Do the iPod Shuffle! Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Generation MP3 Player

Author's Rating:

Pros: It's small?

Cons: No way to control song selection.

The Bottom Line: 
I think this is a good toy for the gym. Add some fast paced death metal and hit the treadmill or the raquetball court!

Author's Review
I won! That was my first thought when I found out that I was getting an iPod Shuffle.   It's good to win things, and I thank Epinions for having the sweepstakes that I won.   Of course, now that I have it, like almost everything I get that's new and neat, I have to review it!

What is the iPod Shuffle?

It's small, it's blue, it holds 2 gigabytes of music!  How small is it? The Shuffle could be a barrett for a young girls hair. It could be a blue tooth sticking in your ear.  It could be two sticks of gum. Keep your eye on it, something this small could be easily lost.

The iPod Shuffle comes in a variety of colors, I chose a metallic blue. It looks nice, and I like the color blue.

How much is 2 Gigabytes? It is approximately 500 songs or about 50 albums, less if you use a higher bit rate for burning.  My music collection is about 150 Gigabytes, so I had to create a small separate playlist for the Shuffle.

The iPod shuffle comes with the Shuffle itself which is a slim blue cylinder with a clip that allows you to clip it in your hair or in your pocket. I have no hair, so I clipped it to my shirt pocket.

How Easy is it to Set Up?

Plug it into your computer with iTunes, and set up is a breeze. I just entered my iTunes account information and told the iPod NOT to try to synch to my music library.  If it had synched to my library, I doubt it would have made it past AC/DC.  The menu allows you to select, so I chose some new music I had just acquired and loaded the new shuffle with a collection of albums by Apocalyptica (a Finnish heavy metal cello band), Epica and Lacuna Coil (a couple of operatic metal bands with female vocalists from Denmark and Italy respectively).  That pretty much filled it because I had burned all these CDs in 320 instead of a smaller but more compressed 128 or 256.

The included headphone / USB adapter is used to both synch your iPod shuffle and to recharge it.  For some reason I couldn't seem to get it to simply charge the iPod without synching. 

How Do you Use It?

You can either plug in headphones and listen, or use any headphone style adapter to listen. This iPod does not have the traditional proprietary Apple interface, so this Shuffle won't work on most iPod designed docking stations.  I couldn't use it in the tradional way with my iPod Kicker, although with an adapter I could plug it into the auxillary input switch.

I did use it in my car with the Cassette Tape style MP3 Player adapter. It has a headphone 1/4 inch jack style that plugs into your headphone outlet, and a cassette that fits into your cars cassette player.   I know cassette players are a thing of the past, but thankfully my car has one, which is ideal for books on tape from my local library and all my iPods, including the iPod Shuffle.

You can either listen to your songs in order, or in shuffle mode.  The iPod Shuffle does start where it left off. If you downloaded an audio book onto this, you could pick straight mode and listen to your audio book.

How do I pick songs again?

You don't, you either listen to them in order or in shuffle mode. There is no selection screen, there is no fast forward, there is no rewind. There is play and shuffle and OFF. That's it.  If you like classical or concept albums shuffle mode will be right out, because it will shuffle your symphonies into a mishmash of movements and any concepts on an album will be lost unless you decide to listen to all your albums in alphabetical order. This Shuffle would probably best be used with a selection of songs that you like for going on a bike ride, to the gym, aerobics or whatever you like to do. (I personally would NOT recommend it for a bike ride, as you won't hear the bus honk, before you are squashed into the pavement by it, use it for the stationary bike at the gym.).

In fact, unless you look at the playlist that you synched to the iPod shuffle, there is no way to know what is on it.  If you are listening and hear a song you like, but don't recall what it is, you are out of luck, there is no way to see.

Headphones / Volume adjustment

The iPod Shuffle comes with a pair of earbud style headphones that has a volume control/mute feature built into them. The Shuffle itself has no volume control. If you decide to use another pair of headphones, you either need a pair with volume controls or you won't get to control the volume.  I personally don't care for earbud style headphones, but I checked them out.  I took my morning walk to the lake with the iPod shuffle. The headphones have a small bar built into one of the wires that contains the only three controls you get.  The buttons are easy to use, you just squeeze the middle to mute or unmute, squeeze the top to raise volume and squeeze the bottom to lower it.

Sound Quality

This iPod Shuffle sounded as good as any other.  The Four Celloists of the Apocalyptica sounded pretty cool as they covered the songs of Metallica and other heavy metal numbers, the soaring vocals of Lacuna Coil and Epica sounded quite good.  Low bass is a bit lacking in this style of earbuds, but stereo separation and clarity is quite good.  Bass was better on my Koss Porta Pros, but since this player has no volume control, you get one set volume.  In my car, using my cassette adapter, the shuffle delivered well. 

But Why?

Ultimately, I have to question just who is the target market for these? Was the iPod nano with included video screen and full controls not small enough to bring to the gym?  Even earlier Shuffles had some limited controls on them.   I for one, really do not understand just why a portable music player has to be so small.  I mean if they are going to make it this small, why not just make it into an earbud style player so that you can mount it on your ear like a bluetooth?

Summary

Myself, I've decided to use this for the gym or out walking to check out new music.  I think it is also ideal for listening to audio books on. Load the one you want to hear, and then synch another book on it when you are done.  If this was my first iPod, I wouldn't like it, it lacks to much in features in favor of small size. My favorite iPod, is the iPod classic which is a bit bigger and bulkier, but holds most of my ripped CD collection with a good sized 120 Gigabyte hard drive.   You still need a computer with an iTunes account to use this, or at least to get it set up and to keep it charged.  I gave it three stars, but don't heartily recommend it, you can't even decide to listen to a song you liked over again.

*the amount listed in amount paid is what I believe this item retails for. I didn't pay anything as I won it.