Well, I’m going to give my previous nano to one of my relatives. She’s happy with her 30GB iPod + winamp, but want something smaller for on-the-go. 😀 Time for a new toy for me while waiting for the Touch.
There are quite a bit of reviews out there already, so I’m just going to be brief.
Annoying things:
-Hold slider is too small, and at the bottom to boot! Docking the nano will prevent access to that slider
-I still don’t understand the point of the headphone jack being at the bottom.
-Cover flow is flawed! It listed the albums by artists, and it doesn’t recognize compilation albums. So I have repetitive listings on my albums in cover flaw (as you can see in the video). Hopefully Apple is going to fix this. Fixed in firmware 1.02.
-Click wheel touch area is kinda narrow. I have big fingers, so sometime I miss a “sweep” when scrolling on the click wheel. I guess this is the reason why I felt the menu UI to be “laggier.”
-Chrome back full of smudges! 😦 I wish Apple used the whole aluminum design like the 2G.
-Small screen is not really meaningful for movie playback
-As usual, minimal packaging. Only comes with earbud, USB cable, quick start guide, dock adapter, and stickers.
-When the screen dims during playback, instead of showing the “Now Playing” screen, it goes into a “screensaver” mode, showing only the time, battery status, and a play icon. I can’t find any option to turn this off.
What I like:
-Larger screen than previous nano: Album art and photos are more meaningful now. Plus the higher res screen allow better font sizes.
-Video playback is great for video podcasts
-Now you can access shuffle option directly on the “Now Playing” screen. On previous iPods, you are forced to go to the setting menu.
-Menu UI is not as laggy as I though (see big finger comment above)
-Gapless playback
-Unicode
-Unbelievably thin!
Not a must buy for previous nano owners unless you need video playback. I rank gapless playback and unicode feature higher than anything, so to me the 3G nano is an obvious choice. For my use, I rate it 92%.
The competitors: The Creative ZEN is definitely the main competitor, having larger screen, drag-n-drop, compatible with iTMS DRM free AAC, and divx support. Problem is video support is limited to 320×240 (so regardless of divx support, most videos will have to be transcoded anyway), no gapless, and no iTunes like experience.
I wish Apple would release a flash version of the iPod classic. Now I just have to wait for the Touch. 🙂
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