A first look at the free iPod touch : Reviewing my new free iPod touch

A first look at the free iPod touch

Reviewing my new free iPod touch

2007-10-02 10:05

My very first thought as I opened the box was that the iPod touch is VERY thin. The actual size of the unit is smaller than I expected - even after having read that other people were surprised by the size. Despite this, the screen still feel generous in comparison to my old iPod Video 80gb.

I immediately noticed the lack of an included case. I usually make my own cases anyhow, but this was a bit annoying as I was keen to take it with me to my university (I don't have wireless at home to try out the Safari browser). I found my old case from a Creative Zen and it fits perfectly. However, I'm still going to make something more robust.

The feel of the iPod touch is great. It's very responsive - almost like it knows what you are thinking. Sometimes something on the screen which is clickable (ie. a link or a navigation feature in your music) will be very small, but the touchscreen seems to do a good job of guessing what you were aiming at with your grubby lil' paws.

The screen is very bright. I didn't notice any of the "negative black" issues yet, but I'll have to do further testing with darker videos. Overall the video quality is very very nice. Youtube almost looks better than on my computer.

The Safari browser seems to be designed well. Obviously on such a small screen you can't functionally view an entire page at once, but it's very natural to zoom in and out and scroll to the part of a webpage that you want.

Typing on the iPod touch is fairly easy to get used to. I'm not a text messager, so I'm a bit slow. Only annoying thing is having to switch to a different screen for numbers/punctuation.

The battery life *seems* good. I mucked about on the web in class for quite a while instead of learning about RAID technology, with no dramatic decrease in batteries.

Browsing music is a lot easier on the iPod touch. I hated having to scroll through a bajillion artists to get to my Infected Mushroom. With the iPod touch, I can just click on the letter of the alphabet and get right to my music.

Sound quality is great. I haven't done a side-by-side comparison with the iPod classic yet. In fact, the classic is getting totally neglected at the moment. Oops.

Overall pros and cons of the touch

Pros
nice bright screen
"clever" touchscreen technology
faster browsing for music
Safari browser feels intuitive and natural

Cons
Main "button" (round button at bottom) requires a fair bit of force to use - in contrast with the light touch on the screen it's annoying. I often had to click it more than once to get it to respond.
You can't change the volume very easily. With an iPod video, you could just reach into your pocket and swirl your fingers around. With the touch you'll have to actually pull it out and look at what you are doing.