iPod Nano 4G Reviewed!

Price: Rs. 9700

So, it’s here again. The new generation of the revolutionary iPod Nano 4G entered our labs late on Friday and left us enthralled. Not only does it pack in all the features that made the previous Nano such a great player, but also boasts completely new ones such as an Accelerometer, which re-orients the player automatically between landscape and portrait modes according to the way you hold the player and shuffles playlists as you shake the player. The Genius service creates playlists based on the type of music and spoken menus.

To call the Nano a stunner, would be a serious understatement. It is the sleekest looking portable media player today and the brushed silver exterior looks and feels great. Weighing in at less than 40 grams, you can hardly feel its weight and it’s a quarter of an inch thick, making it the slimmest iPod yet. The click wheel makes its appearance again and handles the same way as it did in previous models. Meaning, it’s an easy enough way to swiftly get around menus but sometimes feels a little too sensitive. The Nano also reverts back to its second generation design, which means that the menus which were introduced in the previous model have been slightly tweaked. The animated section of the main menu has been shifted to the lower quarter of the screen.

So, are the new features worth the hype? Truthfully, no, although they are quite good. However, one downside is that because of these new additions, the iPod has become even more dependent on iTunes and specifically, iTunes 8. You can only enable the newer features through iTunes 8, but once you enable them, you can use them from the player itself.

Loading up its 8GB of storage was relatively fast. Transferring 1GB of files took 1minute 49 seconds which was 10 seconds faster than the iPod Nano 3G. Navigating the newly designed interface was iPod-ishly smooth with no lagging even when browsing through long list of songs. Its accelerometer let us play around with its three pre-installed games flawlessly. The 2-inch screen stayed as sharp as it was in the Nano 3G and its one the best screen we’ve seen among the player in this range. It did more justice to those short video clips and album art than any other portable audio players.

You would not be surprised if we say it’s better to ditch the bundled headphones and get your own pair. Such a great sounding player does not deserve such a cheap sounding earphone. We plugged in our reference AKG pairs to find what Apple has done to improve the sound. We could not hear the difference over the iPod 3G. The Nano 4G still carries over the same clean and natural sound which is well-balanced and suited for listening to all genres of music. And it also has enough power to drive most full-size headphones. The battery life did not see much improvement over the older Nano 3G.

Apple iPod Nano 4G will be sold at around Rs.9,000 which will be a killer for most other brands. Apple once again proves that aesthetics, ergonomics and astounding performance can go hand in hand.