Apple iPod 40GB - 3rd Generation [M9245B/A]

The biggest plus' are the amount of storage and the ease at which you can access it. Either select by artist, album or a playlist you have created from approx. 10,000 songs. Enough for most people! The intuitive way you search makes it very easy, indeed a pleasure to use, even with a large number of records.

It's small, light and elegant. If you haven't already just pick one up. Why shouldn't it be beautifully designed and useful?

The sound quality is excellent. You can choose the quality of the tracks; higher quality will equal a smaller number of songs but I have hooked my iPod up to my hi-fi and no one has yet been able to distinguish the difference between the iPod and the original CD without cheating! And that is using an 'average' quality setting.

Downsides are cost and battery life. It's not cheap and whilst I think it is a better 'portable jukebox' that it's contempories you may want to consider a smaller model (note that the iPods with less storage are actually smaller and lighter than the 40gb model). Battery life is not great either. 8 hours is the absolute max but if you repeatedly skip tracks, play the games included or use the backlight you will invariably get less.

I use mine every day, almost without fail and really couldn't live without it now so that's go to be worth 5 stars, isn't it?

Plus Points:

1) 40GB is a ridiculously large amount of storage (there's about 37.1GB avaiable for music after you subtract what is used up by the OS).
2) Considering what it can hold, the size of the iPod is amazing - about the same size/weight as my (very old) Portable MD Recorder. Will fit in any pocket with ease.
3) The operating system/interface is logical and easy to use.

4) The freebie headphones are excellent for a pair of in-ears. I've got a pair of Sony In-Ears that cost about £15, and the Apple freebies give a much warmer, less tinny sound than the Sony's (which I was perfectly happy with before).
5) The power cable/adadptor/plug design is genius - basically it reuses the Firewire Cable and allows you to remove the plug and stick a different one on that will conform to electricity sockets around the world.
6) Line-out quality from the dock is excellent. I've got high quality VBR MP3s (averaging 196 - 226 kbps) on my iPod, and when I line-out to my amp, the sound quality is (to my untrained ears anyway) of about the same quality as CD reproduction from my £250 Marantz CD Player. I'm sure hi-fi purists will hate that comment, but if you generally can't tell much difference between CD and whatever quality your MP3s are encoded at, you'll be happy.
7) Personally I think it works fantastically well with Windows (XP Home). I've had no problems whatsoever. If you've got a PC though, I'd recommend turning off Musicmatch Jukebox's auto-sync feature though, and do yourself a favour and buy yourself a cheap Firewire Card for a tenner. You'll get faster transfer rates, can charge via Firewire, and it'll cost you less than buying the USB cable.

Bad Points

1) Predictable, as it's mentioned on other reviews, but the volume is an issue - it doesn't go high enough for everyone. If you are planning on using in-ear headphones you should be ok: In relatively quiet surroundings (e.g. the home, a flashy modern train) the iPod should stick out enough volume. If you get to work in ancient noisy slam door trains or work in London like me, then there's a lot of background noise. I find that the top volume setting is JUST high enough to satisfy me (with in-ears). However, if you're planning on using anything else than in-ears (in any surroundings), then I'd really recommend finding a mate with an iPod and nicking it for a day to try before you buy first. I've tried the iPod with my Sennheiser open-back headphones I've got for home listening and the highest volume setting isn't enough to drive them at a reasonable volume. So beware....
2) The iPod itself could really do with a line-out for the car. If you're planning on connecting it up to your car stereo either by Aux In or an old school Cassette adaptor, then until a car charger comes along for the new generation (that you could then connect to the dock) you're limited to lining-out through the headphone socket, which I guess means the iPod is going to try and drive your car speakers and thus run the battery down quick (I've not tried this, but that's what happened when I accidentally connected my MD player this way, so the same should apply).
3) 8 hours listening time per charge, is probably not enough for everyone. Most people it should be fine...you listen on the way to/from work/college/school, get home and stick it in the dock for recharging. If you want to listen to it all day though, the iPod isn't for you.
4) You can't remove the battery! It's supposed to last "the natural life of the product". Hmmmm.

If none of the bad points are going to trouble you, then go ahead get an iPod, you'll think it's fantastic.

The physical design is beautiful, even the packaging the thing comes in is a work of design elegance, I love the piece of paper on the top as you open it that just says "Enjoy." Apple are definitely design masters and create real lifestyle and life modifying products. The scrollwheel and buttons are great and responsive although there may be some slight delay between pressing and seeing a response on some screens if you have a large music collection on there, I have about 9000 songs but the delay is still small.

The interface is very intuitive once you get use to it although I would have preferred being able to change EQ and shuffle/repeat settings without having to go back to the menu and into Settings. I'd also like to be able to do this from the remote and to be able to rate songs via the remote, ideally i'd also like a remote with an LCD display for song titles (with 9000 songs on shuffle it's difficult to remember exactly what you're listening to!). Perhaps Apple will do something like this in the future.

Those are minor points, the main flaw in the iPod, as everyone is aware, is the battery. It really is bad, 5 hours play is good for the iPod and worse is that the battery runs down when it's off, so if you're on the last bar or two when you get to work and don't/can't charge it during the day the chances are it'll be dead when you come to use it in the evening. There are a couple of things you can do, dare i say need to do in order to get the best out of your iPod...

The first thing is to buy the belkin battery pack and carry it with you always, the lights on it tell you when the batteries need replacing so you should always have power backeup for your iPod.

Secondly, try and charge your iPod where you can monitor it rather than overnight (although overnight as well is good). The reason I say this is because when the iPod says it's charged, it isn't. If you unplug it and then plug it straight back in again and switch the iPod off it will start charging again. You can do this 3 or 4 times in succession and get a full charge.

Aside from the battery and the few very minor issues I have with the interface, the iPod is brilliant, your entire music collection in a small and beautifully designed piece of kit with on the go play listing and easy and fast access to any song. It doesn't get much better than that. It's expensive but if you can afford it and have a large collection, get one.

In response to some other comments:

Yes the iPod has an EU volume limiter but is easily got around, use one of the tools available from the iPodlounge (use google to find), also many tips and tricks on there, very useful.

WMA format. Not supported and it should be to be a universal music player. Is an established and, contrary to some opinions, a very good compression format and is petty of Apple not to support it, especially now that they have iTunes for Windows.

Headphones, the iPod ones are pretty good but my personal fave
are the Koss "The Plug" phones as you can put them right in your ear, have virtually 100% sound proofing of external noise and you can have your iPod loud and people around you won't hear it, bass is fuller as well. Use Creative Travelsound speakers for the best on-the-move hifi combination.

USB v Firewire, I think the reviewer who mentioned this got it the wrong way round, Firewire is much faster than USB2 and it's well worth getting a Firewire card, they're quite cheap and the transfer speed is much improved.

iPod tip: Use Brasso (yes brass cleaner) to clean your iPod, the wheel and buttons can get a bit grubby but this works a treat.

5 stars for intuitive interface, capacity, size, weight, design.
-1 star for poor battery, no WMA, price