iPod Nano Chromatic 16GB

**Edited to say, now had this for 6 months, and it is still going strong. I listen to it almost every day at work for hours. Still love it and recommend it. I bought a clear case for mine so it has no scatches on.**

Well, I have been excited about this one arriving for a few weeks now. I have always had a Creative mp3 player, which I have been perfectly happy with, but when we go to Africa in a few weeks, our van apparently has an ipod connector, so I decided to change my existing mp3 for an apple ipod.

Now firstly you need to know a little bit about my background. I can remember a work colleague buying an original ipod when they first came out, and I borrowed it to see what it was like. Well I hated the wheel, I found it hard to use and not very user friendly. I also believe that ipods are totally over rated and people have bought into the hype about them rather than the product. With the media calling their downloadable programmes "podcasts" and not something a bit more generic, it all add to the hype and people get sucked in.
Well, the ipod nano chromatics have sucked me in this time, and this is my review on it.

- Cost & Appearance -
I have opted for the pink 16GB ipod, they retail in the UK for anything from £144 - £190 at the moment, but I imagine the price will soon drop as they have only just been released.
When my ipod arrived, I was ridiculously excited, I don't know what it is about the little gadget, but it is very aesthetically pleasing.

- Size -
It is 3.6" high, by 1.5" wide and 0.24" thick. It weights 1.3 ounces. The screen is 2.0" diagonal with a screen resolution of 320X240 pixels.
The screen is in the top half of the ipod, and the wheel is displayed in the bottom half. My wheel is white in colour (against the pink background), but the silver and black ones have a black wheel.
The whole ipod has a slight curviture to it, but it is very slight, and is more like a curved edge than anything else.

The back of the ipod is pink, but in the middle has the apple logo and says "ipod" at the bottom on the back it says 16B and has some small text advising the serial number as well as some trademark logos. Personally I would have rather had it all pink without the ipod and apple advertising, but I guess they want their logo on their somewhere!

- Whats in the pack? -
My ipod arrived in a seethrough Perspex box. A sticker peeled away allowing me to open the box and take out a Perspex sheet which held the ipod in place. Bending the Perspex allowed me to extract the ipod from its holders. Included in the box is a USB charger, earphones, a small piece of plastic which I am currently assuming is an ipod rest, but I might figure out what it is later as I try it all out! and a quick start booklet. A note on the quickstart guide says "For complete instructions and important safety information see the iPod nano User Guide www.apple.com/support/manuals/ipod
Oh, I almost forgot, there were some lovely apple stickers included in the pack a well.

- Features -
Now as mentioned I am an ipod virgin, so although there are some new features on this nano compared to previous versions, I will be reviewing all of the features.
Firstly I need to collect the ipod to my computer and sync it to all of my music. I already had just under 8GB of music on my hard drive, so this takes a while to sync into iTunes and then my ipod, but only about 10 minutes. So now I am ready to go.

The first feature is the wheel. Now surely I can't be the only person to find this stupid to use. I personally think it is clunky and difficult to get used to. I assume it is the same version you would find on other ipod, but not knowing that I don't need to press any buttons and instead I only need to run my finger up or down the wheel results in me selecting Italian (I think) as the language default, which doesn't enhance my use-ability of the device! I'm already remembering why I didn't like this wheel the first time round. So once I have set the language I can check out the other features (now I understand them). I think this is a feature that once you are used to will be okay, but for now as I get used to it, I find it a hindrance.

- Main Menu Options -
From the main menu I have the following options:
Music, Videos, Photos, Podcasts, Extras, Settings, Shuffle Songs and Now Playing.
Music, Videos, Photos and Podcasts all list the data on the ipod which falls into those categories, and so far I only have music, so all of the other folders are empty.

- Extras -
Under Extras I have Alarms, Calendars, Clocks, Contacts, Games, Notes, Screen Lock and Stopwatch. I can set an alarm, and a sleep timer under the alarm section; View Calendars and set up To Dos as well as view alarms in the Calendar section; Add world clocks in the Clocks section; I can sync contacts from my outlook in the Contacts section; Choose from 3 games to play in the games section: Klondike, Maze or Vortex; Add notes in the notes section; Lock the screen with a pin code in the Screen Lock section; and time things in the StopWatch section.

- Music -
Under the music section I have the following options:
Genius; Playlists; Artists; Albums; Songs; Genres; Composers; Audiobooks and Search.
Genius is the new 4th generation kit. If you hold down the centre button when playing a song, it will allow you to start genius, which means it will play suggested songs which are similar to the song you are listening to. I did try this and it seems to go on tempo, so this would be a good feature to have if you were running and wanted upbeat music at a certain pace for example.
Playlists can be created in iTunes, so you can add music to a playlist and then easily select it from this menu.
Artists, Albums, Songs Genres and Composers are all self explanatory really and allow you to filter at each of these levels.
I haven't used the Audiobooks feature, but I imagine if you download a book it will be displayed here. Search has an alphabet displayed which you use your wheel to select what you want to search on.

If you are playing a song you can see the album cover displayed on the screen. If you tilt the ipod so it is horizontal, the screen image rotates with it. You can click from here and see all of the other songs on the album, you can also easily scroll through the different albums.

You can set songs to be on shuffle mode, which means that instead of playing all songs from album, or artist or whatever you selected, you can shuffle at random, and any song could be played next. A new feature of the ipod nano is that you can flick to the next song with a flick of your wrist. I have tried this, and I don't think I have the knack mastered yet as sometimes it moves to the next song and other times it doesn't work.

- Games -
The games are okay, but to be honest I have my DS for games on the move, and don't really want to play them on here; but anyway, there are 3 games as standard with the option to buy more from iTunes.
The games that have come with the nano are:
Klondike - the patience card game
Maze - where you move a ball round a maze into holes using the ipods motions, so you tilt the actual ipod to move the ball
Vortex - is kind of like the game I used to play on my old BBC computer - Breakout. In this version you are hitting a ball down a kind of well, which hits objects, and then bounces back up the well towards you. You use the wheel on the ipod to move round to where the ball is coming back to.

- The verdict -

Well I have now had my ipod for 3 days, I thought I had better see if I can get used to the wheel before condemning its functionality. So my verdict is - the wheel is still naff, I would much rather have buttons, but the more I use it the more I am getting used to it.

Regarding the actual iPod, I love - love the look of it and I cant believe how tiny it is and especially how thin, it doesn't look possible that there is a battery in there. I have downloaded 109 albums (and most of the album artwork), and still over just over 10GB of free space, which is good as we are planning to put all of our CD collection onto the iPod and use iPod speakers in the lounge for our music.

I have been keeping my ipod in one of my phone socks, but to be honest even the sock is too big for this ipod, so I have ordered a crystal case for it from eBay as I imagine it would be quite easy to scratch the surface.

The screen which has a slight curve to it has no glare from reflection, which were some concerns I noticed people had about the new design before I bought it.
All in all a great little mp4 player, and I mean little, but big in space and quality.
Thanks for reading, I am aware this was a mammoth review :-)