Über Gadget: The New iPod

Having recently attended the Mac Expo in London I was able to test out a few new gadgets, I'll post my reviews/thoughts over the next few days. First, the new iPod.

The first thing you do when picking up the new iPod is flip it over in your hand and look at it from every angle, this new iPod perhaps more than any before it is a thing of beauty. I'm not going to go on about the design, is there really any point? Just look at the picture.

The next thing you do is check out the video playback quality. I was able to view a number of videos, both iTMS stuff and some EyeTV exported shows. The iTMS video was in H.264 and it looked as amazingly sharp and vibrant as you'd always hoped video on an iPod might. There was no sign whatsoever of any blurring, ghosting, shadowing or frame dropping. The word that I use to describe the experience is 'lovely'. The EyeTV show, Battlestar Galactica, was encoded using the standard MP4 profile. Standard MP4 seems to struggle with dark or near black areas of the image and this is evident in the play back. Having said that this particular type of shortcoming is probably something that a gadget freak like myself would notice ;) Sound quality in both instances was perfect.

As for the rest of the features . . . well it was all up to the usually iPod standard - music playback, GUI, photo viewing - all groovy.

At £219 for the 30gb version the iPod is now even better value.