Customer Reviews

Apple iPod nano 8GB - Graphite - 6th Generation (Launched Sept 2010)

5 star:		(243)
4 star:		(81)
3 star:		(42)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(53)

 

 

Most of the Mp3 players I have owned have been of the Apple brand, which have been- The ipod mini, 2nd Gen Nano and 3rd Gen Apple. With my 3rd gen ipod reaching the end of its lifespan and my cd collection out growing my Ipods capacity I was looking to buy a new Ipod.

Now I'm not stupid enough to waste my money on the Ipod classic or an Ipod touch (might as well get the Iphone), I knew that there was no point in investing in an Ipod shuffle as it would have no where near that capacity I would need to accommodate my music, so my natural instinct would be to go for the Ipod nano 6th Gen.

When I looked at what the new Nano the Ipod had to offer, I met it with quite a bit of apprehension as when I fist saw it I thought it was like an Ipod shuffle, but with a touch screen. However, after closer inspection I think it is probably the best Ipod Apple has made and here is why:

Price: some people have actually complained that the Nano comes with fewer features, but maintains its price. Well I don't really want an Ipod which can take pictures and video recording. Also having looked around the internet, the 5th Gen Nano is a lot more expensive than the 6th Gens.

Size: Yes it is small, but then it is an Ipod Nano. Also even though it is small, the screen display is rather sharp and there writing of song and album titles is very legible.

Functionality: Gone is the Ipod iconic wheel, replaced by the touch screen. I believe that this improves navigation as you are able to work your way into different areas a lot quicker and easer. There are also buttons which help you in increase or decrease the volume and also there is another button which is used to turn the ipod on/off, it can also be toggled to be used to stop/play music or skip tracks.

I have also heard people complain about the shake to shuffle feature saying that when they are out jogging it can cause the tracks to skip; well this function can actually be turned off. Another neat function I found is that the new Nano comes equipped with a clip; this comes incredibly handy if you are out jogging, or are wearing clothing which doesn't accommodate pockets.

The only negative side of the new nano is that the battery life isn't as strong as the previous nanos, but then which apple products are these days? However, the battery life has never really bothered me as I mainly use it on my daily commute to work or if I'm out running, either way I easily have access to charging facilities.

On the whole this is a great product. It is nice and compact (just like a nano should be). It has easy functionality and navigation. It comes equipped with some neat little factions. So if you're purely interested in listening to music the Nano 6th Gen is the Mp3 for you. Ignore all the other negative comments as it seems to me that they are made by people who are looking for an excuse to moan.

I have only been using my new nano for a couple of weeks, but I'm already hooked.

I bought it as an alternative to my old 1GB shuffle. I was finding the lack of a screen and small capacity very frustrating, so 8GB is a luxury for me!

It is very attractive, as you'd expect from Apple. I have added a silicone skin and screen protector to mine to keep it scratch free.

I like the menus and how you scroll through them, they are arranged into 'artists', 'albums', 'tracks' and 'audiobooks' etc with a button on the main menu for each. The buttons are the right size for my fingers and easy to use on the go.

The shake to shuffle function looks a bit odd to people watching but it is handy not to have to look through menus to change a track.

Radio is easy to set and use.

A bonus for me is the pedometer which I didn't know existed until I booted it up. It is linked to the 'Nike plusactive' website it tracks your steps and shows how far you've walked. I find I challenge myself to do a few extra steps every day.

Sound quality is fine from the standard headphones, but I use my own headphones with it because I find them more comfortable.

Battery life is good, I wish it came with a mains charger but they can be bought separately.

Overall I'm delighted with my new toy!

I have had my ipod nano a few days now and here is my review:
Appearance and general:
This thing is tiny! It has a 1.5 inch screen and is very thin and light. I got mine in a pink colour and it look fantastic!
The battery life is impressive. You can get hours of playback- I think I get about 20...
Loading music on is very easy. You need to install itunes and load up any CDs and then they can be synced onto the device.
Features:
Here are all of the features on the ipod nano:
Playlists.
You simply elet your favourite songs and create your own albums. I find this feature very useful when I just want to listen to half an hour of my favourite songs.
Genius mixes.
This is a feature where, from what you have been listening to and what is in your library, it suggests new songs and albums for you to try. I found this feature good at times but it mostly goes unused.
Music.
This, obviously, is the main part of the ipod. You can select what songs to play via Artists, Songs, Albums, Genres or composers. Music quality is excellent, but I would recommend that you buy some half decent headphones. You can shake to shuffle. There is a voiceover feature, by holding on the button on the apple earphones, it can tell you what song you are listening to and who it is by in a robot voice. I do not use this feature and so did switch to better quality earphones.
Radio.
Not the best. But what, really, can you expect? Some stations have decent quality, like the local stations the nano finds for you. You can select certain stations as your favourites, and then you can find them easily. You can also stop and rewind the radio.
Podcasts.
High quality stuff. There are loads of podcasts to choose from, for free, on the itunes store. It does not play any podcast that are video and not audio, instead you can listen to it whilst you see a freeze frame.
Settings.
You can basically change the brightness wallpaper, set a pedometer goal, change photo settings and other settings.
Photos.
The photos are incredibly high quality. You can play slideshows where they zoom in on the photos.
Fitness.
A basic pedometer. You can also view your pedometer personal bests and your workout totals.
Clock.
As you would expect. Also includes a stopwatch and timer.

