Apple iPod touch 8GB

It's black, it's shiny that's all you need to know! Well not quite. Moving through the menus of the itouch is what it's all about. It is the easiest, most intuitive and fun way of navigating that I have ever seen. Other than the power and "Menu" switch all other actions are controlled by touching, wiping, tapping or pinching the screen. Touch the Music icon - touch Albums - turn your itouch through 90° - wipe across the screen to select the album from the covers displayed - touch the album - touch play. It just doesn't get any easier. The same principle applies to your photos. Once you are in the album you see the thumbnails. Touch a thumbnail and you get the picture in full size. Rotate your itouch to see the photo in landscape or portrait. Then comes the really good bit when you use two fingers moving apart to zoom in on the picture. To fully appreciate this feature you must try it yourself.

The sound and picture quality are excellent and movies are very easy to watch on the big screen. Apple do not supply any software with the itouch, all of the content control of the itouch is via Apple's itunes software. If you have had a portable media player before, you are probably used to just dragging and dropping your files through Windows Explorer. I am warming (slowly) to itunes and some of its features but am still uncomfortable with the restrictions such as uploading files from your itouch. Itunes is making me discriminate about what music I download to the itouch and as such I am avoiding filling up the precious memory with my usual dross. That said, it is very easy to find other software out there that bypasses the Apple police.

I used DVDDecrypter to extract a movie from a DVD and videora ipod converter to convert the file to the itouch's MP4 format. Both of these pieces of software are free and quite easy to use. I have also used the converter software to convert TV PVR with excellent results. Conversion time is about twice that of the movie playing time so a 2hr film will take 4hrs to convert.

The WiFi feature of the itouch is a real bonus. Assuming you have wireless broadband it means you can watch You Tube movies, surf the net, download a podcast or browse itunes from your favourite armchair. You would think that surfing the net on such a small screen may be difficult but the itouch zoom feature makes it very viable. The only problem I have seen with the WiFi is that with some routers it fails to access the internet even thought it has good wireless reception. A quick Google search identified this as a DNS glitch which is widely known (except by Apple) and is easily fixed by using OpenDNS (see the website).

Pros: Just about everything.
Cons: A bit pricey, but the pain soon disappears when you get you hands on it.

Never before having had an mp3 player of any kind, I'm not one used to listening to music from a nifty pocket device, but when I saw the iPod Touch I finally took the plunge.
What can I say that you haven't already heard? Well here's a few things to sum it up:

Design:
The iPod Touch looks and feels twice as expensive as it actually is, just 8mm thick (slimmer than a standard CD case) with a nice 3.5 inch widescreen display and only two physical buttons on the whole device and its glossy black finish and chrome back make it something you'd like to own even if it wasn't an mp3 player.

Interface and Userbility:

The touchscreen lets you navigate absolutely everything besides turning it on and off, returning to the home screen, and bringing up the music menu wherever you are. Simple actions like selecting Music or Video are done with just a touch of a finger, as you'd expect. But where the iPod Touch really impresses is the features like browsing through your photos by flicking your finger, and zooming in and out by pinching your two fingers, or browsing through your music by scrolling up and down or flicking through cover flow. This is where the accelerometer comes in. Simply by rotating the iPod the screen will automatically switch to landscape or Cover Flow. It's trully incredible.

Features:

While the iPod Touch is not quite the counterpart of its bigger brother the iPhone, it keeps about 95% of the features without the ridiculous £35 per month contract. The iPod touch, having no phone application and other hardware misses out on these features:

Full wireless capability through mobile internet: instead using wi-fi to connect to the web.

Bluetooth: For connecting wirelessly to a headset but not much else.

Camera: Perhaps the biggest blow, instead keeping the ability to sync photos with your PC.

E-mail: To keep your e-mails with you wherever (didn't miss this at all).

Calander Appointments: Why did they put a calander on when you can't make appointments? Perhaps they'll release this in a software update.

Google Maps: While you can still view this via wi-fi, it doesn't have the full package of being able to call places on the map e.t.c...

None of these came as critical blows for me and I doubt they would for many. The iPod Touch still comes with the main stuff:

Music: Naturally, with new cover flow and touchscreen - well, everything.

Video: Supports music videos and movies with great picture and audio quality.

Photos: iPod Touch really comes into its own here. Superb.

Safari: A brilliant touchscreen internet explorer which I find almost as easy as a real PC.

Youtube: For quick and easy access to the video site. Great.

Calendar, Contacts, Clock and Calculator: All the standard functions we've come to expect, with the Contacts feature slightly making up for the lack of Phone.

The iTunes wi-fi music store: This I really like. Instead of having to load up your PC and navigate through the store, just download it straight to the iPod.

The iPod touch is a great little gadget, and while many find its "small" capacity not good enough its plenty for casual listeners like me. Here's a quick summarry of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

The Touchscreen, 'nuff said.
The Accelerometer polishes the interface.
The most user friendly interface you can imagine.
Cover flow and Photos are nothing short of superb.
Brilliant and scratchproof (yes!) screen.
Wi-fi applications: Internet, iTunes, Youtube e.t.c.
Sound and Video Quality.

Cons:

Fingerprints on screen, kind of expected though.
Wi-fi iTunes store only houses music.
Battery life could have been a bit longer.
Can only charge when connected to a PC that's awake.
Only works with iTunes, probably the most annoying part, no other USB device will work.
Chrome back is as scratchprone as ever.
Is 8GB too small? Maybe.
I don't know if it's me, but even when the volume's at minimum it's plenty loud enough in a quiet background.

The cons behind the iPod touch are extremely minimal and it's overall a brilliant purchase with which you get more than your money's worth.

9.5/10

I'm in gadget heaven. A truly great product that does everything so well and feels well made and very robust in your hand. It is a fantastic music player (so long as you don't need loads of memory) - the cover flow on the large, bright and clear screen is superb - it is great for viewing podcasts/videos/TV shows and it is also an excellent photo viewer.

A few tips to make it even better...

1. The first thing you should do is add a clear plastic film to the back as the stainless steel which looks amazing does scuff and scratch very very easily. Do this the minute you take it out of the box because trust me the back can scuff so easily. I did this on someone else's advice and it stays looking great
2. Upgrade the headphones - the apple ones supplioed are not bad compared to ones supplied with other players but they don't do justice to the music especially, if like me, you choose to have some of your music in apple lossless or 256kbs or above. I went for the Shure SE110 and they are an excellent upgrade
3. Don't bother with a clear film for the front as it is very difficuly to scratch as it is made partly from quartz. Yes you need to polish it and you get a great little polishing cloth supplied.

All in all I am over the moon with this purchase and would recommend it to anyone