Ok so my cheap £25 mp3 player brought from eBay was playing up on me. It was time to invest in a new mp3 player.

Hereby the ipod shuffle, currently priced at £45.75 for 512mb, I used Amazon as I had a £25 gift voucher! Woo lucky me huh.

I received my packaged within a week of ordering my shuffle. I was really chuffed with the outer packaging as well as the actual product. It comes in a greenly yellow box, with the symbol of shuffle and the apple logo, and a see-thru peep box where you can see the shuffle. The back of the box shows clearly the features and specs of the product.
It plays AAC, MP3, WAV and audible formats, and need Mac or pc with a USB port, and iTunes program to add your songs to your shuffle.

To open and get into the actual was tough as I had to use a knife to slice the plastic on the top off.

=== In the box ===
Ipod shuffle
Lanyard
And headphones

CD with the installation disk
Some stickers with Ipod logo
Mini Ipod credit card size card instructions
2 ear phone buds
Ipod shuffle booklet
One year limited warranty booklet
Apple computer software license agreement

== Product ==
The shuffle is sized at 8.38cm in height and width 2.5cm. It is Very small and slightly smaller then the Ipod nano. It is made of plastic and very light weight and weighs 22grams. The front has the circular interface which is similar style to the other Ipod. On the dial it has volume up and down, rewind and fast forward, and the middle is the play and pause button.
The back of the shuffle has a slider which turns the shuffle on, play in sequential order and the shuffle mode. It also as a button which shows the battery life when you press it turns to either green, which means long batter life, amber ok battery life, red almost out of battery and no light which means it needs charging.

The shuffle uses the USB port to connect directly to the computer, for some reason the shuffle does not recognise at the front ports of my computer and I must use the back to plug it in, which can be very annoying to do. It will work both on 1.1 and 2.0 USB ports 2.0 are faster to transfer. If you don't have iTunes installed you must use the installation disk otherwise once you plug it in, on windows XP OS it will recognise it straight away.
Now I kind of found it annoying that I have to use iTunes to add songs to my shuffle and the very first time I plugged it in it automatically started to use 'auto refill' mode luckily I pressed the eject button otherwise it would have took forever.

The memory used for the shuffle is an internal flash memory which has 512mb this is more then enough for me as my old one was 128mb and fitted 20-30 songs. I only use 200mb max with 60 songs. Once you plug in the shuffle you see a little light near the controls, when it lights orange it means do not disconnect from the computer, or it is charging. Green light means you can disconnect the device.

The shuffle is very stylish like the other Ipod family, and the only thing is it does not have a screen to display the songs and artists. The lanyard and the white ear buds go really well together.

My shuffle scratches easily and I now brought a silicone case from further damage. The battery life is excellent I don't need to fully charge the battery as 2 hrs mean it is 80% charged and my battery life never dies as each time I add songs it charges as well. Another bad point I must point out is that many people are complaining how it suddenly stops working after the one year warranty, I reckon apple have done this on purpose so you have to pay to get it reserviced or just buy a new one.

== Instructions==
So the instructions in the booklet was basically straight forward and not complicated, but then its not step by step so people who are novices with technology is going to find it hard to use.

== Good points ==
Very light weight, I like to hang it around my neck with lanyard
Stylish with the entire accessories white ear phones white lanyard
Plays excellent quality music
Battery life is excellent; I never need to charge it ever

== Bad points ==
No screen to see the song
Have to hold down the play button to use hold mode should have just made an extra button
Scratches easily