Geeks.com sent us over for a whirl the highest capacity available iPod mp3 player, the 120 GB version of the iPod Classic. In the era of the touchscreen iPods and smartphones, how is the Classic design holding up?
First off, the iPod Classic 120 GB is a much thinner and lighter device than the original iPods that felt like bricks. It has nice rounded corners, and a beautiful finish. It sports a 2.5″ 4:3 QVGA LCD screen, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Hold slider button, and of course, its well-known by now, touch wheel.
The 120 GB Classic model has the ability to playback VGA h.264/AAC MP4/MOV Simple Profile videos, including rentals and music videos from the iTunes Store. There’s the ability to connect the iPod to a widescreen TV and watch these videos on an HDTV. Same goes for JPEG images.
There are also various extras, like world clock, notes, calendar, alarms, stopwatch and 3 games. I found myself being addicted to Klondike.
In the Settings area, you will be able to control the datetime, backlight timeout, screen brightness, language, EQ, normalizer, and modify the main and music menus.
Heavyweights: Zune 120 GB vs iPod 120 GB
Regarding audio, the iPod can playback mp3, AAC, AALAC, audiobooks, and WAVE. Sound quality is unprecedented, especially when using good quality headphones and 256 kbps VBR tracks. The iPod has proven to be near perfect with our gapless albums, one of the few mp3 players that do so.
In the music menu, you will find playlists (copied automatically by your iTunes installation), Genius (the song matchmaker), Cover Flow (a visual representation of album art), and even searching (which I found pretty tedious to type). At this point I should mention that the Genius algorithm/results has gotten better since it first came out.
When playing a track, the album art is shown on the left side, the track name, album and artist names on the right, with a progress bar on the bottom. Clicking the middle button will interchange the progress bar with a volume bar, a seeking bar, or a “star” voting screen.
The user interface is very speedy, and well thought out. The usability is definitely better than Zune’s. Battery life is phenomenal at over 30 hours of playback.
However, the question remains: should you go for a Classic iPod, or an iPod Touch/iPhone? The answer is this: if you own over 30 GBs of music, go for the Classic. If not, definitely go for the Touch/iPhone. The touchscreen interface on Touch/iPhone is even more intuitive and sexy, and faster to get to certain artists or songs (scrolling on our 60 GB of music in the iPod Classic was daunting).
Regardless, the iPod Classic remains one of the biggest innovations of this decade in my opinion, and unless flash storage becomes dirt cheap, the hard drive Classic iPod version will continue to thrive among audiophiles with too much music for their own good.
Rating: 9/10
Just a minor correction, 120GB is not the largest classic available:
http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/
It was made available during the September iPod refresh along with the 64GB iPod Touch and so forth.
Yeah.. I’d have to agree. There are a lot of strange things here though, that make me wonder about this article.
Firstly, a Zune 120GB is also available: http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/mp3players/zune120/specs.htm . Strangely enough whilst the article has a photo comparing the Zune 120 and iPod classic, not once does it mention the Zune.
Then he starts talking about how its the “biggest innovations of this decade”, but the Zune’s have radio tuners and wifi built in, and more features. It also starts spitting out all the audio formats (or lack thereof), without mentioning players such as the Sansa Clip, that support FLAC and Ogg. Why no comparisons? How many “audiophiles” store their music in Apple Lossless (a format, which is only compatible with one player, and has little industry support).
I haven’t used a zune, but this was clearly written with a very pro-Apple attitude. No comparisons are made between anything other then iPod’s, which makes me wonder if the photo was stolen! Please, submit articles like this to Apple news sites. I’d rather see articles comparing what is being reviewed with the competition, and what its advantages or disadvantages are.
Was this written by an Apple employee perhaps, or was the reviewer bribed by Geeks.com to turn it into an advert? All I know, is that this is a strange review, although, calling it a review would be pushing it, because no reviewer is 100% happy with his product, any review will draw comparisons with other products, and finally, the mention of ITMS sounds suspiciously like something one would hear from Apple Sales Training.
I was lucky enough to be given a 160 gig classic when I retired recently (with a nice engraved message on the back) and I absolutely love it. I have a 32 gig iPhone3GS which is also very good but whats great about the classic is that i can literally take my whole music collection with me wherever I go, I use it for hiking and with a tiny FM transmitter attached I can play any of my music whilst driving.
