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Apple iPod classic 80GB 160GB reviewiPod 6th Generation 80GB and 160GB Models reviewThe iPod classic is a hedge-bet by Apple. They don't want to make the "classic" mistake that Coke made when they brought out New Coke - i.e. replace the goose that laid the golden egg with another goose that may or may not actually be better (as far as the customer is concerned).So we get this too. Don't get us wrong: this is BY NO MEANS an after-thought or substandard model. It is the iPod classic. Stats boost80GB is now the minimum - minimum - you can get your classic iPod in. That's impressive since some of the computers in the office don't have that much disk space, and you wouldn't fit any of them in a elephant's pocket (that's not a euphemism), never mind your own. The hard drive responsible - the component itself that is - inside the ipod classic 80GB model is only 5mm thick! ShellJust like the Nanos the classic has a new metal shell. It is simultaneously slick (looking) and matte (finish). The whole design has a nicely rounded feel - as you would expect by this stage it is very pleasing. The back is still chrome though - we think it would have been nicer with an all over shell. 
ScreenNice and big and with adjustable brightness. The screen is one area that we can actually find fault - it is still the same kind of plastic as before, so it may be prone to scratches. Make sure you treat the whole unit right (even though all the rest of it is fairly robust). It is however 2.5 inches (corner to corner) and 320 x 240 resolution; one of the internet standard sizes - this means that most online films will not have to be resized (squashed or stretched) in order to fit on screen. New methodologyThe iPods now use a combination of flash RAM and hard drive to load-up your music or video. The HD powers up, sends a burst of about 30MB data to its RAM and releases it from there as-needed while the power hungry HD stops. This pulse-load feature means that power consumption is greatly reduced (see Battery News below for more).Using your iPod classicCover flow is the animated scrolling through your album covers that the new batch of iPods will become synonymous with. There were some initial problems with the coverflow 's smoothness when the iPod classic and Nano were released, but a firmware patch has fixed that so they work much better now.Music photo and video:This may get a bit technical for some people. The simple description is that the Classics will play most standard music format and photo formats. Specifically: Music and photo - the usual suspects. Music: MP3 (inc VBR); Apple lossless, WAV, AIFF, AAC (inc protected) Photo: JPEG, BMP, GIF,TIFF and lovely PNG. PSD = Mac only Video: H.264, m4v, mov and MP4. Up to 30 frames per second (as much as a TV) and up to 640 x 480 pixels. That's plenty, even when put through to a TV screen. MenusThe screen menus are now split into 2. People talk as if this is some kind of mega revolution (it is nice!) but it basically means that you can see the album cover when selecting tracks. Cut to the chaseSkip feature in quicktime (mov files) allows you to jump to specific "chapters" just like on a dvd. Other nice touches include volume levelling for the video output. You know what really annoys us (yes - apart from most things) is when you're watching TV and suddenly the adverts come on and you go from being quite content with your telly experience to "oh god, where's the remote? turn it down! my ears are bleeding!" yes well the iPod has a max volume setting for video that allows you to say that no sound effects, or adverts, are allowed to go above a certain volume level. 
The Scale of it allNormally we're as cool as cucumbers when it comes to new dukebox models. We like to poke fun, find fault and provide something of an antidote to the "Oh it's so perfect" choruses that normally accompany an iPod release (if you don't believe us go back and have a look at our comments on some of the previous models. You can navigate from the home page). The iPod classic is different in many ways. It is a refinement and an improvement - which we always like to see - but the big story of the classics is the 2 juxtaposed scales:
1) It is sooo massively big 2) It is sooo massively small
We keep an eye on the horizon here. We see all the new teeny tiny Hard Disks and RAM drives being produced and you can't help but think to yourself "that will make for some really super small mega capacity player one day", but that doesn't always prepare you for quite how small the resulting player is, or quite how large the capacity is. We say it on the individual classics's colour and capacity pages too, but 80GB translates to about 55 days of unique MP3 music running 24/7. 55 days and nights of never hearing the same song twice. And that's only in mp3, you can get even more with better compression rates out of different CODECs (different music files - non MP3). The really shocking thing is how small the player is. It should, by rights, have some bulk to it. It doesn't. It's smaller than its predecessors. But the really really shocking thing is that this is the smaller of the two new capacities. The 160GB capacity silver and black classics have DOUBLE that amount of storage, and they are not significantly larger physically. It is really something. Battery newsAnother fanfare, if you please: For the first time Apple have leap-frogged Sony on battery charge. The iPod Classic will play music for approx 40 hours non-stop thanks to the new methodology mentioned above - this is great news for anyone that owns one: you can listen to an iPod classic there and back on a day-trip to Tokyo. Seriously tough - 40 hours! The battery life for video is significantly less at about 7, but Apple maintain that if you dim the screen you can get much longer life for your tiny little cinema.Conclusion:Do you love it? Yes. Select one of the below.
Black 80GB iPod classic |
Black 160GB iPod classic |
Silver 80GB iPod classic |
Silver 160GB iPod classic
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Next Generation Portable Music
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