If you owned the first Video iPod, there isn't much to say... the Video iPod version 2.0 just tweaks a few things on the original Video iPods. In fact, a firmware upgrade gives you many of the small improvements. The only things unique to the "New" Video iPod is the extended battery life especially for video, the powerful search feature available only to the newest Video iPods, and a faster and more efficient processor running the show in the unit. The new 80GB Video iPod costs $349 versus the original retail price of $399 for the 60GB Video iPod nearly a year ago (but now selling for $299 in your local Apple Store if they still have it in stock).
In true, if you own the 60GB Video iPod, the reasons to upgrade are minimal. Those owning the 30GB Video iPod or older iPod unit might consider this especially if the expanding video options on iTunes figure prominently in your plans.
Short Take
The "New" Video iPod is a minor upgrade/tweak of the original Video iPod. It's not to say that the upgrades and tweaks weren't needed but most of these additional features should have been in the first Video iPod. However, the Video iPod still remains a mixed bag and the hardware for other Portable Media Players are close and at times are superior to the latest Video iPod.
The "New" Video iPod strongest points remain the tight integration with iTunes. The included improved earbuds are adequate for everyday use. A brighter screen is noticable for video playback and does improve photo viewing a bit. The new search function is a huge improvement in finding that one needle in a haystack. Tweaks to the user interface simplify the navigation through thousands of songs, videos, and podcasts.
On the downside, the casing continues to the scratch prone polycarbonate plastic. Apple does not provide a solution to convert video files to a format the Video iPod can play. Video file playback is still very limited versus the competition. The screen continues to blur in scenes with quick movement. The iPod still lacks recording capabilities and a FM tuner which is present in its competition.
Taken as a whole, the Video iPod is a respectable unit whose major strength lies in music playback and organization, iTunes tight integration, and ease of use. It is not as feature rich as the competition, but what it does offer is a refined and tightly integrated system. I would say that if your music collection is under 15GB, look at the 30GB Video iPod since filling this much space with just music is probably impossible for most consumers. If your plans include purchasing or encoding a large number of video files, this would take priority over the 30GB Video iPod.
Prices The "new" Video iPod 80GB retails at $349. You can read by epinion
The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth! for some tips on how to save some money. I will include some additional tips at the end of the review.
This unit was purchased at a Costco.
Note that the 80GB version is $50 cheaper than the 60GB version when it was released a year ago. The 60GB is now $299 if your Apple Store still carries it.
Specs The dimensions of the 80GB iPod are 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.55 inches (0.43 for the depth of the 30GB Video iPod) and a weight of 5.5 ounces (4.8 ounces for the 30GB unit). This is the same size and weight as the previous 60GB version.
The "new" Video iPods have the same design as the original versions continuing with the three layer design. There is the bright silver/chrome back, the middle black or white upper casing, and a clear polycarbonate layer on top of that. The polycarbonate layer continues to attract scratches (usually of the little annoying nicks to look at variety). The hold switch and headphone/Video out jack remain at the top of the unit. The bottom retains the dock connector. A brighter 2.5 inch QVGA (320x240 pixel resolution)LCD screen with LED backlight capable of 65,000 colors does a good job with photos and most video. The Click Wheel remains as flush to the casing as with the original Video iPod design.
The Click Wheel sensitivity and responsiveness continues to be excellent. Coupled with the improvement to the user interface, navigating the Video iPod has become much easier.
However, since the exterior design is the same as the original Video iPod, the design continues to have some problems. The clear polycarbonate layer as well as the back attract fingerprints way too easily. The clear layer continues to be somewhat easy to scratch. What do I mean by that... the unit picks up annoying little nicks and dings although they don't usually make any major problems in the performance of the Video iPod. I found using products like the invisible shield screen protector greatly decreased or eliminated this problem however (www.theinvisibleshield.com). Unlike the release of the first Video iPod, there are cases galore to choose from now.
