Group test: Apple iPod nano portable music player

By far the best known of all portable music players, the nano is the newest and smallest of the iPod family. There is now a completely new, thinner version.

The new iPod nano provides 4GB of storage space. The top half of the player is taken up with the screen, which is a little on the small side compared with some of the players in the test. That said, it is clear and bright, and has been slightly improved.

Unlike the other players in the group test, this one doesn’t come in black – that’s reserved for the 8GB edition, which costs an extra £40. The case is made from aluminium rather than plastic, which makes it more durable but gives it a slightly retrograde feel compared with its predecessor.

Apart from its size, the best thing about the iPod nano is the ease with which music stored on it can be browsed and organised. All the players here use playlists, artists, albums and song titles to find music, but Apple is the only company to use an intuitive method to navigate it – the famous scroll wheel.

None of the other players comes close, as far as ease of use goes. There’s also the ability to add tunes to a playlist while listening, which other players lack.

The nano comes with Apple’s standard earbud headphones, which are not particularly good. It’s worth replacing these at the first opportunity, particularly as they have become a magnet for thieves.

The iTunes software is the only way to put music on the player. Also, it can’t play downloaded music that’s protected with the Microsoft DRM, only music bought from Apple’s iTunes store and music copied from your own CDs, tapes and records.

There’s no sound recorder or radio, but it can show images, and has a calendar and to-do list, a few games and a stopwatch. No case is supplied, but plenty of third-party accessories are available.

This article is part of a group test of portable music players.
See also:
Portable music players
Creative Zen V
Iriver U10
MSI P640
Sandisk Sansa e260
Sony NW-A1200
A table of features can be read via our pdf download above.