Product Reviews

We've grown tired of manufacturers' press releases telling us that their latest portable audio player is 'the iPod killer', but it turns out that the one company with the chutzpah to kill off the most successful iPod ever, the iPod mini, is Apple itself. The mini line has been replaced entirely by this, the iPod nano.

The nano comes in a choice of white or black and with 2GB or 4GB capacities, which equates to roughly 500 and 1,000 songs respectively when encoded using 128Kb/sec AAC; there's no hard disk here, just solid-state memory. This is it's crucial advantage over the mini, as solid-state memory isn't just more compact than hard disks, it's also far more resilient to shocks - so you can use it when jogging, for instance.

Everything that has made the iPod such a phenomenon is still there, along with all the traditional shortcomings of the range.The menus and navigation are identical to the immediately preceding models: the Click Wheel - effectively a round laptop trackpad - is used to 'dial' through the menu structure, and you confirm choices with the centre button. The wheel assembly

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also tilts on two axes to access the play/pause, forward, back and menu functions. Note that the battery isn't removable - we found it lasted for around ten hours spread over three days - but it does handily charge over a USB connection.

Windows users can now use Apple iTunes 5 to synchronise data from Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express to the iPod. It can't be edited once there, but it makes the nano a genuinely useful, if rather pared-down, PDA.

However, a few other minor additions aside - a now-multinational clock and a screen lock - the iPod nano has no new features. There's still no FM radio or line-in recording, and it doesn't natively play unprotected WMA files; iTunes can import and convert unprotected WMAs, but you can forget about trying to play music bought from any mainstream online music store other than the iTunes Music Store. It's this focus on a single purpose, however, that makes the iPod such a joy to use; the lack of choice is compensated for by sheer slickness.

And besides, there's the size. Nothing really prepares you for quite how small the nano is. You can look at marketing material all you like, but we guarantee you a little jolt of unalloyed tech lust when you first hold one. It really is minuscule - fitting, with room to spare, into that tiny pouch on jeans' right pockets - but remains eminently usable. The colour screen may look small, but it's crisp and readable. It can also show photos, and makes a surprisingly good job of it. As usual, we recommend upgrading the headphones.

There are reasons why you might choose a different portable audio player, but your heart does rather tend to overrule your head when you see an iPod nano.