Once I had the iPod classic I ditched all my CDs and plugged it into a Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin speaker dock (tremendous sound by the way) in my living room as a replacement for my stereo system.
I honestly can’t see why anyone would choose a niche product like the Zune which has such poor third party support.
I have a Zune 120GB and I love it. I don’t find the interface unintuitive nor do I find the iPod interface any easier.
It does seem a little anti Microsoft, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
You obviously did not read the article, the article does mention the Zune. And the reason why not much more is said, is because we DID review the Zune a few weeks back on its own article, check our archives.
As for the Zune, the iPod Classic is a much better device in terms of usability. And I find the tremble filters that Apple applying by default more pleasing to the ears than the stall Zune sound.
And this article was not an advert. You have some nerve to tell me that. I don’t write adverts. I simply prefer the iPod WAY better than the Zune, and I do have both products to compare. DO YOU?
My husband is being using another 120 GB Classic iPod too, as his main mp3 player, and he loves it too. He has no problems with it whatsoever. So if user satisfaction comes out as “an advert”, then let it be one. Props to Apple in that case.
I personally think the point of the article was to go over the device and determine whether it made sense anymore in comparison to the iPhone/iPod Touch. The review did not compare it to any non-Apple MP3 players, because that simply wasn’t the objective.
As far as this statement:
First, it says right there is very plain language that it is nothing more than an opinion – I don’t see the point in arguing against it. Second, I don’t think Eugenia meant that this particular model was the biggest innovation – she meant that the original iPod itself was. That seems very self evident to me, but whatever. The point is that sure, to some people Zunes or Sansas may be better NOW – but neither even existed when the original iPod was released. Frankly I doubt either WOULD exist if the original iPod was never released…
ps. When this site publishes anything that cast Apple in a bad light the author gets attacked for it. Now someone posts an article that _doesn’t_ cast Apple in a bad light and the author is getting attacked for it. I frankly wish everyone who is posting this bias/anti-bias/whatever crap on the forums would just cut it out. I have no beef either way – its simply getting old and tired…
ZOMG!!! Product is good, reviewer likes it, therefore IT MUST BE A SCAM!!
Seriously, the reviewer liked the iPod Classic, therefore gave it a positive review. I don’t see the hidden agenda.
If every other site on the planet said the iPod Classic was atrocious, but OSNews said it was fantastic, then you’d have something to worry about.
That’s simply not the case.
I very much prefer my ‘big’ iPod to the iPod touch/iPhone for listening to music. Simple reason: On the big guy, I just have to press one button to skip through my tracks, and I can even do it without taking it out of my pocket and looking at it. Try that with an iPhone! At least for music listening, my iPod very much beats my iPhone. I like my tactile buttons 🙂
Double click on the microphone skips tracks, all without having to take your iphone out of your pocket
sure, if you like to use the crap apple earbuds
Bose Mobile In-ear Headset works for me; great sound and the ability to skip tracks/answer calls.
Why oh why don’t these devices support ogg/vorbis?
I’ll happily continue to run Rockbox on my iPod Video.
for a 10/10 rating see the iriver IHP-100 series. Still the best mp3 player ever made. ogg/mp3/wma/wav supported out of the box, and with Rockbox installed it becomes the best unit out there. Includes OPTICAL Line in and out, built in microphone, and external lapel mic. As well as a builtin FM radio which 7 revisions later Apple have still not added to their players.
I still regret breaking mine and getting an ipod classic 160gb.
If iRiver added a colour screen and modern hdd capacity of 160-320gb (rather than 20-40gb) I would drop the ipod in a second and buy one.
Edited 2009-10-15 13:42 UTC
I don’t understand the purpose of fm tuners on mp3 players. FM Radio sucks, which is why I have an mp3 player to listen to music that doesn’t suck. Is it perhaps better music outside of the US? Or is it for the kind of people who like fm music, but would buy an expensive mp3 player just for the status symbol?
Quite possibly. I know places where there are radio stations and shows that plays, *gasp*, DIFFERENT styles of music. Not like in 50cent and Enimen different but like Charlie Parker and Black Sabbath different.
What’s FM music? I’m kidding, I know you have this oddball concept of FM music over there but to be honest I’ve never understood exactly what it is.
Probably because when I grew up FM radio played all kinds of music so FM music to me is just that,all kinds of music.
