Apple 3G iPod nano 8GB MP3 Player Review

The wafer-thin 3G iPod nano actually has the same thickness as 2G nano.

3G iPod nano put alongside with the iPod classic 80GB.

3G iPod nano compared to a deck of cards.

The matte anodized aluminum is retained, which extends to the tapered edges of the front side. The shiny chrome back (unfortunately) returns, and doubles as a mirror as well as a magnet for fingerprints, scratches and smudges. I'm not sure why the retro design, perhaps a homage to the original iPod? Women I asked seem to think this is a good idea to bring back the reflective surface so they can check on their make-up from time to time.

8GB seems to be the new sweet spot, with five colors to choose from: silver, mint green, turquoise, black, and red. These are all subtler colors compared to 2G's pink, green and blue. The 4GB option is only available in silver; 2GB is now phrased out. With the exception of jet black, all other four models have white-colored click-wheel.

As with all other click-wheel iPods, moving my thumb in a circular motion to pinpoint an item on a never-ending list still works, and the smaller wheel touch-pad doesn't affect usability and scrolling precision. The center select button is now very slightly concave whereas that of the previous is perfectly flat.

There are several things in the hardware department I wanted to mention. For starter, I noticed the hold switch is relocated to the bottom, and the 30-pin connector port is now centered, aliging the nano with external speakers like Bose SoundDock or alike. And unlike its predecessor, the 3G iPod nano's dock port is used to output video over component (480p/576p), S-video or composite to TV. The only caveat is that you need a new cable, rather than recycling the original iPod AV cable that hooks up via headphone jack. As for third party accessories, it's up to the manufacturers to address compatibility concern.

3G iPod nano docked to the Bose SoundDock.

3G iPod nano docked to the Fatman iTube.

Revamped Menus
Neither the hardware features nor the shape-shift really strikes me as none of them is anything ground-breaking. The real surprise is in the revamped menu system. The original iPod GUI is a tried and true system, and works almost perfectly with the click-wheel system. It has however begun to show its age after Apple expands the player's functionality. The so-called version two software is here to help out. Sorta.

The basic navigation menus of V2 GUI remains largely unchanged except the screen is split in half, giving a preview of the randomly picked album art, poster frame or photo. Additionally, the Stopwatch's preview area will show the a graphical representation of a mechanical stopwatch alongside with the elapsed time. The Clocks will display the current time and date, and the Settings will indicate the amount of free space on the nano.

If your only iPod is the nano, then you may recall Podcast is under the Music directory. It has been moved to the root level. Apple also grouped both audio Podcast and vidcast category, for a good reason. iPod video owners are used to launching vidcast in audio mode from Music's Podcast section, despite there's a telly icon beside the listing. The V2 update fixes this problem once and for all with this consolidation. Other minor tweaks include episode count for each Podcast, inclusion of preview thumbnail, and release date for each show. Bookmark is still a standard auto-on feature for Podcast. In fact, the resume function is available to any files if you check their "Remember playback position" boxes in iTunes.

Revamped Podcast interface

Video section receives similar treatment as the Podcast's. Movies provides thumbnails plus the playback length. TV Shows on the other hand offers no preview, but tells you release date for each episode. For Music Videos, iPod simply grabs a frame from the source if no poster frame is found; here, the performers are added beneath the titles. Video Playlists gives you an item count of each playlist, in which every listing is labeled by its genre.

Cover Flow, Search & Shuffle
The Music area now adopts Cover Flow, a trademark of iTunes, Apple TV and iPhone. (Though, it appears the entire iPod except the screen-less shuffle now comes with the featue.) The Cover Flow in my opinion is actually more about flourish than functionality. You cycle the album cover of each song in 3D, pick one, and everything belonging to the same album will appear in ascending order by the track number. The GUI is a nice touch nonetheless, but I often overshot my album choice due to either the interface's sluggish response or the sensitive touch-pad.

