Believe the hype - this IS the future of MP3

There are rival products that have better storage capacity, some sound better or have the ability to handle a wider range of file formats. None of them have the killer apps, user interface, supreme build quality and style of the ipod touch. Nothing comes even close to toppling this beauty!

Not for everyone, but an awesome piece of kit!

This is my review of the iPod Touch. Firstly, let me say how thin this thing is - it's even slimmer than the iPhone - but it still has a sense of being solid and well built. With a glossy black face and a mirrored metal back it continues the typical iPod quality feel. Where this one differs from the rest of Apple's offerings is in its outstanding range of capabilities. Not only can you listen to music, view photos and watch movies, but now you also have access to the internet via wifi, you can download songs straight to your iPod, surf Youtube, check weather, mail, stocks and even find your current position on Google maps. I found setting up a wifi connection and the Mail application both surprisingly straightforward. It's also worth noting that the Safari web browser coupled with the Touch's famous"Multi-Touch" display is simply the best portable internet I have ever used. It runs quickly, smoothly and is a joy to use. However, the most important part of any iPod is the sound quality and this one does not disappoint. If you have music encoded with a decent bit rate you will be in sonic nirvana. However, I have found that the audio equaliser settings make the music sound artificially coloured and are very much best left alone. To really enjoy your music you will have to buy a new set of headphones, as the earbuds that come with the Touch are quite frankly useless. If you upgrade to a quality pair, you'll kick yourself if you ever considered using the Apple ones - the difference in audio quality is that obvious. In fact, Apple have been very stingy with the included accessories - there's no cradle, just a lead to plug to you pc, there's no case to keep the iPod safe in, there's no AV kit to plug into your TV, you have to buy that separately too. But the one that gets me the most - if you want to charge to thing, you better have a computer nearby, because you have to charge it with the USB cable. If you want to charge it by mains, you have to buy a separate charger. I spent £250 on an mp3 player and it doesn't come with a charger? Ridiculous. Another thing that is tight is storage space. 16GB is not much these days, and the 8GB version wouldn't even hold all my music never mind photos and videos. However, there is a reason for the small capacity - the data is stored on flash memory, which is expensive to produce in high capacity, but has the advantages of being lighter, less power hungry, smaller and more shock resistant than a hard disk player (like the iPod classic). The small amount of space may be a deal-breaker for some, but personally I find 16GB is ample - just don't expect to put your entire DVD collection on it.

If you only want an mp3 player for music and videos, then this one is not for you. There are many higher capacity and lower priced alternatives out there. However, if you are likely to want some internet or mail capabilities on a portable device in addition to music and video then the iPod Touch is hard to beat. It simply exudes quality, but this quality comes at a price. It's not for everyone, but it is for me!

Don't know what I'd do without it now.

Best thing i have brought in the last 18 months. I did not use it too much to start with but the more content i put on the iPod the more i used it. , Travelling, running, drving in the car, hooked up to a pseaker system.........you name it i have used it in this way.

Ipod 80GB 5G

I'm giving this ipod 4 stars cuz it might not be worth 5 stars for everyone's tastes. This is my first ipod having previously used mobile phones with 4GB memory cards for listening to music and it's a step up and no mistake!

All my music- every CD in the house and most of my friends' on it, all at 128kbps bit rate, 51GB with 21GB left.

Itunes, i and others have heard can be a pain, but after a day or so, it works real well with the ipod. It was a (fun) task converting all my 14500 tracks to aac. from wma. It took 7 days at 6GB per day (14 hours) to get it all on there. Btw, itunes will usually miss out album art and sometimes genre and year from tracks modified on windows media player 11 which means you have to modify a lot of the tracks yourself. Ive virtually perfected everything on all my tracks cuz i don't wanna keep touching up the details for my next ipod whenever that'll be.
Another point is that when converting tracks to mp3 aac compatible ipod formats, it will duplicate the tracks that you set to transfer so if you find your hard drive suddenly shrinking, this is why, so set the output file destination to an external hard drive if possible, but if you wanna modify tracks on the ipod, plug the external drive in, or itunes won't find any tracks! One last point about itunes 7.5 is that album art coverflow does work if you set the colour of the screen to 32 bit through control panel/display. It's jerky and cpu-guzzling but its pretty impressive nonetheless.

It's easy to navigate around the menus nb compilations are present on the 5G/5.5G version! the sensitivity of the wheel is pretty much perfect for rapid menu- flicking, and if you don't wanna look at the screen, the clicking sound tells you how fast you're going.

When playing a song, from selecting the track to sound coming out takes 3-4 seconds, fine then. The hard drive spins when changing tracks and spins for around 10 seconds to fill up the 32mb, yes 32mb buffer. If you play tracks of 128kbits bit rate, the hard drive will store 7 or 8 4mb tracks til the hard drive spins up again. DON'T RUN WITH A HARD DRIVE, not that i have and i wouldn't dare either!

The sound quality compared to my previous mp3 devices took a while to adjust to, even with the eq set to 'bass booster', the bass is oddly lacking and this is the bassiest eq of all but the overall quality after getting used to the shriller sound of the ipod is great after a day or so. Thru some non-apple headphones, the quality is very acceptable- very clear, just keep the volume down, cuz it does scream at you through traffic noise at higher levels. Distortion does occur and deep drum beats get spoiled often but other eq settings probably get around this.
N.B. the quality of sound when played in my car through a £7 fm transmitter bought from a petrol station is damn near CD quality, amazing!

