- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 34 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Worth it if bought on discount/used etc."
Pros: The clickwheel, no one else can offer something so wonderful!
Cons: Audio slightly needing/not color screen/batter life still too little
Summary: I recently bought a very nice, perfect condition two month used Blue iPod mini. I love it, admittedly, and it is getting a LOT of use from me, such as right now. The clickwheel is awesome, no other company can offer anything that compares. One example is the way the volume is controlled: when in the screen that is showing what is playing, you can feather touch-rotate-slide you finger along the clickwheel and the volume is adjusted effortlessly. I don't have to use both hands. It is like a light caress.
Navigation is a breeze with the clickwheel, you just have to use it to understand how wonderful it is.
OTOH, the iPod mini's sound quality is just slightly lacking. My iRiver iMP-50 CD-MP3 player has better sound, for example. Don't get me wrong, the sound is good, just not fantastic, and this player should be fantastic, after all, it *is* the iPod, right?
The screen is sharp and clean/clear, but monochrome, sadly. There is room on it for more info, but they only put the track number, repeat etc. symbol, battery life, song bar, time from start time to end, song and artist. They don't show genre, or anything else. There is a play/pause symbol too. When using illumination it is both bright and a light blue pleasing color.
Having to use iTunes is annoying, but there *are* alternatives, especially if you use Linux, as I do, which are better. iTunes doesn't let you move the music off the mini and back to the hard drive, a real dissapointment! Also, you MUST use special software that can access and work with the iTunes DB file system to handle loading/unloading/managing the files on the mini. Other players work like plain hard drives with a tree structure. Some people will prefer the iPod way, some will prefer the hard drive directory tree structure way. The Apple way is no file/directory tree structure, but by category using id3 tags of the files, so that music is found under categories such as artist, album, etc. This is an important distincion that most reviews fail to mention.
My music is all low compression, so battery life isn't too fantastic. I haven't fully tested, yet, but I use up the battery very quickly because all of my music averages around 260k bit rate, from 190 up. So I am going to guess that 10 hours is the best that I will get, and I have a 2nd gen player.
The aluminum case is beyond awesome. It is rugged, beautifully made, and scratch resistant. The Apple signature white theme is stupid IMHO, and is a prententious display of consumerism.
That the player does not come with a firewire cable and wall charger is a real bummer! That it takes firewire is fantastic, the new iPods don't, which angers me to no end, and the new ones scratch easily, but not these venerable iPod minis. I feel that the mini is the best product Apple has ever made, or likely ever while, they way that they are going.
There are a TON of add on items that will work with the iPod mini, though forget recording with it, which is stupid! It's size makes it DEMAND usuability for on the fly recording of lectures etc. It bums me that the best player that they made won't record, has no mic. Oh well.
This player is worth it, but be careful when you select it that you know that it really is the right one for you. I got mine for $130 in mint condition, so it was worth it.
I love my iPod, all in all...
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