In Use... The Music, The Photos, and Navigation The Video iPod continues to have excellent music playback. I was extremely pleased with it and the loudness of the unit even on the included improved Apple earbuds. Most people will not notice any slight sound distortions (which seem to be smaller than the older Apple standard earbuds). You now have gapless music playback between songs which is very nice (the original Video iPod can be upgraded to include this feature with firmware 1.2 and higher). The unit does not skip under mild jostling but this is a hard drive based MP3 player so keep that in mind (there is the potential). The Video iPod is capable of playing the following music files:
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF
There continues to be 22 preset equalizer settings on the Video iPod and most basic features for music playback are easily accessible via the Video iPod's controls. There continues to be no true user definable equalizer setting. The Video iPod remains an excellent music player.
Navigation remains quick and easy due to easy to use Click Wheel and with the improvement to the UI (user interface). This remains my favorite way of navigating through hundreds even thousands of songs... especially with the ability to group songs by albums, composer, artist, and the such. The current batch of Video iPod and 2nd generation Nanos allow searching by the first letter of the Song/file which will automatically activate when scrolling through long lists of songs or videos.
Photos continue to be handled the same way as the old iPod Photo and current generation iPod units. Photos must be synced through iTunes before you can display them on the iPod Nano. iTunes will reformat the image to a small thumbnail so that the Video iPod can quickly display it on your 2.5 inch screen. Unless you check the box in iTunes, you will not transfer the actual photo files to your Video iPod to tranfer to other computers. The causes a bit of waste in the memory space department since you are technically storing the image twice on your iPod. The images are vibrant and sharp for the screen... the brighter screen doesn't notably improve photo viewing. Viewing photos on a PSP or my
Creative Zen Vision:M was a more satisfying experience. The PSP's wider color range and larger screen outshines the Video iPod where the Zen Vision:M still has a brighter and more vibrant screen (capable of a wider color range as well). You can easily set a slideshow on the Video iPod screen with your choice of music. iTunes is capable of transferring the following file types for "viewing" on the Video iPod:
Syncs iPod-viewable photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats
Video Overall, the "new" Video iPod is above average. It is slightly better than the original Video iPod in that darker scenes that were hard to make out on the original iPod are better defined and easier to see in this edition of the Video iPod. Start up time from selecting the video to display on the 2.5 inch screen is faster than in the original as well. Fast paced action scenes may be blurred a tad on the screen... certainly reasonable when comparing to the Sony PSP and the
Creative Zen Vision:M which has blurring is such fast paced scenes. I did not check output to an external monitor.
Like the original Video iPod, you still don't get options for altering the brightness or gamma correction for video playback. Video playback is still limited to MPEG4 and H.264 codecs only (video compression schemes). The only "official" way of creating videos is through QuickTime Pro which is an extra $30 and still a poor solution at best for video conversion (especially if you have your own video collection on your computer). Third party software is available (some of it is free) but are not always consistent with creating a quality conversion to a file type the Video iPod can handle (although this should correct itself over time) especially with the changes to the decoding on the iPod... but more on that later.
For the most part on copyrighted material, the Video iPod is basically restricted to material downloaded from the iTunes 7.0 store if you don't have Quicktime 7 Pro or convert video through a third party program (which isn't guaranteed to work in practice).
Where things have changed is that video capability are a bit more than icing on the cake like it was when the Video iPod was released a year ago. The large amount of TV shows and series available now available on iTunes and now movie content (although it is restricted to Disney owned movies at this time) make the iPod an alluring choice, especially if you're unwilling to convert video content for play on your iPod. No other Media Player offers this amount of video content (Unbox from Amazon offers some purchasable movie content for Windows Media Based Players).
