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Ipod Touch Review

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ceres

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Unpacking and handling:

After a rather long waiting period of three weeks my (actually purchased for mommy) touch 8gb arrived.

Once you open the attractive packaging you are in for a few surprises. The touch comes at a 50% premium over current 8gig flash competitors.

Of course, in a number of ways there are no competitors. The most prominent feature is the touch interface. After some playing around you get the drift and controls work fluidly and intuitively from that time on. However, as usual there is an Iphyrrus victory involved. The touch interface could have made for easy eq adjusting, otg playlisting and such. Apple chose to forego that opportunity. To be fair, playlisting has been improved. Searching and selecting albums and individual songs or precreated playlists is faster than ever and getting in touch with your music is fun. Coverflow works the way it was meant to be. The implementation on nano3g and classic is a worthless gimmick in comparison.

While in your hands, the touch is a wonderful device. In your -large- pockets it is lost and cannot be operated. This device screams for a high quality remote as seen on past high end md players from Sharp and Sony. Also adjusting the voulme with the touch controls is a pain. Build quality of the Ipod touch face is top notch only scratchable with vile. The back should have been anodized Al just like the front frame but Apple wants to profit from windfall profits generated from made for Ipod cases. Or whatever.

Video Playback:

Kind of undecided here. The Screen sports good contast and brightness. However, blacks are totally washed out. i purchased two test videos from ITS. The Strokes - Heart in a Cage b&w and -only for test purposes 50 cent - Ayo technology. Video was choppy at times with artifacts and blurring. No homerun but certainly better than everything I have seen. I haven´t seen the Samsung Touch DAP yet. For casual use and videocasts and such the touch is a great device.

Audio Quality:

Most hiss ever on an Ipod (of course still way better than shuffle II), overall sound signature is very similar to Ipod 5.5 Video. Mids and Treble are warm, silky and harmonic. Great musical sound (re)productions. Bass is deficient (see frequency response curve). Good news for EU buyers: No cap seems to be in place. Measured output is 25.5mw, SNR 85(A) db and thd 0,073% via headphones. post-21416-1133366816_thumb.jpg

Noteworthy:

The touch comes with internet access via wlan and access to the wifi ITS. I use Apple´s latest AirPort Router. Wlan Setup on the touch is a matter of seconds. The connection remains stable all day long, Rendering of web pages is the best I have seen on a mobile device to date (don´t know Nokia´s N95). Still pages filled with css and ajax will take some time to load and scrolling through page such as bbc.co.uk will take some patience. Personally, I am not into this kind of thing. Notwithstanding my personal preferences internet on this device is a very pleasing affair. Great job on that!

One setback. You cannot dl free content from the wireless ITS. No podcasts, webradio and such. Lame move. Getting fresh podcasts or radiostreams on the road would habe been terrific.

Outlook: There is much space for fancy icons left on the screen. We will see new apps and an expanded ITS in the future. Right now, the touch is a scaled down version of the Iphone with worse sq and screen. The 2nd gen Touch will probably be the touch you would want to buy. Buy then 32 GB should be feasibe for 399, 16 GB for 299. Right now, the 16 GB touch is too pricey coming in at the same price point as the PS3.

Software Intergation using Itunes 7.5, FW 1.12: top notch and stable albeit slower transfers than Nano.

Pictures: Once I find my camera ;)

Edited by ceres
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I live in the Netherlands and my ipod touch was capped!

I had to remove it. You'll have to edit a .plist file after you jailbreaked your ipod.

You'll get significant more output power when you remove the cap!

greetz

The device I received wasn´t capped. At 65% volume I had to stop bc it got brutal. 45% was plenty with triple.fis. Also output came in at 25,5mw. I have never seen

such numbers on an Ipod. Strangely the documentation I found in the package wasn´t localized so I might have received an uncapped Ipod.

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ahh... okay...

you lucky bastard! Well, uncapped the touch is indeed insanely loud!

BTW, You mentioned triple.fi's...... I assume you own a pair? May I ask if you have any experience with UE Super.fi 5 pro?

I'm thinking of pruchasing a pair to upgrade from my V-moda Vibes. I'm gonna use them with my Touch and my new MZ-RH1.

greetz

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ahh... okay...

you lucky bastard! Well, uncapped the touch is indeed insanely loud!

BTW, You mentioned triple.fi's...... I assume you own a pair? May I ask if you have any experience with UE Super.fi 5 pro?

I'm thinking of pruchasing a pair to upgrade from my V-moda Vibes. I'm gonna use them with my Touch and my new MZ-RH1.

greetz

Yes I have owned these phones. They are a very good improvement over the vibez but imo comfort and fit are bad (just like the triple.fis).

I´d look elsewhere.

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Cere's..........

You seem to be quite pleased with audio quality, always a weak point with the ipod. Would you recommend this device for it's SQ. I'm not that bothered about web surfing and video. I just need a good quality DAP with good memory capacity.Sony's are currently capped at 8GB. Thanks for the review BTW, detailed as always.

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Cere's..........

You seem to be quite pleased with audio quality, always a weak point with the ipod. Would you recommend this device for it's SQ. I'm not that bothered about web surfing and video. I just need a good quality DAP with good memory capacity.Sony's are currently capped at 8GB. Thanks for the review BTW, detailed as always.

I´d say it depends on the phones you want to use. The touch is rather hissy with sensitive phones. It´s okay with the likes of MDR EX90 but rather displeasing with iems such as Super Fi 5s. I´d order from amazon and give it a try.

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Cere's..........

You seem to be quite pleased with audio quality, always a weak point with the ipod. Would you recommend this device for it's SQ. I'm not that bothered about web surfing and video. I just need a good quality DAP with good memory capacity.Sony's are currently capped at 8GB. Thanks for the review BTW, detailed as always.

There is always a choice for the 16 GB NW-919 walkman, which is pretty power packed for music enjoyment, i can't find another dap that can come closer to NW-919 for music enjoyment, though at some point Sony has to sell a 16Gb dap worldwide anyway, but Ebay and Yesasia can always import that NW-919 for anyone right now as well, waiting time is about few weeks

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