Product Reviews

Apple's latest flagship iPod might not be able to make phone calls, but it's otherwise similar to the iPhone. Integrated WiFi makes it easy to connect to a local wireless network. You get both Apple's Safari web browser and a dedicated YouTube browser, although Safari doesn't support Flash, Java or most media streaming standards. You can access and download songs from the iTunes Store but none of the free content, including many podcasts, is available. With WiFi enabled, the Touch constantly scans for networks.

A single button wakes the player from sleep mode and returns to previous menus, and the touch-sensitive screen is extremely accurate. An orientation sensor detects whether you're holding it upright or sideways, and adjusts the display accordingly. The onscreen keyboard is fine for simple searching and browsing, and a unique pinch-to-focus feature makes it easy to zoom in and out of webpages.

At its native 640x480 resolution,

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video is clear and sharp. Colours are accurate and the bright 3.5in screen can be viewed from all angles and in most light conditions with minimal glare. The iPod Touch supports the MPEG4 and H.264 video standards and can play any video that worked on previous iPods. Unfortunately, iTunes does a poor job of converting video files from other formats and it took hours to convert a full-length film to play on it. Audio quality was excellent at normal settings, though. Although we noticed slight distortion of some low-end frequencies at bass boosted settings, it wasn't a deal breaker. The standard iPod headphones were disappointing, though.

Unlike other iPods, you can use the Touch to play music when it's connected to a PC via USB transferring content. With WiFi enabled, we got a respectable 16 hours and four minutes of audio playback. This increased to 25 hours and 33 minutes when we turned off WiFi. Video playback time was seven hours and 23 minutes.

We did have some quibbles. The 16GB of flash memory seems scant compared to the 160GB iPod Classic, and there is no way to create video playlists or watch videos in sequence. Video format support is poor compared to Archos's 605 WiFi, but that lacks a web browser.

The iPod Touch is one of the sleekest portable media players on the market. Although a more affordable 8GB version is available for £199, it still isn't great value. Fortunately for Apple, the iPod Touch is cool enough to justify the hype and, if you don't mind the meagre storage, it's a great choice.