Note that the "new" Video iPod will play videos encoded for 640x320 resolution (the iPod will convert the output to 320x240 for the 2.5 inch screen. Upgrading the older Video iPod to Firmware 2.0 will allow the original Video iPod to play 640x320 encoded video without having to convert them to 320x240 resolution first. Note that iTunes has upgraded all their video collections up to 640x480 resolution content but you have to repurchase any videos you purchased in 320x240 resolution to get the upgraded content. No freebies for customers from Apple... sigh. You can guess what will happen when Apple make high resolution/HD content available... you have to pay to upgrade your already purchased videos to get the HD resolution.
As far as movies are concerned, you can only play them back on iTunes or your Video iPod (all Video iPods registered to allowed iTunes account). You cannot burn the movie to a DVD to playback on your DVD player. On top of that, movies start at $9.99 and new releases are $12.99 for the first week or so. Highest price I've seen is $14.99 for a movie. Considering you're limited to where you can view the movies, buying DVDs still seems like a better choice right now.
Note that a typical movie (around 90+ minutes) will have an average size of 1.5GB. A safe assumption is 1GB = 1 hour of video at 640x480 resolution. This translates into about 78 hours of video on an empty 80GB Video iPod... or around 50 full length movies. Compare that to the 30GB Video iPod holding at most 15 full length movies if you put nothing else into it. Note that since the TV shows are now encoded in 640x480 resolution, they take up more space than they used to (they were encoded in 320x240 resolution prior to iTunes 7). Again, if you purchases episode of say Lost, Desperate Housewifes, or Gray's Anatomy in the 320x240 format, you have to pay for the 640x480 encoded versions. Apple gives you almost nothing for free!
Searching There has been some refinement in the ability to browse through thousands of songs. If you find yourself scrolling through hundreds of songs, the Video iPod will switch to browsing by the first letter of the song/artist/album which makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. This feature is including in the 1.2 firmware upgrade.
The other major upgrade is available only to the "new" Video iPods. This one is the ability to type in letters or phrases or even the entire title of the item you're looking for. You cannot get this feature on the original Video iPod (at least as of firmware 1.2). I upgraded my 60GB Video iPod to firmware 2.0 and didn't get this nifty new search feature on it.
Games The other new feature is the ability to play games made especially for the Video iPod (the original Video iPod needs to be upgraded to firmware 1.2 first). As of now, 9 games are available from Pac-Man to Zuma. Most of the games have been seen in some form on a PC, pocket PC, or Palm platform before. Each game costs $4.99 which is a bit steep for some of the games. Control are based on the Click Wheel.
I purchased Pac-Man which is a faithful complete arcade translation of the 19070-80s hit. Controls translate very well to the Click Wheel although the amount of pressure you place on the Click Wheel is important. Lightly touching the click wheel in the appropriate direction will move Pac-Man in that direction. However, pressing hard in the menu direction will pause the game and bring up the game menu. This happens quite often when you're running Pac-Man through the maze and have a ghost right on your tail and frantically pressing directions into the click wheel.
Note that games through iTunes work only on the Video iPod running firmware 1.2 or higher!
iTunes 7.0 This is the piece that makes the iPod go around. Actually, it is a two way street... iTunes 7 needs the Video iPod so you can utilize iTunes 7 to the fullest. It remains an above average music organizer on its own but couple it with an iPod and things change. It serves as your software docking base for any iPod since iTunes 7 allows you to completely manage your iPod right down to firmware upgrades! iTunes 6 wasn't this in sync with your iPod.
iTunes 7.0 is your gateway into the iTunes store and all the music, music videos, podcasts, games, TV shows, and movies you can purchase from Apple and stick into your Video iPod. The store has gotten a mild overhaul from iTunes 6... but that was to accomodate the new games and movie section. The store is broken down in music, TV Shows, podcasts, games, music videos, and movies. The weakest sections here would be the games (only 9 games so far and only one of the games is somewhat unique) and the movies section (limited to Disney owned movies).
