Friday's Pick of the Week: iPod nano
This week’s Friday pick is the newly released iPod nano. The successor to the wildly popular iPod mini, the nano brings color, a small size and lots of fun to the MP3 player party.
The iPod nano’s thinner than a #2 pencil design measures a mere 3.5” x 1.6” x .27” and weighs 1.5 ounces. It has a 1.5” color LCD with LED backlight and its ports include a dock connector and stereo minijack. It syncs with a PC or Mac via USB. Two flash memory storage sizes – 2GB (500 songs) and 4GB (1000 songs) – are available and the player comes in one of two colors: white and black.
Audio file formats supported by the iPod nano include AAC, Protected AAC (iTunes music store downloads essentially), MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, WAV and AIFF. The player can also display pictures on its color screen, supporting digital images in the JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats. The photos and music can be transferred to the nano through the iTunes software which comes with the player.
Battery life via the rechargeable battery is up to 14 hours of music playback, or up to four hours if one does a photo slideshow set to music. The battery also has a quick charge time of about three hours, with an 80% recharge rate within 1.5 hours.
Other features of the iPod nano include support of podcasts, a calendar and contacts function which syncs with Outlook or Outlook Express, a world clock, a stopwatch, playlists and a click wheel for navigation of music and on screen menus.
Accessories included with the nano are earbud headphones, a USB cable and a dock adapter. Optional accessories made by Apple include lanyard headphones, different color armbands and different color cases called tubes.