Product Reviews

The legendary white iPod is no more. In its place is a slimmer brushed aluminium model, in silver or black, known as the iPod classic. Unlike Coke Classic, it's even better than the real thing. Despite the change of finish, the classic looks similar to its predecessor - until you switch it on. The new user interface makes better use of the colour screen and supports Cover Flow, Apple's cute way of flipping through album sleeves. On the classic, you do this using the ClickWheel. With Cover Flow enabled, the operating system slows down noticeably, but there've been two firmware updates already to improve

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this, so it may soon be resolved.

The classic is the only remaining iPod with a hard disk, either 80 or 160GB. If you've got a hefty music collection and want to carry it all around with you, or fancy using the same device to back up or transfer files, it's the only iPod for you.

The nano, meanwhile, has gone from tall and skinny to short and fat to accommodate a colour screen for video. It's like a metallic After Eight, without the fondant centre, and comes in two capacities and five colours. The 4GB model is available only in silver, while the 8GB comes in black, silver, blue, green or Product Red Special Edition.

The 2 inch screen is big enough to read menus, play with Cover Flow and even look at photos, but video? Not for any length of time. At £99 for 4GB or £129 for 8GB it's reasonably priced, but more expensive than the 8GB SanDisk Sansa e280 that won our MP3 player group test (search for 120563 at www.computerbuyer.co.uk). The nano's screen is better, but overall the SanDisk still edges it.