National Public Radio, guys, National Public Radio. Believe it or not, news and other useful information also gets transmitted over FM radio.
No thanks, I prefer to read the news rather than listen to it. That way I don’t have to listen to those smug bottom-feeder reporters that pretend to be horrified by the latest catastrophe all the while smirking because it means they got a bigger paycheck for being first or some other such nonsense. Plus, I can pick and choose what to read, for example I couldn’t care less about sports or the latest actor scandles.
Well reading those smug bottom-feeder reporters is not much better.
I get my news from /bin/fortune.
LOL, who listens to FM radio? Some men like sports. and when you grow up, News will be important to you and you will probably grow to like NPR. Someday, someday.
Edited 2009-10-15 15:32 UTC
Sports and News is primarily in the AM band in this area…at least what is worth listening to, that is.
Here’s one reason. So we can listen to the BBC World Service.
My iRiver Spinn does have a color touch screen (and Ogg Vorbis support, and I think it even has flac support). My biggest complaint is that there are a lot of video formats it doesn’t support (it won’t play any of my MST3K AVIs unless I run them through the included transcoding software — although, to iRiver’s credit, the transcoder will take those AVIs and generate something that the Spinn will play). The thing does only have a… 4G, I think, hard-drive, tho, so it does fail that second requirement you mentioned.
It does not play FLAC either. One of the main reasons for having a big-capacity hard-drive player is the ability to squeeze-in lossless audio files.
FLAC support is available with Rockbox but, as I understand, Rockbox cannot be installed on the new iPod Classic devices (Apple took care of that).
What’s wrong with .wav?
EDIT nevermind, flac’s compressed. I see.
Edited 2009-10-15 14:55 UTC
Well, it does support Apple Lossless, and you know how Apple is about “duplicate functionality.” They probably wouldn’t support MP3 if they didn’t half to. Not sure what it’ll take to finally get Apple to embrace the open audio formats, if it will ever happen at all.
they told me to go fly a kite when I asked them about the possibility of doing this on my blog. nevermind I normally get around 100 hits a day on it.
Without piracy, it would cost you over $40,000 to fill it up at 99 cents per song.
<sarcasm>well yeah, because that’s the only thing you use a compact 160GB device for </sarcasm>
Seriously, my AAC encoded library is 25GB encoded @ 320Kbps, and that’s all CD’s ripped. My collection isn’t that big compared to others I know. Couple that with the fact that the device plays video (1GB a movie, if you do the better quality) and is an excellent bus-powered HD that fits in your pocket, and you’ve got a heckuva deal for $250.
My previous 30GB gen5 iPod I used for running VM’s off of, install files, music, video, etc.
Not necessarily. I have spent $1500 on iTunes in this year alone, and we own 400 CDs with my husband (we are big audiophiles). However, a lot of our music that fill up our 60 GB library are legally free songs. Either Creative Commons ones, or promotional mp3s: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2009/09/30/where-to-get-legally-free-…
Good thing I’ve got an existing large collection of CD’s then.
First off, I’d agree with a couple of people here regarding iRiver. My iHP-120 with rockbox was one of the greatest things I’ve ever owned in my life. Truly a perfect music player from both a format point of view and a management point of view.
I firmly believe in being able to use windows explorer to manage the music on my device.
That being said, the absolute biggest upside to using the iPod classic vs the Touch/phone is the fact that you can set it up to be synced via Winamp with the ml_ipod plugin (from sourceforge).
It’s not quite as nice as an explorer interface, but the _really_ nice part is that I don’t need iTunes PLUS it also will automatically convert all my FLAC music to either AAC or MP3 depending on what settings I use when I sync. Plus, the size means I can carry all of my music with me at all times, plus have a portable HDD.
what I used to love about my iRiver is that I could be listening to all my music on random, hit an artist and want to hear a song, pick it and have it play that song and go straight back to playing in random. I haven’t ever figured out how to do that on the classic.
In the end, I _loved_ my iRiver and I really like my iPod. If the iRiver had 120gb like my classic does, I’d argue that it was a much better player.
Why is it that tech sites never consider sound quality for portable music players – they rave on about fancy features and gimmicks but ignore the very essense of what the product should be about.
Audiophiles don’t use ipods.
