Product Description

Apple iPod Nano 8GB (Black) Even brighter color screen. Your album art, photos, and more gain even more brilliance thanks to a 1.5-inch color display that's 40% brighter than before. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Play your music even longer betwee

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12449 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Apple
• Model: MA497ZT/A
• Released on: 2006-08-01
• Dimensions: .9 pounds
• Display size: 2

Manufacturer's Description

A thinner design. A brighter display. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Just about the only thing that hasn’t changed is the name. The 8GB iPod nano puts 2,000 songs in your pocket.(1)

Look like a rock star

Your music says a lot about you. So should your iPod nano. A super-slim design says you always have room for music — up to 2,000 songs, in fact. Durable anodized aluminum says you won’t let the rough and tumble of everyday life ruin your groove.

Carry a tune (or 2,000)

Choose a 8GB iPod nano and add a soundtrack to your life. Just use iTunes to import your CDs, shop for songs on the iTunes Store, then sync them to iPod nano. Possibly the world’s coolest photo album, iPod nano holds up to 25,000 snapshots.(2) iPod nano plays audiobooks and podcasts from the iTunes Store, too.

Play more encores
Imagine what you could do in a day. Fly around the world. Watch two sunsets. Listen to your iPod nano. Up to 24 hours of battery life(3) means the hits just keep on coming. Whether you’re exercising, commuting, or rocking a road trip, iPod nano may just outplay you.

Light up the stage

While it can't stop the rain, iPod nano might make your day a bit brighter. 40% brighter, to be exact. Album art pops and slideshows stun on the iPod nano’s dazzling display. That means everything looks as good as it sounds.

Go on tour

Add accessories and your music stays with you at home and on the go. Of course, iPod nano itself makes a great accessory. Wear up to 2,000 songs around your neck. Run with up to five days of skip-free music on your arm. iPod nano is the new black.

1. Song capacity based on 4 minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; actual capacity varies by content. 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
2. Photo capacity based on iPod-viewable photos transferred from iTunes.
3. Up to 24 hours of battery life refers to music playback. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Good but not perfect - and here's some advice.....
To judge by earlier reviewers' comments here, most people's views on the new iPod nano are cut and dried - they either love it (the majority) or they seriously dislike it.

For me, the reality lies somewhere between these polar extremes. It's a terrific product in many ways, but it has some glaring weaknesses, too. As well as looking at the good and the bad, I'll suggest some ways of getting the best out of it.

To start with the good stuff, let me say that this is the best iPod that I've encountered, and I very much prefer it to the full-size iPod. The memory is smaller but, at 8GB (of which about 7.4GB is actually usable), it will have more than enough capacity for most users.

You can't watch movies on it but, then, would you want to? I bought this product as a music player, not as something to give me eye-strain by watching films on a tiny screen. As a music player, it is excellent. The sound quality is outstanding, and can be improved even further if you invest in some better headphones (see below).

The design is not only iconic but superb. It's wafer-thin, ultra-light, beautifully styled and has a good scratch-resistant black finish (unlike the full-size iPod, which is heavy, and looks as though it would tarnish if you so much as looked at it). The click-wheel navigation system is brilliant, enabling you to move easily between songs, change settings, create playlists and so on - extremely user-friendly.

The iTunes software programme has improved steadily over the years. It can rip music off your CD collection, and can also burn CDs (though not very well - see below). The organisation and functionality of the software is much better than it used to be.

So far so good, then, but there are some notable shortcomings, too. The first is that, should the (internal) battery on your iPod ever fail (and they do), replacing it is VERY expensive indeed. My second criticism is that the iPod nano is hardly generously equipped. When I bought my iPod mini a few years back, it came with a belt clip, a mains charger and a CD containing the iTunes software. The new nano comes with none of these things which should, in my opinion, be included. Sure, you can buy after-market clips, chargers and the like, but should you have to, for an item at this pretty hefty price-tag?

One other point is that the headphone connection is now on the bottom of the unit and not, as previously, on the top. To my mind, this is idiotic, and inexplicable. It means you have to carry the thing upside down, it's difficult to use with an aftermarket protective cover and, because the headphone jack is now beside the charger socket, it's going to make fitting accessories (such as iTrips) much more difficult than it used to be. I can't understand why they've done this.......