Fortunately, there's a better method of searching songs, and that's, eh, Search. The latest version is basically more or less the same engine as the 2G iPod nano on top of the facelift. It can match your keywords with the entire tags in real time so entering 'fly' would turn up 'Fly Like An Eagle' and 'I Believe I Can Fly' instantly. There's a generic icon corresponding to the content nature on the left side of each listing. Oddly, while the iPod nano can search through my vidcasts and movies, it couldn't playback them in video mode. Let's hope I need to update this part after Apple releases the bug fix.

The video playback screen is identical to that of the iPod video, and you can as usual toggle between playback position and brightness control. The Now Playing screen for audio still take full advantage of the ID3 tags, only now it shows the user rating as well. The album art has an angled, three dimensional look to it, but Apple took out the full screen mode for the cover. Perhaps the most notable addition is the shuffle mode, which you can bring up by pressing the center button three times. It's certainly more convenient than holding the MENU button until you're back to the root; proceeding down the SETTINGS; and selecting the desired shuffle setting.

3G's Now Playing screen on the left; 2G's on the right.

Games are the best time killers, but as of this writing, only a handful of titles from iTunes store are being updated for the new 2007 iPods, starting with Tetris, Ms. PAC-MAN and Sudoku. More will definitely come very shortly. To Apple's credit, the 3G iPod nano is pre-loaded with iPod Quiz, Klondike and Vortex, all of which have rich graphics and high replay value.

The new GUI has raised the bar for user interactivity in portable electronics, yet it may have gone too far with the visuals. After playing with the iPod nano for a week, I found the previews getting in the way as I tried to navigate the menus. They often took a bit more time to load, and the problem was compounded by the relatively slow 'wipe across' transition effect.

Performance

The 2" LCD screen is a huge bragging right, at a depth of 204 pixels per inch and a maximum resolution of 320 x 240. It is so bright I can use it as a flashlight despite the intensity of LED is spread out. Pictures forcefully resampled during sync are just crisp, the colors are vibrant, and the fine text especially showing the lyrics is very legible. The LCD's response time is also sufficiently low for fast motion video.

The video playback is one of most welcome features, but I'm caught off guard by the lack of storage upgrade. The largest capacity you can get for the 3G iPod nano is 8GB. If you go with the highest possible audio quality, a 43 minute CD encoded in Apple Lossless will require near 300MB. Throw in ten discs, and you will have less than fifty-percent of space left for TVs, movies and vidcasts. Should you put video on top of your priority list, 8GB still isn't very practical. For example, my Band of Brothers mini-TV series, ripped from DVDs to H.264 in 320 x 240, already occupied 3.5GB of the nano's limited space.

There's no boost to the battery life. Apple claims run-time to be 24 hours for audio and 5 for video. My 3G iPod nano managed to last for 23 hours and 30 minutes before it shut down itself. I left it running with no backlighting most of the time. Volume throughout the test was set at 60% volume without equalizers. I didn't bother repeating the endurance test with EQ enabled since the audio enhancement distorts the sound too easily, at least when I tried it on my Bose nose-cancelling headphones. As for video battery test, I began playing a bunch of H.264 800kbps videos at 80% brightness. The nano in the end was forced to turn off itself just shy of four hours. Recharging the battery to its fullest capacity completed in 110 minutes.

Filling up the 3G iPod nano is incredibly fast, compared to previous versions; my MacBook Pro was able to transfer 7.18GB of assorted MP3s and Podcasts into the player formatted with MacOS Extended table in just 11 minutes. This translates to 92Mbps or 11.55MBps. To put this into perspective, 2G iPod nano took 37m:31s to completely fill the 2nd generation iPod with a mixed batch of 1,585 songs encoded at various bitrates in AAC and MP3, totaling 4d:19h:13m, or approximately 7.36GB (about 27Mbps).

Recap
Thanks to a new body, a larger screen, video playback capability, a new interface, and iTunes store games, the 3G iPod nano is by far the most significant upgrade since the inception of the product line. Some of the visual tweaks don't necessarily lend to better usability, but those are just minor imperfections that could be fixed with a patch. A 3.5G in early 2008 may see storage upgrade to 12GB or 16GB, but at its current state, the fixed onboard 8GB flash memory leaves something to be desired. The 2G iPod nano review from a year ago concluded that Apple had held back. I guess Apple this time is going all out with this completely redesigned nano.