Review: Apple iPod Touch portable video player

is iFrom the moment Apple unveiled its iPhone a few months ago, it was clear that the phone’s innovative touch-screen control system was going to appear in the iPod as well. And now, at the same time as the phone's UK launch, the iPod Touch has appeared.

Available with either 8GB or 16GB of storage space, the iPod Touch is just 5mm taller than the standard video iPod, but the trademark scroll-wheel has disappeared and most of the front panel is devoted to the 3.5in (9cm) screen. As the name suggests, the screen is touch-sensitive, so the player can be controlled by tapping on the screen or making certain gestures with your fingers.

When the iPod is switched on, a menu appears allows the user to select between the music, video and photo modes or to activate the player's wireless network connection for a bit of web-surfing – yes, it can do that too.

When the Music mode is selected, the screen displays a simple list of music which can be sorted by song, album or artist. However, rotate the iPod sideways and the screen automatically switches into a mode that Apple calls Coverflow. This displays cover artwork for the albums, and you can quickly browse through them flicking a finger across the screen.

The photo mode works similarly, allowing the user to browse through their photo collection with a simple movement of a finger. However, there’s another trick here too – using two fingers at opposite corners of the screen, you can zoom in on an image or shrink it down in size by pinching the fingers together or pushing them apart again. It’s a great trick, and makes the iPod really easy to use as it’s so responsive to every little flick of the fingers.

Video playback is more straightforward, as video is always played with the i Pod on its side, in widescreen, and the screen offers good image quality. We wouldn't want to watch a full-length film on it, but it’s fine for watching music videos and Youtube video clips.

That brings us to the iPod Touch’s new wireless networking abilities: it can log on to any wireless network and use its built-in web browser to surf the net. The usual problem with web browsing on handheld portable devices like this one is that the screen is too small to view pages properly.

However, the Touch allows the user to zoom in on pages by pinching two fingers, as with photos. This makes a huge difference, as it's now possible to zoom in on any part of a web page to get a closer look. Text, including passwords, can be entered using an on-screen keyboard, and there’s a really clever option that allows several web pages to be opened at once.

It’s true that the iPod Touch expensive given that it only has 8GB of storage; rival video players have larger screens and much greater capacities for much more attractive prices. However, the touch-screen controls are enormously impressive, and wireless internet access means that the iPod has developed into far more than a simple music and video player.

Vista compatible: Yes