The bottom line is that it is a very good divice. Some people may be missing the video and camera features. But I do not. The small size and shape just wouldn't be suitable for video or a camera.
Basically, I LOVE IT!

An iPod Nano for the Nano purist.
Basically it does what the name suggests. In a SMALL package it plays music and this it does well.
I certainly do not miss the additional function of video camera, which I always felt to be more of a gimmick on an iPod of this size.

I bought an iPod nano 1st generation 2Gb for my wife some years age, which she is very fond of. Recently she returned the favour buying me a new iPod touch 8Gb. Whilst this is a great device, I wanted something of greater storage size and lesser physical size. I also may soon get an iPhone 4, which is very similar, save for the phone function.
I chose to exchange for the 6th Generation Nano 16Gb.

I have added tunes in both the iTunes basic(128k) and plus(256) formats and to be honest you have to listen carefully to notice the difference. Thus far I managed to fill the device with around 130 albums (6 days) at the plus format. Using the basic format, I have added 224 albums (10.2 days of music), 1 audio book and 15 podcasts and still have 1.5Gb to spare. All of the tracks include High Res album art! I have listened on good quality headphones and run through a decent stereo and am more than happy with the quality.

The touch interface is intuitive and in no time I knew exactly where to go, to get what I want, with the minimum of fuss. One small criticism is that long titles/track names, etc. Do not scroll across screen automatically in the catalogue menu, as they did with older Nanos. It is possible to manually scroll, line by line.(perhaps a future firmware update may correct this). However when searching by album small pictures of the album art precedes the title, which makes things easier.
If wanting to fast scroll, there is a line to the right of the screen to scroll through alphabetic letters; which then goes straight to track/titles beginning with that letter, when you let go. I'm finding this a perfectly good alternative to the scroll wheel. Perhaps an improvement!
Once a track is chosen to play the album art is used as a background, for the touch controls shown on the screen.
The screen looks very nice with a good quality resolution.
Touch response is very good.
There is a sleep button which turns of the screen so it cannot be inadvertently changed. This function is automatically engaged after about 70 - 80 seconds.
There is a switchable option to allow shuffle by shaking the iPod. I have not managed to get this to happen by accident, as it takes a good firm shake, side to side, 2 or three times to activate, confirmed with a beep. When in sleep mode the shake to shuffle will not work.
There is facility for photo's but with such a small screen size I do not see this as a serious function.
The integral clip is a very useful feature, as is the ability to rotate the screen indiscriminately.
There is also the pedometer, which I have not yet put to the test.
As with the newer iPods, it includes the "Genius" function for playlists, where Apple scans your music and creates genre based playlists. This feature is interesting, though if you already have your own playlists set up, may not bring anything incredibly new.
My only frustrations are with iTunes, which affects ALL iPods alike

With regard to battery life, I have turned the screen brightness at lowest setting (quite sufficient) and have left it playing almost constantly for 24 hours, using only 30-40% of battery. I have also kept volume at 40-50%.

This iPod is perfect for someone who wants an insanely small music player!
If you do want video camera and other toys (to each their own), go for a different iPod!

I bought this because I thought the size would be great for carrying around, the trouble is the screen is probably a bit too small for easy touch control, but overall the device is well designed with a logical menu structure.

Now to the important bit and were it all starts to go wrong, try hooking this upto a decent pair of headphones and the sound quality really disapoints. The sound is flat with quite poor stereo seperation, in fact I was so dissapointed that I've put it on ebay and got a New Apple iPod touch 32GB (4th Generation) from Amazon. The touch absolutely blows the nano out of the water when it comes to sound quality, you can hear every detail and the music really comes to life.

In summary, this is OK if you need something small and aren't bothered about the sound quality.

This is my first Ipod (or MP3 player!). I was originally looking at the Ipod Shuffle but decided that I would prefer a touch screen so that I could find what I wanted to listen to easier and I chose this one as it was small and would fit into my bag. I was going to buy the 8GB one but decided for the extra money I would go for the 16GB - and I have half filled it already.

I bought the graphite one as although I looked at the other colours I decided that I could personalise it to any colour with silicone skins if I wanted to.

