The first MP3 I ever owned was a Creative Zen. This subsequently broke when I banged it (not hard) on my desk at work. I'd spent hundreds of pounds on this and was devastated that it had broken. I did not want to rush in to buying something new and for a little while I actually went back to using a CD player just because it felt a lot more reliable to me. I then thought about getting an iPod for a while but ended up winning an iPod Shuffle in a competition held by a firm that I used to work for. I have had this for a few years now and I also have an iPod Nano as well thanks to iPods restoring my faith in MP3 players in general.

My iPod shuffle came provided in a plastic box and it was quite well packaged. It looked good as soon as I received it. My shuffle is the silver variety and I quite like this look as it is classic and never out of fashion colour wise. The shuffle is very small being 4cm high, 1cm deep, 2.7cm wide. This is a fantastic size really for something with the ability to play music. The weight of this is incredibly light at just 15.59gm so this very lightweight and small meaning you need to careful where you store it to avoid losing it but it also means that this really adds barely any noticeable weight to your pocket or when clipped on to the neck of your top or sleeve.

Working this iPod is very simple. To add music to your shuffle you will need to plug it in to your laptop, open up the Apple iTunes software (or download it if you don't have it) and then import songs from your computer, from CDs or download songs from the iTunes store. The front of the iPod has the forward, back, , + and - volume control buttons with a further button in the middle to press to play or pause the song. These are well laid out and respond to a light touch quickly. The buttons are easy to see and feel when I have the iPod in my pocket or cannot be bothered to look at what button I am pressing.

At the end of the shuffle you will find the headphone jack where you plug in your headphones and you will find a small light. This light is an LED and when your are using the shuffle to play songs you will see a yellowish light on. When you are not playing songs, ie you have paused it then there will be a red light, also when the battery is low that red light will start to flash. This is obviously a very helpful feature for an MP3 player that does not have a screen to refer to. On the other end of the shuffle there is an on and off switch and there is a shuffle button. This has two settings, one being play music in the order that it is on the device and the other being to shuffle music so that the songs are played randomly.

The iPod that I received came with a 1GB memory and I have around 250 good quality songs on there with about 5% of my space left. I am very happy with the amount of songs that I have on here and some of them are quite long too. I am not sure how much this shuffle would be to purchase now as I believe that there have been one maybe two new generations since then so this is probably just available pre-owned.

What I love about this shuffle is just how lightweight it is. I like the random ability of this shuffle and it is not often that I have to skip a song as I keep this updated regularly to ensure that my songs are ones that I am still enjoying listening to. I love how this clips on to my sleeve or the side of my shirt if I am using it on the walk to work. This is very simple to use and to load songs on is incredibly simple too as long as the iTunes software is keep updated (this happens automatically on my computer). This shuffle is ideal for running or jogging as it clips on and therefore you would not need to hold it.

I must say that my shuffle came with the charger with USB cable and the headphones but both have long since been broken and replaced. They were broken by my cat rather than breaking because they were poor quality.