iTunes 7 now displays the breakdown of memory usage broken down by file types (i.e. music, video, contacts, games, other), firmware version, how and what to sync to your iPod... making it a more intuitive experience and making it easier to keep your iPod up to date. iTunes will automatically check your firmware version and tell you if there is a new version available. It is a one button click to perform the update.
iTunes 7 also resigned the level of organization for devices and music lists. Everything is much cleaner and catagories are more clearly defined. The right column shows a list of devices and playlist. Submenus open up when you click on certain options. Overall, iTunes is more streamlined. The new jukebox like album cover display is very nice. As you flip through the album cover on the main display, a smaller display lists the songs associated with that cover. It's quite funky. Only problem is Apple is still working out the association of album cover pictures to the appropriate album. You can manually associate album cover picts to the album/song but if you have some music tastes off the beaten path, it can be difficult to find the cover art.
iTunes 7 still allows you to rate songs, arrange favorites, arrange playlists, display the number of times you played a song/video, and allows organization through several catagories including song title, artist, album, and genre. This information is also gathered and synced from all iPods that sync with iTunes on that computer.
iTunes 7 does NOT let you encode video files for playback on your iPod. It is also unable to handle video files that Quicktime or your iPod couldn't already handle. It will play back files that Quicktime or your Video iPod could display and does a good job in helping to organize those files.
iTunes 7 does NOT help you in your organization of photos. Syncing photos to your iPod essentially consists of you telling iTunes which directory(ies) with pictures in it to sync to your iPod. Don't count on it to display your photos.
iTunes does allow you to burn your music to playable CDs but video cannot be burned to CDs or DVDs. Note that any TV show or Movie you purchase through iTunes can only be played back via iTunes 7 or through your Video iPod.
iTunes 7 is not a perfect solution but no other MP3 or portable media player has made software that integrates as tightly as iTunes does to all the iPods. This is Apple's trump card... if Microsoft's Zune comes anywhere close to Apple's integration, Apple MIGHT have some real competition. On second thought, Apple may have conquered online video sales by the time Zune comes out.
Battery Life The battery on its first charge lasted 15 hours over the course of 2 days on a combination of music, Pac-Man, podcasts, and TV show viewing. Not bad overall. Overall, that is pretty close to what Apple's stated battery life of 20 hours. Note that the battery life measured mostly audio playback and Pac-Man playing. The batteries are still not user replacable and that you will see battery life diminish after 1 to 2 years of use. The battery is 80% charged in 2 hours via a powered USB 2.0 port. It takes 4 hours to fully charge in this manner.
With pure video playback, I average about 4 1/2 hours of battery life on a full charge. This is a huge improvement over the previous Video iPod. Note that Apple claims up to 6 hours of battery life for pure video playback.
Apple maximum battery life is tested under conditions where the iPod has a set playlist with the backlight off and the iPod is set to continuous play.
You can still charge the Video iPod via Firewire cables but you cannot sync it via Firewire as far as I can tell (this seems to be a permanent decision to drop Firewire connections since the original Video iPod and 1st gen Nano).
Connecting to a Computer and Use as an External Hard Drive The Video iPod can sync via USB 1.1 connections although it is slow. USB 2.0 connections are much faster. It took about 15 minutes for 1 GB of music with conversion for gapless playback to transfer into the 80GB iPod.
Extras Not much change here. The Video iPod has a World Clock capable of showing three different time zones (not including the primary), an Alarm clock which functions exceptionally well as with most iPods, 4 games, store Contact information if you had a vCard on the patient, store notes (can display text files if you placed the files in the right directory), Calendar, and a nice looking stopwatch feature. Note that this iPod does allow you to create playlists on the unit itself and rate your music files... and all that information gets synced back to iTunes when you connect to your computer.
If english isn't your first language, you have options to set the iPod to any of the following:
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese and Turkish
If you wanted .ogg music file playback, this isn't the MP3 player for you. There is no FM tuner on the Video iPod. There are no recording options like in some other MP3 players. Keep that in mind when making your decision when comparing to other MP3 players.
