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Hey guys, this is Austin and today I’m here with a review of the new iPod
nano 7th generation. This brings back a much more traditional design but is it
any good? First step is to pop open the box and inside you’ll find the iPod
nano in yellow, although in person it’s pretty green. You’ll also find the new
Lightning cable to charge and sync and the Apple EarPods which look like the
old earbuds but actually don’t sound bad at all. Pop the screen protector off
and finally the iPod is free. Take a look around the iPod nano and you’ll see
it’s absurdly small. Along the left side you’ll see the volume rockers as well as
a center button which allows you to pause, skip tracks and more. The top
houses a sleep/wake button and on bottom you’ll see the Lightning jack,
plastic window for the Bluetooth antenna and the headphone jack. To give
you a better idea of how thin the new nano is, it’s identical in thickness to the
cable on the EarPods. Hook in a pair of beefier headphones and the nano
looks downright silly. Speaking of audio, of course that’s what an iPod is all
about. With the included headphones the nano sounds perfectly fine with a
moderate amount of bass and solid overall quality. Hook up a pair of more
power hungry headphones like the Audio-Technica ATH-M50s and the iPod
will drive them just fine although of course not as well with a proper setup.
Even though it looks just like iOS Apple officially calls this the Nano OS and
it’s not hard to see why. You have no support for apps and Wi-Fi is nowhere to
be found so it’s best not to go toss your iPhone away just yet. To navigate you
can swipe back from any screen or hit the home button to go to the
homescreen. It’s very responsive and features a 2.5” inch display with a
resolution of 240x432. In addition to music you can always watch video on the
tiny display. It plays 480p video synced from iTunes and the player is just fine
but honestly I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to watch a movie on
something this small. Same goes for pictures, you can view them but it’s not
something terribly useful. Nike+ is built-in along with a pedometer which can
be helpful for exercising. You’ll find a few more apps like radio, podcasts, and
a clock but don’t expect to do much more than listen to music on it. Battery
life is really impressive. I’ve been using the nano off and on for several days
now with the screen on full brightness and I’ve only just dented my first
charge. The thing with the iPod nano is that it’s still entirely tethered to
iTunes. Want to add a song? Hopefully you don’t have Spotify because you’re
going to need to import the music into iTunes, find your Lightning cable, let
the iPod stop anything you were doing and then transfer the files over. With
music available effortlessly everywhere you turn on smartphones and even
the iPod touch this feels like a major hassle. Don’t get me wrong, the iPod
nano is the best iPod for music yet. It’s tiny, uncomplicated and amazingly
enough plays MP3s. The thing is that’s exactly what the first iPod nano did
when I bought it in 2005. If this was $100 I’d say it makes sense but at $150 it’s
not much less than the vastly more useful iPod touch which makes it a hard
sell. Don’t forget to hit up that Like button and if you’re interested in more
videos like this I’ve got lots of coverage of the new iPod touch! Anyway I will
catch you in the next one!