Apple’s taken a few risks with the iPod nano’s design in the past. But then we all have to take a risk every time we leave the house or shove a lit firework down our trousers. For us, though, it worked. And so has Apple’s latest elongated, slimmer-than-slim design for the nano.
Ditching the After Eight mint-style of the previous generation has paid dividends. This is the thinnest (6.2mm), most powerful nano to date, coming in 8GB and a more grown-up 16GB flavours. The colour, two-inch screen may be pointless for watching movies on (seriously, Tom Cruise is small enough as it is), but it’s a pleasure to use, and crisp and sharp to boot. It also now has an accelerometer (like the iPod Touch) so the said screen will auto-rotate to suit.
Apple’s also introduced a feature called Genius, which lives up to its name by creating playlists for you based on what you normally listen to. Press the centre button and your nano will spit out a mix of what it thinks you’ll like in mere seconds. Pretty clever, no? Another nifty feature is the shuffle mode. Just shake your nano (not too hard) and it’ll literally shuffle the songs around.
All sounds pretty spiffing then. And it is. It really is. It’s just the same old problem creeps in. Apple’s audio can’t match the likes of Sony and Creative players. It’s not bad by any stretch, it just can’t match them for bass. That said, as long as you’re not a confirmed hater of the way iPods sound, this is still the most luxurious mini MP3 player at its price point.