In the Box You get a USB dock connector cable, the new and improved iPod white earbuds, 2 sets of foam coverings for the earbuds, iTunes version 7.0 software and PDF instruction manuals on a single CD, and a slipcase. You have to buy the actual USB AC adapter if you want to charge the Video iPod away from a computer or a powered USB 2.0 hub.
Accessories? What a difference a year makes. There are a ton of Video iPod specific accessories available now. The video out composite cable is probably a nice pickup for most. A case would be another good pickup.
The Invisible Shield protector is still my favorite choice. You can check www.theinvisibleshield.com for more information on this laminate that made my previous Nano and Video iPod scratch resistant. This stuff is great! Although your iPod doesn't have the same smooth feeling as it came out of the box and the surface has a glossy appearance (like a photo print from the shop), the Video iPod is nearly scratch proof! The invisible shield does not affect screen clarity in the slightest with the backlight on... although with the backlight off, the glossy sheen is a bit annoying on occassion. This preserves the looks of your Video iPod.
As far as attachments that extend the capabilities of your iPod like the voice recorders and the such, the Video iPod does not have the extended headphone jack found on previous full sized iPods. So any accessory that utilizes the headphone plus 4 pin jack will not work with the Video iPod! I really haven't looked into this part of the accessory market however to see if upgraded accessories have been released.
You can read my review on the
Logitech mm50 portable speakers for the iPod. I love these things. They are a fair size with very few compromises on quality and sound!
You can read my review on the
Logitech mm32 portable speakers for the iPod. They are decent portable speakers although he mm50 offers more oomph for your bucks.
This is my review on the
JBL OnStage II speaker system. A decent home docking station if you can get it for under $80.
Competition Honestly, I think the only real competition is the
Creative Zen Vision:M and the Archos AVx04 series players.
I have no experience with the new Archos AVx04 series players. However, the Vision: M has a FM tuner and voice recording capabilities. I also feel that the Vision:M has a much better screen than the Video iPod and has more flexible video playback options and available formats. I consider the Zen Vision:M to be the superior choice if you encode your own videos!
If you want a big hard drive but want to spend a little less money, look at the
Video iPod 60GB model. It will save you $50 but you do lose some battery life, the nifty search function, and have a dimmer screen. However, you do retain most of the functionality of the "new" 30GB and 80GB Video iPods.
Looking for a flash memory MP3 player? Look at
iPod Nano 2nd generation 8GB black model.
Money Saving Tips It gets a little bit harder with each new iPod model. Apple has stopped the educational discounts for the iPod (although some students and teacher might get lucky at their local Apple Store). As far as online stores go, you'll pick up somewhere between a 2-5% discount from a number of reputable sellers. Amazon.com will often have a small discount on recent iPod units (note that Amazon.com is discontinuing their A9 1.57% discount this month so use it if you have it before they officially remove it from the site.) Coupons for first time buyers at Crutchfield.com and Buy.com are another way to get a quick discount. Crutchfield.com has a referral code that gets you $20 off a $100 purchase (get the code from a friend who shops there. If you're that desperate for a code, you can email me). You can use coupon codes at OfficeDepot.com but you still have to pay sales tax. PCConnection, MacConnection, MacMall, and PCMall often give $5-$15 dollar discounts and/or a free accessory after mail-in rebate.
If you prefer buying in a physical store, it pays to be part of a frequent buyers club (like at Staples, Office Depot, Best Buy where the membership is free) (Best Buy's was being modified to a free program in October 2006). Coupons for Office Depot are fairly frequent and get anywhere from $10-$25 off. Best Buy has a 10-12% off coupon every one to two months. Target often has promotions with a $10-$15 iTunes gift card with a new iPod purchase.
Moral of this story is that you should be able to get a small discount, but it will be very difficult getting a large discount on an iPod if it isn't used, a rather old model, or refurbished.
