Apple iPod Nano 2011 (8GB, red)

Pros: Size will appeal to those looking for a more fully-featured shuffle. Touch screen will appeal to some. Great battery life for size.

Cons: Screen much smaller than before. Fiddly touch interface. Long title, artist and album names are truncated - big issue on such a small screen. Loss of extra features.

Summary: This product aims to redefine the nano line into a streamlined portable music player. The size and presence of a clip is clearly pitching this as un upgrade to the iPod Shuffle.

Unfortunately, a few key mistakes severely cripple the device's ability to excel in this category. The size makes one handed operation virtually impossible, unlike with the previous click-wheel models. The small screen means much less will fit on there, and coupled with the necessity to make UI elements larger for use with the touch interface, browsing through a large music collection quickly becomes impractical. Compounded with this is the issue prevalent in all iOS devices - the inability to handle long titles gracefully. With such a small screen, the fact that names that are too long are simply truncated would be a major headache for a large number of users.

It would seem that Apple has taken the viewpoint that usability is now uncool.