The new iPod Nano – Chromatic

In case you haven’t heard, Apple has released its next generation of iPod Nano, named iPod “Nano Chromatic”. It’s actually about the right time, because I’m planning to “upgrade” my iPod Shuffle to an iPod Nano.

NOTE: This post is about the iPod Nano 4th Gen Chromatic release. If you’re interested in my personal review on the iPod Nano Chromatic (4G), please go to my review post on the iPod here.

New Design. New Features. Now in 8 GB and 16 GB

The new IPod Nano looks quite similar with its second hand generation as can be seen below (screenshot taken from Wikipedia):

It’s slimmer, it can hold more songs (with 8 GB and 16 GB capacity), and it also has a new “shaking” feature.

iPod Nano Chromatic “Shake” feature

It’s quite useless, in my opinion. The idea is that if you shake the iPod Nano, it will shuffle to a different song in your playlist library. How hard is it to just turn on the shuffle mode and press the next button? O_o I’m not too sure either how sensitive the shake sensor is. You wouldn’t want the iPod to shuffle itself when you are riding on a bumpy road now, would you? Not to mention that some kids might throw the iPod accidentally during the shake :)

iPod Nano Genius mode

This is also a new feature on the 4th generation of iPod Nano and a new feature on iTunes 8. When you listen to a song on your iPod, the Genius mode can automatically create a new playlist of your songs in the library that resembles the same mood/tones. I’m not too sure how smart it is to detect similarity between songs. What is it based on? Beats per Minute? The Bass frequencies? I know my own songs; therefore I usually know what songs go well to which songs.

However, I guess it’d be interesting to use this if you have thousands of music files on your iPod!

It comes with a variety of colors too, so it will satisfy everyone’s taste. I just wish probably if they didn’t put the Genius and Shake features in, it may come cheaper than the RRP of UD$149 (AUD $199) for the 8 GB.

I’d have to think more on whether I should upgrade my iPod Shuffle to this. The reason I wanted to upgrade is because iPod Shuffle:

• Doesn’t have a playlist (you can only go to next or previous track)
• Doesn’t have a track progress bar (so you have to do the old fast-forward and rewind way by press+hold the button). It’s kinda annoying when I listen to a music/audio halfway and I mistakenly press the “Prev track” button when I actually wanted to press the volume button