There are pros and cons, then, with the good outweighing the bad (hence four stars). To maximise the good and minimise the bad, here are my tips on how to get the most out of your iPod nano:

1.When buying, check out the best warranty and insurance, and make sure that it covers battery replacement (which is very expensive). Some retailers will give you ongoing cover against almost everything (including battery failure or accidental damage) for a modest monthly charge;

2.Load music from your CD collection, and DON'T buy tracks as downloads. These are expensive (99p each, far pricier here than in the US, where it's 99 cents, or about 51p). The quality is a long way short of CD audio, and you can't even burn a decent CD from them;

3.iTunes is great support software for your iPod, but it's not very good at burning CDs. So, if you want to burn CDs, buy specialist software for this, such as Blaze Audio's excellent Rip-Edit-Burn; and

4.Think about buying some better headphones - there are some fairly inexpensive ones from the likes of Sony which can materially improve the sound quality of your iPod.

So that's it. The new iPod nano is a really great product - stylish, high-quality and user-friendly - but it's not perfect. I hope that my four tips will help you to get the best out of it.

Enjoy!

Magnificent
The New iPod nano 8GB is a great product. Having owned a 512mb mp3 player until Christmas, this seems like a world away from that. The colour
screen, the extremely elegant, user friendly navigation system and the general "upper class" feel of the iPod makes this a fantastic gadget. A
couple of things to note though before buying:

1. Although it says 8GB, only about 7.45GB of this is storage space, so bear that in mind.
2. It doesn't come with a mains charger - a bit of a pain I know but you can pick up a charger from Amazon third party sellers for as little as a penny a piece - I did and it's perfect.
3. You need iTunes 7.0 or higher - this is not a problem though if you don't have it, just go to the Apple site and download it for free. If you have an earlier edition of iTunes, just do the same and it will update it, keeping all your Library and stuff intact.
4. The instruction manual isn't great, if possible have someone around who has an iPod themselves to help explain it to you. But in honesty you could quite easily figure everything out as you go along without making any mistakes.

The great things about this iPod are:

A 24 hour battery that can be recharged easily. Even when you are putting new songs onto it from your computer, it charges itself. Plus a separate mains charger is easy to use if you buy one.
There are loads of personalised settings you can apply which are very straight forward.
The music organisation is terrific, whatever you want to hear you can choose in a few moments of turning it on.
The sound quality is excellent; as well as EQ settings which enable you to change the sound settings for different types of song, e.g. Rock, Pop
songs.
iTunes is very easy to use once you get the hang of it, and it easily sorts your tracks out automatically without the need for you to type anything in. Putting songs on your iPod is a simple "drag and drop" exercise that even a computer novice can handle.

The iPod is aesthetically pleasing, a sleek, slim black that slides into your pocket comfortably. The material is smooth to the touch and, as
mentioned before, it just feels like a really sophisticated gadget.

If you are looking for a reliable, user friendly and large storage capacity portable music player, look no further than the 8GB New iPod nano.

Stylish, well executed player
I've bought this player to succeed my trusty yet ageing Creative Zen. I thought i'd dabble in the Apple iPod, something i shunned 3 years ago when buying the Zen.

I've been very impressed thus far. The controls are a whizz, much better than the Zen with it's over sensitive scroll panel, this was the bane of an otherwise excellent player.

Sound Quality is top notch, though as mentioned time and again don't even consider using the earphones supplied - They're cheap cost-down phones and a magnet to any devious types who want an ipod but don't fancy paying for one. Buy a decent set of Sennheiser or similar headphones.

I sympathise with the previous reviewer on the location of the headphone socket. It does seem rather dumb but being an Electronics Engineer I can see why (in theory) they've done it. The Nano is so thin that you can't place the headphone jack under the LCD screen, there simply isn't the space. You would have to move the LCD screen or elongate the top of the unit. I imagine this was down to the styling department at Apple and whilst every Engineer jumped up down to get the screen moved, styling said no. Welcome to my world....

Another minus point actually comes from one of the main selling points of the device, it is exceptionally tiny (and black in colour) so therefore really easy to lose! I've already had few desperate searches through my bags, terrified i've dropped my (very expensive) player. I think my next investment will be a belt holder so I can rest more easily.

Oh and before i forget, it is 7.45Gb AFTER formatting, the disk needs a file system (known as a FAT (File Allocation Table)) in order for the procesor to know where to look on the disk for each file. This unfortunately takes up a set percentage of your disk. It is identical for the Hard drive on your PC, or on you HDD recorder, DVD-ROMs, flash drives and so on.