The Innovative new Ipod shuffle has arrived.... but has it been worth the wait? (Apple iPod shuffle 1 GB)

Member Name: c013310

Product:	Apple iPod shuffle 1 GB
Date:	07/07/05 (949 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very small, light, durable, good price, ok sound quality

Disadvantages: No screen, only plays Mp3s and can be difficult to use

After having a mini ipod for nearly 8 months i decided that i needed a cheap, compact Mp3 player which is even smaller than my ipod but can still hold a decent amount of songs so i can go to the gym with it etc. Luckily, Apple had just released a new ipod in the form of the shuffle which suited my needs perfectly.

The only problem however is that it doesn't have a screen....
I thought that this would mean that i would not be able to find my favourite songs quickly and easily, and i was partly right.
The ipod shuffle is designed to shuffle your music around so its random but i still like to know what order it is in so i can keep track of it.

It was a slight problem but you can put the ipod on two settings. One is the shuffle mode where it randomly shuffles or your songs around so you never hear the same track twice. The other mode is useful as it keeps the music in order so you can roughly judge where songs are you want to play quickly. This is one of the only problems i found with this ipod.

When i got it, it was packaged in a very small green box which inside has the ipod, the starter cd with itunes, heaphones, instructions and sponges to got on the heaphones. When i saw it, it was truly extremely small, about the height of a pack of chewing gum. However, i wondered how i would connect it to the computer with no usb or firewire cables. Well, the shuffle has a removable cap which reveals a usb plug which slots into the back of your computer so no worries there. Just it doesn't work with firewire so be warned.

I have windows 98 like some of you might know form reading my mini ipod review so i had another nightmare trying to transfer songs onto the damn thing without itunes. I did finally manage to get it working with my favourite program, anapod explorer which now has features for allowing shuffle support. The only thing is that you can only transfer Mp3s so if you want to listen to .wav or .wma tracks then you'll have to get an audio converter before you do. This is a bit of pain!

The ipod also has one button on the front in the shape of a circle. With this button you can turnt the volume up or down, play or pause tracks or skip songs. This button is quite handy but doesn't compare to the mini ipods touch wheel. Still it does it's job well enough!

Sound quality could be better but it still depends whether you have downloaded tracks of the internet or saved tracks off cds. This has an effect on the quality of your tracks.

The shuffle comes in one colour which is a bit plain so you can buy multi coloured cases to stop them from getting scratched and to inspire some colour as well. Also, charging the battery takes four hours and the maximum battery life is roughly 12 hours but mine never did.

The shuffle comes in two sizes, 512 mb or 1 gb. the 512 one can hold about 125 songs and the 1 gb can hold about 250 songs which is good for the average user but not for me as i found it was just too little space for my library.

Finally, i'll tell you that i did end up selling mine back on ebay which is where i got it from(quite cheap), just because i felt that i should just stick with my mini ipod. The no screen just annoyed me and the fact that there was only space for 240 songs was also irritating.

However, i would recommend it to people who have a small library of music and need a small, cheap mp3 player to put it on. This is the main use of this ipod and i wonder whether Apple are ever going to actually bring out another different product than another ipod!!

Thanks for reading

Summary: Worth buying if your music library is small & you need a small, compact player!

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