Its the same with the latest tech-geeek fuelled digital camera market – all the online reviews and paper magazines all talk about features such as tilting screens and wireless pritning and hdmi out and flash and face recogition and built in arty modes .. but do they every consider the quality of the image or optics?
sigh
regarding FM – U use it a lot and the reception is good in the UK where we still have some good public service boradcasting.
What I’d like to know is how many of these so-called audiophiles can actually hear the differences they say they can, and how much of what they say is simply talking out their ass in hopes of getting greater attention? These are the same people who swear Bose sounds better than anything else and will spend $300 on a headset that, at least to me, sounds no better or worse than half a dozen headsets I’ve owned which cost less than half that price. My thoughts on the iPod’s audio are this: sound reproduction is quite good (at least to me it sounds just fine), but the eq is just plain awful and causes clipping and distorted low frequencies regularly. This eq quality problem was true on my 6th gen iPod Classic, my 4th gen iPod Nano, and now on my 3rd gen iPod Touch as well. My solution is just to use it without an eq, I hardly use them anyway as I like to listen to the music the way it was originally intended.
And btw, the review did mention sound quality.
They did actually mention sound quality in the review. But, you are right – sound quality is so often over-looked.
However, whilst I wouldn’t exactly say that I am the most amazing audiophile in the world, I do appreciate good sound quality. I’ve found that, given a decent set of ‘phones (I’ve used a couple of sets of Shures and they are excellent), and setting the EQ to ‘off’ gives a decent sound quality if you have a good quality file (256k / lossless) through an iPod.
Just my thoughts…
Ox
Sansa Fuze is also a great player. It can play OGG Vorbis and FLAC, the loved open formats. I have to add the fact that this player supports ReplayGain tags too. The sound is very good and it is a very affordable player compared to the iPod. I hate Apple’s Microsoft-esque strategies, but I believe this is the way it works for every monopolistic american company. The Fuze also has a slot to expand its capacity, with miniSD card or a microSDHC card. Please do a Fuze review.
I have already reviewed similar solutions from Sansa: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/?s=sansa
The player quality is simply not the same. I have seen Sansas crash, not display all album art (even if it’s there) etc etc. Sorry, but there’s no real competition for the iPod I am afraid. If you need a player that works properly, the iPod is it.
Hey, I can do that to!
“I have seen Sansas run great, play anything thrown at them and always work perfectly for people, etc etc. Like my boss. He loves his, and it even plays games and video via rockbox!”
Sadly, I’d have to agree with Eugenia on this one. My wife and I each own a Sansa View and they are one crash away from being replaced. They have given us so many problems over the last couple years, it’s really getting hard to keep them.
My wife has to ask me about once a month if something is wrong with her player. Usually I do a system reset and it will limp along for another few weeks.
And the Sansa View will not take Rockbox. Too bad because the player could use it.
Is this really the case with the newest iPods:
When playing a track, the album art is shown on the left side, the track name, album and artist names on the right, with a progress bar on the bottom. Clicking the middle button will interchange the progress bar with a volume bar, a seeking bar, or a “star” voting screen.
I’ve only used 5th generation’s iPods (which I still use 60 GB) and you don’t have to click the middle button to get the volume bar. You get it by the touch wheel.
No, the volume bar is the default and is accessed without pressing the middle button. What the review is referring to is you can press the middle button to change the volume bar to a seek bar and the touch wheel will then operate the seek bar instead, or if pressed again will select among a few actions you can take on that track. Two seconds of inactivity will cause the touch wheel to switch back to volume.
Eugenia, I actually agree with you on iPod. There is no competitor to its level. I am considering getting one. The problem is price, usually BRL 780,00 for that little desired thingie. (1 USD = 1.79 BRL) I am afraid here iPod is heavily taxed.
I read your Sansa View review. Yes, they are known to choke with album art larger than 300kb, the UI could be improved. Oh Well, I guess the iPod is still champion…
Edited 2009-10-16 12:35 UTC
Out of curiosity, what’s AALAC? I did a couple of google searches but didn’t find anything audio related.
Er, a typo for ALAC, Apple Lossless Audio Codec
Epic Fail might be over the top but for me, after having an earlier classic go AWOL cause someone bumped into me, I’ll never buy an iPod with a hard drive again.
Other then that I’m sure its great at what it does but I’ll just have to cope with the lesser capacities of a flash, Apple or otherwise, player.