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December 5, 2005

Review: Apple iPod 5th Generation

"While the quality gap may have narrowed in the digital audio player world, the iPod is still the best. The fifth-generation model arrived as, in fact, the best iPod ever, which is quite an achievement, especially considering the miraculously minuscule iPod nano which was released a couple of weeks earlier," Jeremy Mahadevan writes for The New Straits Times.

"Not only is the new full-size iPod thinner and lighter than the smallest examples of its predecessor, it costs the same, has a larger, higher-resolution screen, comes in a new colour and, most excitingly, plays video," Mahadevan writes. "It can handle video formatted in either MPEG-4 or H.264, and content is already on hand for download off Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which is as yet unavailable in Malaysia thanks to our love for the pirate’s life. Arrr."

"What else? It still displays photos, syncs all its content seamlessly through Apple’s exceptional iTunes jukebox application and, of course, plays music — the sound quality is slightly better this time around, with lush bass and steadier treble," Mahadevan writes. "The library of podcasts available via the iTunes Music Store has expanded considerably, and subscribing to specific feeds and having them auto-uploaded to the iPod is still a frictionless affair. Is that it, then? Well, not quite. There are weaknesses..."

Mahadevan's list of weaknesses includes:
• The packaging - "nowhere near as memorable as it was back in its premium days"
• Lack of bundled extras - "dock and audio-visual cable are now (expensive) extras and — most annoyingly — so is the power adapter"
• Lack of FireWire compatibility

Mahadevan notes, "Thanks to the quality of the screen, videos are remarkably nice to watch. The syncing, navigating and playback processes are identical to those for music and photos, so they don’t take long to figure out. You can’t fast-forward or rewind through a video (it would require more processing power, which would mean a bulkier, more power-hungry device), but you can use the iPod’s Click Wheel to scroll to any particular point in the video... it might be a pricey toy, but it’s the best music player out there, a good photo viewer and a decent video player, and it makes the competition, and its predecessors, seem archaic while managing to keep prices level."

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Posted by mp3fan at December 5, 2005 6:04 PM