Battery life isnt amazing, 5 hours a day at moderate volume gave me 3 days play time, get a mains adapter asap id suggest.

I've heard that a lot of ipods self-implode after a few months and i will write another review here if this happens, but 1 month on, mine is going strong and obseleted every CD in my house and car!

This is better than the new classics ive messed about with in hmv- faster and better sounding.
Until the mega capacity flash powered 2009 ipods emerge, this will more than suffice.
Consider a 5G a worthy bit of kit!

A comparison to the Creative Zen Vision M opposition

Based upon several weeks/months of use of both the 60GB Ipod and Creative's Zen Vision M, I offer the following summary of my personal opinion..

What Apple does better:
Click wheel ease of use - less (over) sensitive than creative Vision M pad. More intuitive controls.
Bigger choice of accessories.
Styling.
Bigger disk capacity (creative only offer a 30GB version)

What Apple does worse:

Software is not as good. Nothing to convert videos to a suitable format. Software for auto naming of tracks and conversion of a lot of CD's to MP3 is not nearly as intuitive.
Screen not nearly as good.

Where I can't split hairs:

I found the sound quality and battery life to be comparable.
Both (once you've got used to them) feel good to use.
Both suffer appallingly from scratches. The ipod came straight out of the box into an iSkin protective case and it marked on the 'shiny side' immediately. God alone knows how!

Try them both before you buy to see which you prefer to operate, but note that the computer software that comes with the creative product is superior. You pays yer money......

Ipod 30GB Video

My ipod was given to my Dad last Christmas but as he doesn't use it I now have it. I like the looks and the sound quality and Itunes is very easy to use. The ipod has barely been used but it keeps freezing which is very annoying and the battery life is really poor. I don't know if I have a dodgy one but I would only expect this kind of performance from a much older model. Apart from the obvious drawbacks I love having an ipod and it's very easy to use.

I LOVE MY IPOD

Absolute quality. Initially I was worried about spending £170 on this but 3 months down the line all my fears have been put to rest.

In reality its pretty impossibly to fill an 80GB ipod (i'd like to meet someone who has) but you're paying an extra £60ish for an extra 75GB of memory over the average nano.

I would only recommend this to people who see music as a hobby and have a vast music library to fill this baby up.

There's a minor drawback with the video player because you have to do some converting crap but it's just a teeny tiny chink in the armoury of what is a fantastic multimedia device.

Screen size is good, click wheel is predictable amazing, battery life could be longer, aesthetically pleasing, invest in some quality headphones and you are there!

Long live ipod

iTunes software is flawed ...

Yes, I've had this iPod for nearly a year, and I can tell you, I've had my fair share of problems with mainly the iTunes software in particular.

Infuriating doesn't even begin to describe iTunes. Firstly, I hate the way the whole computer freezes for ages when I connect the iPod to the computer, then it takes longer for it to update. Only, and here's my main annoyance with this, my iPod cannot update anymore(it comes up all the time now with 'attempting to copy to the disk"OWNER'S IPOD" failed. The disk could not be read from or written to' - even after clicking Restore various times), and this has nothing to do with any fault the iPod has as it works fine as is still like new(despite a few scratches it easily gets on the click wheel since I didn't have any proper protection for it then).

So, my iPod, having been restored again and again without successful updating of songs and videos I wanted to put on it, it's virtually useless, leaving me with the decison of what to do. I have now brought a temporary Creative Zen Stone that doesn't need any software to get the songs onto the actual mp3 player itself and the problems that come along with it.

To it's credit, it does have alot of features(like video, that plays really well), and good sound, but iTunes really lets this down. iPod are decent of you want to conform and fit in but there are better mp3 players than the 'all-powerful iPod', in my opinion.

Great, but scratches very easily.

I've had my iPod video for quite a while now and i am extremely pleased with it, the sound is fantastic and the video quality is supereb even though the battery only lasts 2 hours while watching a video file from fully charged. Pictures come out amazing too. I've noticed that one person below commented that you have to convert all video files on an iTune formay and this can only be done via Quicktime Pro. This is untrue I use a free programme called Jodix, which is avaliable on the net and it is fantastic and works perfectly I haven't had a single problem with it and it is very easy to use. All you need to do is tight click the converted file and select play with...itunes. Anyway my iPod is very good, but i do suggest you buy a case for it straight away, i didn't and got 2 major scratched which has permantly damaged the screen [...] But apart from the few down-sides this is a fantastic piece of kit and i will recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good mp4 player, however buy a case!

Note for people who want and MP3 for working out with...

I bought this after deciding that i wanted to up grade from my mini disk. I had heard how great MP3 players were for working out with as they could store a real mixture of music.

DONT USE THIS THOUGH!!!!! it is (i have been told) that this this is the last ipod apple made before they went totally digital. In other words there is still a small moving part within here. SO if you work out for anything longer than say 15mins - especially with an activity like running, then this part starts to shift about and eventually it freezes. After time, this part (within mine) must be totally loose as now it is so sporadic on if it is going to work or not. Ive lost count the times ive had the sad faced ipod logo come up!

I would go for a nano or another make if you are after something to work out with. Even with 4G you can still store hundreds of songs so the capacity is not something that should affect your enjoyment of the workout at all. I have the 8G nano now and am more than happy with it (until the internal battery runs out on that!!!).

Superb

Very easy to set up and use. The video quality is second to none. Looks great, feels great, an alround brilliant ipod.