Apple iPod classic 6th Generation Silver (160 GB) MP3 Player

I am pretty serious about my music. I've lost count of the number of CDs I own; it's somewhere in the five hundreds, I think. I am also a regular iTunes user and have downloaded lots of music, movies, and television shows from there, all of which take up a lot of space on my creaky old desktop computer. For the past few years, I've been a fairly dedicated user of Creative products to take care of my music on the go. But then my husband Bill and I bought a 2009 MINI Cooper, which has a special compatibility with Apple iPods. For that reason, and the fact that my latest Creative product had topped out at a capacity of about 1,000 songs, Bill gave me an Apple iPod Classic 160GB MP3 player for Christmas in 2009.

Product description

My silver iPod came in a neat little box with a USB cable. It weighs in at about five ounces and easily fits in my pocket or purse. The front of the player as a click wheel that after several months of use, I'm still getting the hang of. It also came with a dock adapter and a pair of ear bud earphones that I don't like.

What I love about this player

When I use a Y USB cable with my new iPod in my MINI, my iPod syncs with the car so that the music is in the car's computer. The iPod also runs off the power of the car, so I never have to worry about running out of juice on long road trips. By contrast, the two Creative products I used in the recent past ran on simple cables that allowed me to play music in my car, but also ran down the battery in the player. With the Apple iPod Classic, when I turn off my MINI, the player automatically pauses.

I love the fact that this iPod is compact, yet has tons of space for music, videos, pictures, or whatever else. This little machine can handle up to 40,000 songs or 200 hours of video, more than enough to accommodate my massive CD collection and then some.  At this point, I have about 7,000 songs on my iPod, as well as a couple of movies and four seasons (41 half hour episodes) of Three Sheets.  There's still plenty of room for more stuff on this player. 

When this baby is fully charged, it will play music for up to 36 hours or videos for up to six hours. If I have it hooked up to the USB cable in my MINI, which is where I usually use it, I don't even have to worry about the battery running down.

The iPod has a tiny little screen that actually offers a pretty good picture, even if it's small. The screen on my iPod measures 2.5 inches, which is big enough for my private enjoyment. By contrast, my Creative Zen Vision W has a 3 inch by 5 inch screen, but it's heavy and bulky and, after three years of moderate use, rather cantankerous. The Creative product doesn't always want to work the way I want it to.

Also, Bill and I are slowly turning into Apple users. I predict that when my current computer finally croaks, we'll be buying an Apple product to replace it. So when that happens, my iPod will be ready to go! It's compatible with a variety of other Apple products, which makes it very convenient to use in the home or outside. I can also buy Apple games and applications to make this MP3 player even more entertaining when I have time to kill.

What I'm still on the fence about with this player

The Apple iPod has a click wheel on the front. In order to access my music, turn the volume up or down, or change any of the settings, I have to touch this wheel and run my finger around it, clicking when the selection I want to choose is highlighted. While I am sort of getting used to Apple's click wheel, I prefer the way Creative's controls are laid out. On my Creative products, there are actual buttons to push which create drop down menus on the player. I find the buttons and the four directional control on the Creative easier to navigate without making a mistake. I also think the buttons on my Creative products are simpler to use.

With Apple's click wheel, half the time I mess up and click the wrong selection, which leads to both annoyance and wasted time.  To me, the click wheel is so sensitive that it's hard to select the choices I want.  I find the Apple iPod confusing when I want to power it off, too. On my Creative products, there's a specific button I push and hold to turn off my MP3 player. On the Apple iPod, I have to hold down the bottom of the click wheel, which, at least in my experience, doesn't always work out the way I want it to.

Things I don't like about the iPod Classic

First off, when I use it in my car, it automatically starts playing music alphabetically, unless I specifically tell it to shuffle the songs. When I used Creative, I could set the player to DJ and it would stay in that mode until I changed it. Not so with the iPod. It seems to default to alphabetical music play unless I specifically tell it not to every time I use it.

Secondly, I wanted to delete some TV shows from my Apple iTunes account because they were taking up too much room on my computer. I thought an easy way to keep my shows, yet free up space on my computer, would be to transfer them to my iPod. So I did that. Then, after I deleted the shows from my computer, I got a message from iTunes telling me that since I had deleted those shows from my computer, they would also be removed from my iPod. I'm sure there are many good money-making reasons why this happens with Apple products. It still annoyed me.

When I use my Creative products, I can put stuff on there and delete whatever I want from my computer. I don't have to worry about the stuff on my MP3 player being erased, too. And yeah, I know I can burn iTunes stuff on CDs and DVDs. I just can't be bothered to do it.

Other features on the iPod

I generally use my MP3 players for music and very occasionally movies and videos. But the Apple iPod can also be a great help to travelers. It has a clock function that can be set to several different time zones.  It can be set to run in most of the world's languages.  It has an alarm function, as well as the capacity to hold photos. I can use it as a calendar as well as a place to store contact information. It even has a stopwatch.

The one feature I was surprised to find that it doesn't have is a radio. Of course, with the 7,000 songs I've already loaded onto this thing, I probably wouldn't use a radio function anyway. This iPod also works with Apple's Genius function, which supposedly matches up musical selections in my library and makes a playlist to suit my mood. I've found that Genius doesn't always score in this regard, but the concept is cool enough.

Overall

I like this MP3 player. It's a good choice for a user like me, who needs a solid machine with a lot of storage. I'm impressed by the fact that this MP3 player is compact and clean looking and I love the fact that it's so compatible with my new car. Although I was a dedicated Creative user and prefer some aspects of Creative's design to iPod's, overall, I like this player better just because it holds twice as much, yet takes up about a third of the space.

I also think this player is more stable than my Creative players are. After four months of use, it has yet to crash on me, whereas both of my Creative MP3 players had crashed at least once within the first month of use.

Other information

This iPod comes with a one year limited warranty and a single incident of complimentary phone support. In other words, if I called tech support about this product within the first year, they'd help me for free the first time (sounds kind of like a drug dealer-- first time's free, everybody does it, right?).

The iPod is compatible with the following formats (taken from Amazon.com): AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV audio formats; H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats; JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only), and PNG image formats. It has a built in lithium-ion battery.

The LCD screen has an LED backlight and 320 x 240 pixel resolution.

The Apple iPod takes 2 hours to do a quick charge of 80% and 4 hours to fully charge.

To run this on your computer, you'll need iTunes 9 or later as well as the following:

Mac system requirements: Mac computer with USB 2.0 port; Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later

Windows system requirements: PC with USB 2.0 port; Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later

For more technical information, please visit www.apple.com