When it arrived it didn't come with many instructions - apart from how to turn on and that you needed iTunes - but if you search on the Apple website you can download a PDF user guide http://support.apple.com/manuals/#ipod which I have found to be very useful. I found it easy to download music onto it - and accidentally wipe it off again! - but you only do these things once and I have resolved that problem and put it all back on - it was all to do with 'Sync' in iTunes and unticking the boxes (all will become clear if you do buy one)

I find the touch screen easy to use (although some say it is small) but then it is a small piece of kit! (It measures approximately 3.5cm x 4cm and is incredibly light). And it didn't take long to work out where to go to find what you were looking for. It is really easy to scroll up and down to find music or artists as there is a line to the right of the screen which allows you to scroll through alphabetically - you can then just 'let go' when you have found the letter you want and it goes straight to track or titles beginning with that letter.

Haven't used the headset supplied yet as I bought some tube speakers and use it with those. Really easy for just carring around the house to whichever room you are in.

I still haven't found out how to use the 'shake to shuffle' but if you want to change the song you are listening to it is really easy to do it so I haven't looked further into that. Although reading one review on here it says "shake hard 2 or 3 times and you will hear a beep!"

It's really easy to put playlists on too - which is great as I can now connect it via the USB to my car and have hours of music without having to keep changing CDs.

It also has:
Nike pedometer - but I haven't used this yet
An integral clip
Radio stations
an option to download photos

For anyone still wondering what to buy - try it - I thought it would all be beyond me having to use iTunes etc - but it is actually quite easy to use

Bought 2 nano's (his & hers), had them a few days with no problems other than you cannot shut them off, as somebody else mentioned. When you hold the sleep button down for a few seconds you should see a white on black spirral as it closes down. No spirral no shutting down.
Top tips to resolve this and other issues
1. Download Itunes software.
2. Register your nano.
3. Download software upgrade - This resolves the switching off problem and any other bug issues that have come up recently.

As a side note, why does it cost more for other colours, the cheapest being pink!

I loved my old iPod 5th Gen and have used an iPhone which I think is pretty good. I purchased a Nano, hoping for something that was comparable, but smaller and lighter allowing me more freedom and ease of use when traveling or exercising. Unfortunately, the sound quality compared to the old iPod and even when compared side by side with the same head phones and an iPod touch is poor. There is just no energy in it. The sound is flat with little bass and no punch. The volume is also muted. In a loud environment, you'll need good noise reducing ear phones. So much for airplane usage.

After a long flight I wanted to update the review. The flight was in two legs totalling 23 hours. With really good earbuds, the volume level was passable. The battery life, rated at 24 hours, was OK and I only needed to recharge after 12 hours. It seems adding playlists takes up a lot of energy. There is a button to fast forward, but pausing takes a good bit of fumbling around. I can't figure out why they didn't put two more buttons on it. The space is there. The size and weight does make up for quite a bit, but not enough for me to change my opinion. The Nano has lost almost everything that made the iPod good.

With the iPod, I could control my music and never had to look at it. It worked. It didn't do everything, but it did what it did so well, I could overlook it's flaws like moles on a super model. The Nano is just good enough to really make me wonder what it could have been. There are MP3 players out there for much, much less money. In retrospect, I should have paid 1/3 as much to get the cheap MP3 player. Value for money, it would have had to be better.

Apple really missed on this one.

I bought this little gadget as I needed something to listen to my music on instead of my phone, and it's the best decision I've made so far. The sound is great and the memory is more than enough for all the music I need. For a music junkie like myself, I couldn't have made a better buy. It's small enough to slip into my bag or my pocket and clips onto anything for handsfree tunes and all my songs are just a touch away. I would recommend this to anyone and everyone who is looking for something for all their music yet small enough to store in any tight little space, nook or cranny. I would also recommend buying with it a mini speaker as it just emphasises the sound quality of this neat dinky sound system. Love it!!

This iPod appealed to me due to its compact size, good looks and reasonable storage space. Although many people complain about the lack of video/camera and similar capabilities in this iPod, my personal opinion is that the screen size is so small that you don't really need those features. Also, given the size and the purpose of this particular iPod, I didn't expect a great deal other than being able to play music on it. Still, given the fact that everyone has their own preferences and the fact that previous generations of iPod Nano had those characteristics, I feel it's a bit naughty of Apple to take that away while maintaining the price.

Other than that, this iPod is easy to use and navigation is very similar to iPod Touch. However, the screen doesn't rotate automatically as you turn this iPod. The clock you normally see at the top of your screen isn't there either.

However, the most frustrating thing with this iPod is exactly the same as the issue people have with the iPhone and that's its battery life. Apple website claims that this iPod gives you up to 24 hours of music playback when fully charged and, believe me, you will fully understand the meaning of the term "up to". I don't know in which universe this iPod was tested before its release to the mass market, but I managed to get it down to around 50% of its fully charged battery having played back only one full album by one artist just twice. Anyone can understand that this wouldn't come to anywhere near 24 hrs by any stretch of imagination.

All this aside, it's still a nice alternative to iPod Shuffle. Those who don't like the idea of a fancy iPod Shuffle should probably consider other iPods.