Apple does it again! This time they have introduced a more compact version of the iPod nano. Third generation iPod is really slim, it even makes palm of a ten year old look big. Some of the second generation nanos got cracked inside pockets because they were longer, the new size is less prone to such accidents. The product can fit comfortably inside your front pockets without somebody noticing it. The product is even 62% smaller than the iPod mini. It is indeed the slimmest MP3 player in the market.

Technical Specifications and Features

Review

Music sounds excellent on the headphones that come with free with the 3G nano. Design of headphones is the same, no change in this area. Split-screen is one of the new features. Split-screen displays an image on right side of the screen. The image is selected randomly from the selected playlist on left. Playlist creation and synchronization is a breeze using the new version of iTunes. Using smart playlist you can easily categorize your music and videos. For example videos can be classified a TV Shows, Movies and Music Videos.

Picture is worth a thousand words. Like iPhne, iPod 3rd generation comes with cover flow option. You can easily browse albums just by looking at their images using the click wheel. Once you select album you can flip it to see the track list. Searching has never been that visual!

Using iTunes has never been easy. It quickly converts WMA and other formats to native format automatically. You can go the iTunes online store and purchase TV shows and movies. You will also find lots of free podcast and video subscriptions. Unfortunately iTunes cannot convert videos on you PC to MP4 you have to get some third party software for this purpose or go to the iTunes store and buy it online. You can also download Videocasts from iTunes.

iPod 3d generation comes with 3 preloaded games i.e. iQuiz, Vortex and Klondike. If you like games you can also purchase them online at iTunes store. The default games showed a pretty good FPS (Frames Per Second), but don't expect it to be a PSP. You can also find free games over the web, but they were not as good.

If you are fond of listening to audiobooks that you wont be disappointed with the capabilities of iPod. You can even adjust the playing. The only glitch is that you have to convert audiobooks to "m4b". There are several free third party utilities that convert other formats to "m4a". The trick is that you just have to manually change the extension of m4a file to m4b. If you don't change the extension the audiobook will be detected as a song and won't appear in the audiobooks section in the player's menu. Alternatively there is always the iTunes option.

Display of iPod has never been sharper. In fact I was quite amazed to see bright and crisp images and menus, even at 50% brightness setting. You can easily save photos of various formats using iTunes. Thumbnail view is displayed by default, but you can view images full screen and even run a slideshow with music and transitions.

Video Playback

I was amazed to see video play that much smooth on this baby. On 3G iPod nano, videos appear as clear and bright as on a normal computer display. Aspect ratio is 4:3 which makes the screen very small if you want to watch widescreen videos. I have never seen such a stunning image quality on such a small player! Here is a sample shot that I took during video playback. It looks bit blurry due to the focusing problems in my camera and the plastic cover that I my iPod was wrapped in, but I assure you that the video looked much better that! You won't be disappointed by looking at 4:3 video.

Disadvantages

As the world moving to high definition videos and 16:9 aspect ratio it was strange to see a player with 4:3 format. Another disadvantage is that you have to use lots of third party tools for video and audio book file format issues. The iTunes solution is a bit expensive. The earbuds are good if you consider that they came free, but don't expect them to beat the $50 earbuds in the market. Although design of iPod earbuds has been comfortable, they tend to fall if you are not steady. If you are working out, taking your yoga or dance lessons then you should definitely look for in-the-ear style headphones.

Should I Buy It?

Despite of these small drawbacks, the 3rd generation iPod is definitely worth it. It has all the bells and whistles to be the product of the year 2007. It's a best gift you can give to your loved ones. Such wide array of features had never been seen on a small player. It's the Holy Grail of portable MP3 players, what else can you expect from a media player!