Damage Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 Say what? How dare Damage review an iPod, an iPod Shuffle of all things? Did the finality of that sink in yet? ...OK. Now that's over with, get to your insults, but after reading this review.Equipment: 1 iPod Shuffle 512MBs, 1 Presidian folding speakers, 1 Sony XD200, 1 Sony XD400, 1 Koss Portapro, 1 default iBuds, random MP3s, 1 Car audio systemProcedurals: Random MP3s loaded up, shuffled. I can't tell what's playing on these until I hear the songs.Everyone knows what the iPod Shuffle is (will be refered to as iShuffle or iSnufflelopogus), but for the three of you who's been living in Tibet, here's a rundown. It's a USB Key drive with MP3 playback thrown in. It has dimensions of a normal USB Key, and from a distance, it'd probably look like a USB Key. The only thing that'd give it away is the bullseye design of grey and white towards the top (or bottom if you're using the lanyard). On the top (bottom) of the player you have your usual head-phone out, and the botto (top), you have your USB port. It's light as a feather (less than an ounce) but packs 512MB of memory which you can use as removable drive.Except you need to activate that function via iTunes before you can use it as such. You'd think by now, the disk mode would be activated by default. Seriously.Technically, you're supposed to use iTunes to manage your iPod shuffle. I'm game. So in goes iTunes 5.0. While it might be easier to manage individual songs from different albums, the entire song organization of iTunes somehow manages to be inferior to the Artist->Album management of SonicStage. Say what?Looking for alternatives, I found the ml-iPod for Winamp and a random small python script turned windows EXE to be much more superior way to manage music, especially the latter. However, this isn't an iTunes review, it's for the iPod Shuffle.Packaging. I miss the dangerous blister plastic in which I can slice my precious fingers in many different ways. Instead, the boring ho-hum cardboard box made getting to the Shuffle way to easy. I hope I don't get any papercuts.UI. Or there lack of. Other than the play/pause, volume, fwd/rew, and the on-off-shuffle switch, and the battery indicator button, along with three LED to indicate its current state (hold, play, pause, what not), there is no UI or feedback from the unit. In that way, it makes the unit dead simple to operate, even in the dark. However, that simplicity has its price. For instance, if you know there's a certain song you want to access, you may be pressing that FWD button lots of times for that song. But hey, life is uncertain, right? Enjoy the adventure, right? Bollocks to that, I suppose instant gratification doesn't come to anyone's mind.However, all things can be forgiven if it sounds decent. Thankfully, the iPod Shuffle does shine brightly in this area, comparing favorably with the vaunted NH1. The bass is crisp and strong. The Trebles, for the most part, is clear with detail though perhaps bit brighter than the HD-AMP flavored sounds of NH1 with the XD400. Conversely, using Porta Pros and XD200, the trebles sound veiled throughout while the bass and the vocals remain intact. In fact, I can't find any faults with the iPod shuffle's Sound Quality, or at least anything glaring to nitpick about. Well...Considering the shuffle is supposed to shuffle songs, it doesn't shuffle too well. I hear songs that I've heard 15 minutes ago again while certain songs never gets played. Using iTunes or other third party programs, this is a problem with all shuffle managers. So much for unpredictability, I'd hope that when it shuffle through my files, it'd at least keep track of the last several songs and not repeat them...Overall, I consider the iPod Shuffle as a USB Key Drive with secondary MP3 playback thrown in for good measure. With a set of decent, low impedence headphones, this makes for a good commute buddy, so to speak. Carry some tunes with you along with your data, and when you have some minutes to kill, listen to your tunes, or that podcast you've been downloading. You know, a veritable multitasker. Still, the lack of a UI feedback (and all the features that could've come with, like... EQ perhaps?) hurts the iPod shuffle. A jack of all trades and master of none.The Good: Good USB 2.0 KeyDrive, MP3 playback, built in batteryThe Bad: Built in Battery, iTunesThe Ugly: No Screen, no features save MP3 playback. Shuffles like Shuffleboard.Verdict: B- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobt Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 Thanks Damage,By the sounds of it I won't be getting one nytime soon, great review though.Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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