, which you press to take you back to the home page, also you use this when the IPod is in sleep mode, this needs to be unlocked for you to get access to the slide bar, - this bar unlocks all the functions on the IPod.
2nd. This is a push button, on the top id the iPod, with this you can lock the iPod to prevent any problems that could incur such as getting knocked off channel when you have the iPod in a pocket or handbag. With this button of you hold the button down whilst the iPod is unlocked, this brings up a power off menu, which you can slide to turn the IPod off or you can turn the button displayed at the bottom.
3rd and 4th - There are also two buttons which are connected to each other, and these are located on the left hand side of the IPOs, these are the volume control to increase and decrease the volume.
I will say although there are only 4 buttons it does take a little bit of time to get the hang of which one does what, I guess it was harder for me as I have always had MP3 players, and now this IPod comes along and changes everything, but slowly getting the hang of it, although give it to my daughter and within a few days anyone had of thought she'd had it for years. I blame it on the generation gap. (that the excuse I'm sticking too.)
=The Touch Screen=
Here we go another help moment, but with my daughter to hand, and the instruction booklet.
The touch screen was quite easy to get the hang of, I put that down to having a touch screen on my smart phone, and the apps are quite a good size to touch.
=The Apps=
The iPod touch has 17 pre-installed applications on it
Games Centre,
Photos
You Tube
Calendar
Contacts,
Maps,
Stocks,
Weather,
Utilities,
Notes,
App Store,
I-Tunes,
Music
Mail
Safari
Videos
Settings.
=Internet Access=
Some of the apps do require internet access, such as Maps, You Tube and App Store, to name a few.
=Additional Apps=
There are literally thousands of additional apps that you can get, on any subject from business to weather, games to bingo.
=Cost=
Some apps are free to download which others are chargeable, any charges are fully displayed before you download, and can be from 69p to even £3, I tend to have downloaded a wide selection of free ones. They are easy to download from the apps store.
=Change Your Mind - Apps=
This is easy to delete the apps if you change your mind, you just hold down the icon on the app you want to delete, then when the app wobbles, this displays as an X you then press and conformation screen shows delete and then bye bye app.
=Music=
When you go into the music app, a screen appears, and there are five icons,
Playlists
Artists
Albums
Songs
More.
You can search through the music icons when you have a song playing, and from here you can rewind, fast forward, play, pause, or change the album.
If the album you have downloaded has album artwork, this displays as a background picture.
=Speakers=
You can choose to listen to the music without headphones or an iPod dock, as there are built in speakers, it gives a basic level of sound, but personally I prefer to have a dock if I want the music on when I'm in the room.
=Videos=
The app for Videos gives you the freedom to search through and watch videos easily, although the downside is the size of the screen, personally I'd rather watch videos on my tablet. but it is all personal taste.
=Photos=
You can just transfer photos from your computer onto the iPod, and there ready for you at a touch of an app.
=ITunes=
ITunes is the device needed for the transfer of music, you need to transfer your music to an iTunes compatible format, you can also download music directly from the iTunes app, or buy from Amazon,
=Battery=
The battery is a built in battery, and gives up to 36 hours of use, this does depend on the activities undertaken. You can also charge via a USB cable, which can be via a computer, or one of those plugs you can attach a USB cable.
=Memory=
This is a 8B memory, and I have installed photos, apps , music and there is still plenty of room left.
=If=
If I knew I would have chosen the 16GB as that would give me more room for apps as they can eat into the memory, but for the first one I am pleased with it.
=Price and Availability=
The IPod is available in many retailers from Argos to Amazon, Curry's to Tesco. Prices do vary.
Rough Guide
8GB - £130 to £160
16gb - £160 to £200
32 Gb = £200 Plus
=Would I recommend=
I would defiantly recommend these, not showing my age, but I was around when the Sony Walkman was the new must have gadget, then the personal CD player, so I am a but long in the tooth with electrical, and to be honest I am still finding my way around this IPod, it is a case of "sweetheart" (my daughter) can you do this or what have I done. But compared to my MP3 players, it's like comparing a 10 hour economy flight to 10 hours in First class......
