iPod Nano 4G Review

I’m a sucker for new Apple gear. Turns out after I saw yesterday’s “Let’s Rock” event, I needed yet another iPod (Check out Josh’s excellent coverage of the event on the rest of the site). So today I took a much needed get-away and made an emergency run to the nearest Apple store (Keystone store in Indianapolis). I was originally planning to get a 16gb, since it’s only an extra $50 to double the capacity, but alas they were only stocked with 8GB. “I’ll take one of those then.” A few minutes and an emailed receipt later, I walked out of the store with a yellow 8GB iPod Nano.

Shiny

(Updated 9/17/08)

Initial Impressions and design:

Once again, Apple has done what it does best. Make their own products look absolutely dorky and outdated in comparison to their latest offering. Do yourself a favor and don’t hold the 4G Nano up next to a 1G or 2G Nano (3G “fatty” doesn’t count). You’ll be amazed that you were once blown away by those now defunct designs. Suffice to say, they got the Nano design right (again).

Of course, we all sort of knew what was coming. Curved glass (no, it’s not too reflective to be annoying), tapered design (feels great in your hand), and larger screen than has been on a Nano before. Even knowing all this and seeing the pictures, as usual, it’s a whole different thing to actually use the iPod. For me, it simply feels smaller and thinner in your hand than any picture can capture.

In the box: iPod, Cable, Headphones, Dock Connector

The new Nano comes with the usual assortment of necessities, and my only complaint here is that it doesn’t come with the newly announced headphones with volume controls. Fortunately for those of us with iPhones, the special iPhone headphones with the microphone works just fine for play/pause and skipping to the next song, just like on the iPhone. So the only thing that’s missing is volume controls. The included headphone cords are still plenty long for keeping the Nano in your pocket.

Controls:

The clickwheel brings me back to why I purchased yet another iPod. As I’m sure a lot of people did, I figured I would simply use my iPhone (2G) for all of my iPod needs. After all, it was the “best iPod” Apple had ever made. While I like the iPhone iPod interface, I’m simply tired of the whole “touch your music” deal. It just doesn’t feel like an iPod to me. I love the tactile controls of a dedicated iPod, and being able to crank up the volume with the wheel just feels right to me. I really missed that with the iPhone, and it’s why I’ll be using my Nano for all my music needs.

Screen:

I think Apple finally figured this one out. With the new aspect ratio on the Nano, they got a whole new chance to redo the UI, and it’s really great. Two things have been really improved upon by way of the new screen. First, there’s no longer a ton of white space to the right of menu items, and because of the portrait layout, you get more menu items on a single screen. Second, the album art/song information now fits nicely onto the screen without all the awkward white space. It takes a lot of cues from the iPhone’s setup, and it looks great. And although it’s hard to explain, the curved glass, when looked at at a slight angle, almost gives the impression that your albums are inside of the iPod. It’s a nice sense of depth that I haven’t noticed in any previous iPod.

Another big thing I noticed about the new Nano was it’s speed. This thing is darn fast. Everything, and I mean everything, happens instantly. No waiting for CoverFlow album art to load, no pause when you click the next song, nothing. This is really a great thing to see in a 1.0 firmware release. Not exactly something I’ve been used to *cough*iPhone*cough*. And as long as we’re comparing the Nano with the iPhone, the accelerometer in the Nano seems a lot more responsive than on my iPhone. It works like you expect, and without delay. Shaking it to shuffle is a slightly ridiculous feature, and I sure won’t think to do it when I want to change songs, but it does work most of the time. About 3/5 times the Nano would actually change songs when I shook it. Maybe I just need to to refine my technique.

UPDATE: It turns out, although I still have a fairly poor success rate of shaking-to-shuffle when I actually want to, I did find that I had the Nano shuffle unexpectedly while it was simply in my pocket as I was walking around. So that is actually a problem. I can see this happening if you were running with it strapped to your arm also. I have the “feature” turned off for now.

Everything else:

A few other things that are nice touches:

-When clicking through the song options with the center button, you can now change the shuffle options. No more clicking back to the settings to change this.

-I never really used coverflow on my iPhone, but there’s one great application that I’ve found for it on the Nano. When playing a song, simply rotate the Nano 90 degrees left or right to enter coverflow, which will bring up the current album, and then press the center button. Now you’re looking at a nice screen with all of the songs on that album! This wasn’t something I expected to transfer over from the iPhone, but it’s a great feature, and very nicely implemented. Once again, the responsiveness of the interface makes it all the better, and more likely for me to use.

