Apple iPod Shuffle 1GB (2nd Generation) Review

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Transcript of Featured Review

This is the new iPod shuffle. This is 2nd Generation iPod shuffle from Apple and as you can see it's quite small. Now they do a lot of cool thing with this. I mean it's very tiny and everything is built-on to it. Obviously there's no screen so if you're looking for an MP3 player with a screen then this one is not for you. Here are the nice things it's small and it's light and that's good for things like working out or jogging or running. I've used this in the gym and the clip is not hard to open but once you clip it on to your clothes which is what you'll probably do it doesn't fall off very easily and to get it off actually even if I'm pulling it it doesn't just fly off. To actually get it off you do have to open up the clip and take it off. Now I'm not saying that it won't fall off. If it is rigorous enough it may fly off but a nice thing is that it is solid state memory so you probably won't have the same kind of damage to it and it is pretty durable it's aluminum outside. It has the same kind of controls as the original iPod shuffle with the Play button a volume up and down for that. The shuffle part of it on the bottom is right here there are actually two switches here I don't know if you can see them but the switch here changes between shuffle and repeat and just cycling and the switch on the left turns it on and off so when you turn it on I don't know if you could see it but there's a green light that turns on and that thing reminds us of the same indicator that if you have the first time of shuffle you'll know what's going on there's a green and amber and a red. Red means that it's out of batteries amber means that it's getting close to drain. Now one nice thing about it is that it actually has this indicator on the bottom end on the top so no matter which way you had it clip on you can always see what's going on with it. The headphone jack is up at the top and it doubles as a connector to the dock so you're probably wondering if it's like how are you going to connect it to your computer? Well it comes with this cheap little dock here which looks like a three and half millimeter headphone and you just actually just plug it in here and then the other side of it is a USB cable that you plug it to the computer. The only downside to this is that the charging. Now there's a couple of different options that you have. One option is to buy a wall adapter that plugs in to the USB port and you can charge it that way. Another option is to plug it to your computer but the catch is that your computer has to be on in order for it to charge. Now you can find kind of different ways of working around it and the way that I found that works is you buy a powered USB hub and you plug it in to that and then you plug that hub into the computer. It doesn't work a hundred percent at the time. What you'll have to do is either turn the computer on have it register and then turn the computer off and then it will keep charging or take power away from the hub and then plug it back in and then it will start charging. I don't know why it actually does that. It seems like you need to signal to tell it to start charging otherwise it won't do that. So you can see it sits nicely here and I haven't had any problems with scratches so far but I have seen a little bit older ones that scratch a little bit on the top and the bottom so there is going to be wear and tear in it but it's a pretty durable MP3 player. Just to compare this is the size of the regular shuffle the 1st Generation and this is the new one. So you'll see that it's probably less than half it's size. With the clip it's slightly thicker but not much and so I mean if you're looking for something to bring to the gym this is a great thing. The only problem with things this small is that you might lose it so that's one thing to be careful of. The last thing that I want to talk about with this is the headphones. Now if you ordered this very early when they first came out you would have gotten these old headphones which you can tell by the shape of them. They kind of look like there's a stick here and then they're kind of stuck on. The new headphones they basically look all integrated like so see there's no distinction between these earbuds part it just kind of smoothly close together so I'll hold them up to you together so you can kind of tell. Now I've heard different things about them the biggest thing about these new ones is that it's supposed to have a greater dynamic brain in terms of frequencies so you're supposed to get a richer sound and from what I'v heard it does offer a better sound. It's not totally noticeable it's not like the old headphones suck and the new headphones are like the greatest thing but they are better. Now the new headphones the other thing is that they don't come with the little earbud covers anymore. They just come like this no earbud covers and what I found is that they're a little bit smaller than the old ones. It's good if you have smaller ears usually for women because these won't hurt when you put them in anymore. That's the problem that I think some people have. The problem is if you do have bigger ears then what happens is these tend to fall out a lot. A nice solution to that is to go to radio shop or if you have an old set of earbuds that have some extra covers put the covers on and these covers actually make it so fit pretty snugly. So aside from that the only other difference is that they're a little bit shorter probably about six-inch shorter than the original headphones and that actually works out well if you're going to be using the shuffle actively because you don't want a long cord dangling that can be caught on something. The disadvantage is that if you are using your headphones for other things then you're going to find it too short for a life and that if you plug it in to your laptop and you're listening while you're working but for use of the shuffle I think it's a good combination and a good design and with earbud covers these earphones are great. So this is the new iPod shuffle by Apple and I would highly recommend getting it. It retails for $80.00 and recently they've come out in addition to the standard color they have a burnt orange pink green and blue I believe. So to a store play with them play with the clip and see how you like but I definitely love mine for going to the gym.