Thanks to its new anodized aluminum casing, the new model looks much like the now-defunct iPod mini, but much, much slimmer. Improvements over the first-gen nano include a brighter screen, longer battery life, and my personal favorite—gapless playback. The 2GB model comes in silver only while the 4GB model comes in silver, green, blue, or pink. And the 8GB model comes in black only (the 1GB model has been dropped). This revamped nano still lacks an FM tuner, a voice recorder, and video playback, so other premium flash players such as the popular SanDisk Sansa e200 series still have the iPod trumped on features. But then, the Sansa e200 doesn't do gapless, support lossless compression, or support Audible audiobooks. And the nano syncs with your Microsoft Outlook (2003 or later) contacts. One major difference between this generation of the nano and its predecessor is that the new model has picked up the optional recording capability of its full-size sibling; using an optional microphone adapter from Belkin (and soon others), you can create voice or line-in recordings on the iPod nano. Now that the player comes in an 8GB capacity, this is a significant new feature. It's a good bet that this will be Apple's most popular iPod yet, and with good reason

it has a matte black finish, which picks up tons of fingerprints. Measuring 0.3 by 3.5 by 1.6 inches and weighing 1.4 ounces, the tiny player feels slightly smaller in the hand than the previous nano, partly because of the iPod-like rounded sides. The LCD screen is still the same size and resolution as the old nano (1.5 inches diagonal, 176 by 132 pixels), but Apple says it is 40 percent brighter. I looked at the new model's screen next to my old 4GB nano, and it does indeed look significantly brighter. The click wheel hasn't changed except that the center select button is now slightly concave. The hold switch is still on top, and the dock connector and headphones jack are still on the bottom.

The new nano comes with new packaging, a tiny clear-plastic box, and new earbuds, which are still white, but slightly smaller and more traditional looking. There's also a dock adapter and a USB charge/sync cable in the box. Conspicuously missing is any type of case or sleeve, though Apple did the same thing with the first-gen nano until enough customers complained about it.

The iPod's navigation system is still the best in the business By choosing Search from the Music menu, you can search for content by first letter or by keyword. When you select a letter, artists, albums, and tracks all show up in the same list (artists and albums are denoted by icons next to them) so you can easily find what you're looking for—especially handy on the 8GB model. The Games menu still contains the same four games as before, so if you were hoping the new games announced for the full-size iPod would work with the nano, you're out of luck.

As with all iPods, the new nano works only with iTunes on both Macs and PCs. You're able to load data on it via drag and drop, but music, photos, and audiobooks must be loaded using iTunes. Thankfully, iTunes is an excellent piece of software, though be aware that there have been some reports that new iTunes 7 not working properly. (I've installed and used it on two PCs and two Macs without incident.) When you plug your iPod in for the first time, you'll probably be prompted to update the firmware; this is now done from within iTunes instead of via a standalone updater utility, as is the Factory Restore function.

 

Basically, when you scrub to the end of a long track, the nano will play content from much earlier in the track than the time you scrubbed to, and when the track reaches the end, the timer shows 0:00 left until the song actually ends. Also, if you scrub near the end of some tracks (say, to 14 minutes into a 16-minute track), the nano will stop playing that song and simply skip to the next one. Note that this does not affect the normal playback mode (if you don't go into scrub mode). I also tested this using my old 4GB nano, which I reloaded via iTunes 7 to eliminate the software as the source of the problem, and I did not experience the glitch. Note that AAC, Apple Lossless, WAV, and constant bit-rate MP3s are not affected by this glitch.

The iPod nano supports AAC, protected AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3, AIFF, WAV, and Audible formats. It also supports JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, and GIF photos, as well as PSD files (Mac only), all of which are optimized in iTunes before they are transferred to the iPod nano.

The iPod's ability to create and save multiple playlists directly on the device is something I find very handy, though it would be even nicer to be able to rename and edit playlists you've saved without connecting to a PC. As do previous iPods, the nano goes into pause mode if the headphones are removed during playback.

Player Type: Flash MP3 Player
Radio: Optional
Recording, Voice: Optional
Recording, Line In: Optional
Audio Battery Life: 26.17 Hr
Storage Capacity: 8 GB
Dimensions: 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.26 inches
Weight: 1.4 oz
Video Recording: No
Screen Resolution: 176 x 132 pixels PRICE-

$249.00