-Games: Gone are the old Brick, Solitaire, and Parachute games. The new Nano now includes Klondike, Maze (which uses the accelerometer), and Vortex (which was released for the 5G iPod some time ago). While the new games are nice, I don’t think I’ll ever use them since I have an iPhone, and I’m kinda sad that Brick isn’t there anymore. Maybe it’s an easter egg like it was all the way back on the original iPod?

-Instead of simply floating album covers by to use up white space like the 3G Nanos and the Classics, the new UI now shows information about the contents of the menus on the main menu. For instance, if you hover over Settings, you will see how much space you have free on the iPod, and if you hover over Now Playing, you can see the current song without having to click on the item.

-I haven’t messed with Genius much, because I just started it up on my computer, but it’s nice to know I can use Genius right on the Nano.

**Updates:

(9/12/08) Just wanted to point out a few more things I’ve found:

-Headphone cord is now a much softer plastic that I find tangles less.

-Don’t know if this was ever available before, but now under Settings > Playback, there is an “Audio Crossfade” option, which requires no setup by the host computer. The Nano is now able to do on-the-fly audio crossfades, and it works great! I love having this feature on the iPod as well as in iTunes. Also in this section is an option for the “Energy Saver”, but I don’t know what it does as there is still a backlight timer option. Edit: It looks like this option actually turns the screen off after some arbitrary amount of time, along with just turning off the backlighting.

-For those wondering, you can turn off the Shake to Shuffle feature, although as I mentioned, it’s pretty hard to accidentally active the feature.

-Genius is a nice way to quickly generate a playlist, and I’m liking the selections it makes. Activating it from the Now Playing menu is a good way to continue listening to a particular type of music. It’s unfortunate that all songs are not available for use with the feature though.

(9/13/08)

A reader asked about how the Nano worked with Apple Lossless files. I was not aware of any problems with this feature in past iPod Nanos, but I tested it out on my 4G. I have a rip of Radiohead’s OK Computer in Apple Lossless format, which I loaded onto the iPod. Just like any other formated song, the Nano was able to pause, play, and skip tracks without any delay. I also tried playing a song for a while, then pausing and turning off the iPod for a few minutes, and starting it back up, and the song resumed immediately. I was unable to invoke any unusual or unwanted behavior. Looks like if there were any issues with Lossless playback in previous generations, they have been fixed with the new firmware.

(9/17/08)

Another reader queried whether or not the new Nanos rocked back and forth when placed on a flat surface, due to their tapered/oval design. Indeed they do rock a bit, but nothing that I ever found to be bothersome, or really that noticeable. When sitting on a flat desk, the Nano will rock slightly to one side if you push the previous or next buttons on the click wheel, but they still register without any problem. I actually find the rocking/taper to help a bit when trying to pick up the Nano. I also tend to have a couple fingers on the iPod when I go to press a button, so I don’t mind the wobble. Overall the device is solid enough that it doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t sit quite at solidly on a table as the old Nanos. It is a bit nicer in terms of trying to tip the screen towards you to see what’s playing. The design lends itself to that a bit more gracefully. It’s pretty much the same difference between the old Touches and the new ones, and the original iPhone verses the new 3G iPhones. Apple seems to like the tapered back look, so there’s really not any way to avoid it anymore.

__________________________

Perhaps it was just the use of my iPhone that made me forget just how great iPods are, but the new Nano encompasses everything that has defined iPods and kept them in their dominant market position for seven years. The new 4th generation Nano feels small, light, of high quality materials, and has the best iPod UI to date. I didn’t mention video playback in this review, but suffice to say that it plays video, and the screen looks great. It’s not really something I do with my Nano considering I have a 3.5″ iPhone screen to use, and the 8GB space allotment on the Nano is a bit tight for videos. I used to feel that the Nano was the smaller, cheaper alternative to a “real” iPod, but with Apple’s current lineup and the decent capacities (8 and 16 gigs) of the Nano, this is really the “classic” iPod and fully deserves to have those iconic white earbuds hooked up to it. What are you waiting for? Go buy one!

Got something you want to know that I didn’t cover in the review? Post a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

~ by kerby on September 11, 2008.