Apple iPod shuffle

The new iPod shuffle is the latest member of Apple's digital audio family. Gloss-white, and looking more like a stylish lighter than a music player, this is the first solid-state flash memory iPod. It's impressively small, with a body about the same size as many basic USB flash drives but, even more amazingly, with a similar price tag. It comes in two memory sizes, 512MB and 1GB, with street prices of £69 and £99 respectively.

At the base is a full-sized USB plug used for charging the battery and file transfer. This is done by drag and drop from your iTunes music libraries or with the iTunes AutoFill feature.

The iTunes integration works well, making the whole music-management experience fairly simple. A copy of iTunes 4.7.1 (required for use with this iPod) is included. The downside, and it's a big one, is that the shuffle isn't directly supported within Windows Media Player, which will alienate many. Also, in Apple tradition, it will handle only MP3, AAC, WAV and AA formats - it won't even discuss WMA playback. That's a major turn-off if WMA makes up the bulk of your music collection.

Over a USB 2 interface, replacing the entire contents of our player took roughly four minutes; the limiting factor being the flash memory itself rather than the connection. If you use high bit-rate audio files, they can be resampled to 128Kb/sec AAC format as they're copied to your iPod, although this does result in the process taking longer.

Due to its size and price, there's no screen in this iPod. Instead of browsing through different playlists and tracklists, you listen to music in either shuffled or basic sequential order. Shuffle mode, as you'd expect, picks tracks randomly from the player's approximate 120 or 240-song capacity. While you can't browse your selection beyond simply skipping unwanted songs, we didn't find this too annoying in general use. Even better news was the 16-hour battery life.

The controls are minimal. Arranged on the front are Back and Next buttons, volume up and down, and a Play/Pause button in the centre that doubles as a lock. A set of green and orange lights glow through the white front to show status, and a three-position slider moves between Off, Sequential and Shuffle mode.

If you've wanted an iPod but didn't like the cost, the iPod shuffle is very attractively priced, particularly given its capacity. If you won't miss WMA support or Windows Media Player integration, it's a great buy.

Author: Keith Martin