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Apple iPod touch 32 GB
by illusiveman
-When I bought the product-
Around late December 2010 I decided I was going to buy myself an MP3 player, having previously owned an Ipod Nano I decided that I would buy myself an Ipod Touch.
The reason I wanted an Ipod was so that I could watch videos on it while travelling and also listen to ... music.
-Features-
The Ipod Touch (4th Generation) is available with internal storage sizes of 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, I own the 32GB version which I believe at the time cost me about £200 - £220.
The 32GB version of the Ipod Touch has plenty of storage for me to store my music and videos on, as the Ipod only supports certain formats of video so I had to convert my videos into the MP4 file format, I could also reduce the quality a little bit to make the files smaller and to fit more on the Ipod.
The touch screen is also very responsive and excellent for typing and playing games, although I find the buttons can be a bit small if you're fast at typing.
Wi-Fi is also built in which can be really handy for when you are travelling and find a Wi-Fi hotspot, Safari is included as the default web browser which is okay for me but doesn't have flash support so various websites may appear without pictures and videos.
A music player comes pre installed on the Ipod and allows you to play all the music you may have stored on the device, it also allows you to view music by artist, album, song name so that you can easily find the song your looking for, shuffle is supported so that you can listen to your music and not have any idea which song will be playing next, you can also repeat a specific song if you really like it.
A video play is also pre installed and allows you to play your videos in a similar manner to the music player, like the music play it allows you to view videos in
Games and apps can also be downloaded and installed on the Ipod, apps can also be sorted into folders to make them easier to find, there is also a Game Centre included to allow you to access high scores to games you may be playing, I believe you can also add people as friends so that you can compare your scores to theirs.
Apple's app store is also built into the Ipod to allow you to download apps, some of which are free and others cost between 69p and £3 (I'm not sure on the exact price ranges), you can also search for a specific app if you already know what you are looking for.
The front facing camera on the Ipod Touch is only 0.3MP (Mega Pixels), the rear facing camera is only 0.7MP so I don't usually take a lot of pictures on it, the video camera allows you to record videos in resolutions up to 720p (or a resolution of 1280x720p), I've only recorded a couple of videos but anything I've recorded has been of excellent quality.
-Limitations/Disadvantages-
The battery is built into the Ipod so would be very difficult to replace and would be expensive to have it fitted by a professional due to the time it would take for them to take the Ipod apart.
As the Ipod includes the standard USB dock connector port the only cable that can be plugged in is the cable that comes with the Ipod, if this cable is lost or damaged a replacement would need to be ordered before files can be transferred.
The screen can also be easily damaged and is very difficult to replace and would be expensive to have a professional replace it (my friend was quoted £50 to have a screen replaced on his Ipod of the same model).
Itunes is the only way of transferring music, videos and photos to the Ipod as the files are re organized in a special database structure, I've also found that Itunes automatically synchronizes files unless
switched off.
The price of an Ipod touch can vary depending on the internal storage size (mine cost roughly £200) so can be expensive, and if it stops working it would cost more money to have it repaired.
-Overall Rating-
I have owned this Ipod for just over two years and has been well worth the money I paid for it at the time, although I don't use it as much I like to use it to listen to music occasionally, I would highly recommend anyone that is looking for a device like this to buy one of these (I believe the newer models are cheaper than £200), overall this has been a very useful device and give it a 4/5 rating.
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Sandisk Sansa Clip plus 4 GB
by spiritwood
I have a very large music collection and several stereo systems to play it on. I use my laptop for music as well and connect it up to a separate amplifier so really I did not need an MP3 player. However I was gifted this from an American friend and it has turned out to be very useful. I use it when sitting in the sun in my garden and to ... connect up via 3.5 cable to my car stereo.
To look at the Sandisk Sansa clip mp3 is very attractive. Mine has a black plastic case which is high shine which contrasts nicely with the square matt centre button. The Sansa clip comes in a variety of alternate colours and there are 2gb, 4gb and 8gb models available to buy. The player lights up in a shade of bright turquoise blue which is not only appealing but great if you are in the dark at night and feel an uncontrollable urge to listen to Engelbert Humperdink. This has never happened to me though, but if it does then I am very well prepared.
The player is intuitive to use and set up, lucky for me really because I often read instructions long after the event (if at all). It has black side buttons which are an upgrade from the silver ones on the 2gb model before this one. On this one, these are your volume controls and a lock feature. There is a standard size jack for headphones so you can swap the ones that come with this for the phones of your choice, an excellent feature as there is nothing more annoying than integral headphones that are uncomfortable and cheap. I swapped mine over to a pair of in ear Sennheiser headphones. The player can also be attached to mini speakers should you wish via the headphone socket.
The player has 4gb of integral memory and this is expandable by use of the micro SD card on the side. This is useful if you have a lot of music on your mobile phone as it can be swapped across in seconds before you go out into a much smaller device. The player supports up to 16gb of additional memory which is a large amount and has been plenty for me.
FEATURES AND SOUND QUALITY:
As the name suggest, this is a clip mp3 player. The back clip fastens very securely to a belt, waistline or pocket and the clip is strong and springy. When fully charged the mp3 player lasts a surprisingly long time, I have managed to get 15 hours use out of it before it died. I love the fact that it has an integrated FM radio which is easy to use and scans effectively even in poor coverage areas like the place that I live. The headphone cable acts as an antenna for the FM function and the radio stations that I scanned (all of the main ones plus some quirky small ones) were clear and easy to listen to even when moving about.
The sound quality is good, even more so with good headphones. The ability to adjust equalisation is part of this. It can sometimes be a bit tinny on standard settings on more pop type music but I listen to a lot of Bass driven rock and Reggae and it copes well.
THE MAIN MENU:
This again is user friendly and intuitive but being so tiny it can be a bit fiddly to access the different functions without concentrating. It has no large lcd screen, indeed the screen holds just four lines of text in a 1 inch area and there are no pictures to guide you so you have to scroll through via bright blue text along the menu into different folders. The downside to this is unless you catalogue your music in folders, you will spend time faffing about trying to find a track. Very annoying. The next model up (the "zip") does have a larger screen and picture facility.
The player has a good range of equalisation and play modes including the standard repeat and shuffle. The equaliser has settings for jazz, rock, pop etc and can be individually adjusted.
Like I said the headphones that came with this were cast aside for a pair of nice ones and I think that this is important. The included headphones are standard and perfectly functional but I do like to hear every facet of my music so opt for something more sensitive and dynamic.
The player supports MP3,WMA, Ogg and Audible audio file formats. Another nice feature is the inbuilt voice recorder which works well even in a pocket and gives clear results.
This player is really very tiny, slightly smaller than a matchbox. It is just 0.7 inches deep. I like the fact that it is so portable but do miss the ability to access songs easily via album art.
CONNECTIVITY AND VERSATILITY:
The Sansa clip features a high-speed USB 2.0 interface so music can be transferred from pc/laptop easily.
The moveable SD card function enables the user to transfer music across devices such as other players, phones, laptops etc. A mini USB mains charger is available to buy seperately as a spare as are cases and data cables. The next model up, the "Clip Zip" has a larger lcd screen that does show album art so if this is something that bothers you, it is easy to upgrade for a few more pounds.
ADVANTAGES:
* Easy to set up
* Good sound quality and rich bass
* Cheap and versatile
* Expandable memory slot via SD card (up to 16gb)
* Secure clip feature
* FM radio and audio book function
* Voice recorder
* Accessories are available cheaply
DISADVANTAGES:
* Standard budget headphones are functional but recommend an upgrade
* Small interface and lots of scrolling
All in all this is an excellent little player with many useful features. For the price it is very good value.
Available on Amazon for £24.99
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